Bhaji Lao Saasta Ni?

Sanjay Leela Bhansali has to be given credit where credit is due. He can paint a beautiful canvas and he is capable to extracting a powerful performance or a few powerful scenes (in the case of Bhai) from his performers. His music used to be peppy and impactful for all his movies. His sets, the best Indian cinema has ever seen.

Now on to the things that I feel he really needs to do better at - for starters, I sincerely believe that he decides the era, the culture (Gujarati, Rajasthani, Maratha etc), decides how many songs he needs to have, what the sets and costumes of those songs need to be, and then tries to squeeze in a story in between the sweeping camera shots of the landscape and the loud percussion heavy music. One thing his stores lack is clarity of emotions. There were several points in the film where some reactions were captured and I didn't quite know what to make of it or where the film was heading. Its almost as if when youre trying to make a "great" movie, you end up forgetting to make a good one.

The accent of Ranveer Singh, sounds reasonably authentic. He speaks Hindi with a Marathi twang which I quite liked. Priyanka Chopra's accent switched on and off depending on the seriousness of the scene. If its serious then it switched back to north Indian Hindi, interspersed with the off Marathi word. Deepika, seems to do justice to all of her roles these days, effortlessly. Her role as a warrior, a danseuse, a mother, a lover, are all played well.

I'm a tad bit disappointed with a couple of formulaic things which I would sincerely like SLB to break - the darkness of his scripts where the lovers always end up uniting in tge afterlife and the editing. Now, I know Indians like bang for their buck, but every movie does not have to be stretched to 3 hours plus to show you how great a job the cinematographer is capable of doing.

All in all, it was a movie I would recommend watching just as I would Baahubali, and other science fiction movies with good production value, because these canvases were meant to be appreciated on the big screen, but this opulent historical rendering leaves you with something missing at the end of the movie. You feel like you've seen a great piece of Indian cinematography with thumpy music and good performances all around, but it needs, some seasoning!