OPINION | Is Raja Shivaji Dhurandhar Part 3?

A few minutes into Raja Shivaji, it feels as though one has walked into Dhurandhar, with its characters dressed in medieval costumes.

Raja Shivaji released in theatres on May 1.

Source : Instagram/@riteishd

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Key points generated by AI, verified by newsroom

• Ritesh Deshmukh directs and stars as Shivaji Maharaj, a Maratha warrior.
• The film depicts bloody battles and a Hindu vs. Muslim narrative.
• Abhishek Bachchan and Vidya Balan offer brief gravitas and sarcasm.
• Women characters serve primarily to bless the warrior protagonist.

The thunderous soundtrack, the armour of machismo, the sound of a war call against the evil Muslim plunderers, the Hindu vow to rescue the country from Islamic dominance… At first, I thought I had walked into Dhurandhar with the characters in medieval costumes.

Spectacle Over Substance And Depth

Men are still beheading their enemies, literally, in this film, and in a manner of shrieking in Iran. Swords or nukes, it is business as usual for the warmongers.

Ritesh Deshmukh stars in and directs this bombastic biopic on Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Maratha warrior who dreamt of swaraj for the Marathas and fought till his last breath for it. Deshmukh, with all due respect, hardly seems the right fit for such a valorous part. He is sincere, yes, but not able to convey the luminous legacy of the Great Man, reducing his gallantry to a series of bloody AI-induced battles where beheading is a bloodsport. Impaling comes second.

I am not sure whether Mr Deshmukh wanted to make a Game of Thrones out of the Maratha warrior’s life. That’s the way it seems to be. And our compliments to the chef for reprising the popular refrain of the Good Brave Hindu warriors versus the Bad Evil Backstabbing Muslim plunderers. Half the budget must have gone into applying kajal to the Muslim characters (how kohl is that!).

Abhishek Bachchan appears for a while as Shivaji’s elder brother, bringing a gravitas to the storytelling sadly missing from the core of the film. Some key historical characters are used for comic relief, reminding us that history is what we make of it.

History Lost In Hero Worship

None of the Muslim characters is anything but a unidimensional caricature, except the fabulous Vidya Balan, who, as the weak Mohammed Adil Shah’s wily Begum, is full of toxic sarcasm. She is a hoot, even though most of her scenes are shot separately from the durbar politics and interpolated with not half the cleverness the Begum displays.

Balan fits in perfectly in a film that is eventually a historic hiccup, a hysterical hyphen to a much larger political reality, which is way beyond the grasp of this project. The aim here is to lead the leading man into a hand-held hagiolatrous haloism. In all the crowd sequences, the junior artistes look at Ritesh Deshmukh as though he has just announced a Diwali bonus during Eid.

Barring Balan, the women in the story - the mother (Bhagyashree) and wife (Genelia D’Souza) - live only to breathe blessings on their beloved warrior (no prizes for guessing who). Genelia, as Shivaji’s dharampatni, sports manicured nails in the 17th century. She gets a death sequence longer than Zeenat Aman’s in Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, the difference being that she delivers her adulatory lines for her husband in a perpendicular position. It’s not easy being the queen of the show.

At 3 hours and some minutes, Raja Shivaji is surprisingly brisk-paced and mostly well-edited (Urvashi Saxena), although the scissors stop reverently every time our screen Shivaji has a speech to make on swaraj. The great Santosh Sivan’s cinematography is surprisingly unremarkable. Some of the choreography in the battle sequences seems inspired by Bajirao Mastani.

The dubbing in the Hindi version is uneven. Was there a need to pan-Indianise the Maratha warrior’s saga?