"Whenever terror and cruelty rise on Earth,
a great soul is born to protect it."
Hello everyone!
Unfortunately, working the job I do, sometimes my shifts are a little bit on the crazy side, and my sleep schedule suffers as a result.
That's not to say I physically CAN'T sit down and write, the problem is that my only writing times are either right before bed, or if I get up early enough so that I can whip something together and then post it.
And a lot of the time, I kinda need to not be sleep deprived since I deal with money at work LOL.
So last week was a bad bust on that account, and HOPEFULLY this week doesn't turn into the same chaotic mess!
That out of the way, I can now confidently sail into this week's blog post.
Without further ado, we're heading right back into Bollywood, because of course we are, and having a gander at the historic epic, Chhaava.
Chhaava tells the epic story of Sambhaji, the second ruler of the Maratha Empire, and while I know it took some creative liberties that definitely upset people across India, I can honestly say I won't be reviewing it based on that.
I don't have the knowledge to do so!
But I'll be looking at it from the point of view of it being a movie in and of itself, so, hopefully I do it some justice.
It's definitely a high earning movie, but that being said, you don't always get the best movies to earn the most money, people tend to flock to cinemas to watch them because of great marketing, the promise of a good story, and of course the cast that's the biggest draw.
Chhaava begins with the Mughal emperor being told the news that his greatest enemy is dead, and while the man mourns, because, welp, good enemies are hard to find these days, he's also like WE RIDE AT DAWN, THE MARATHA REAL ESTATE IS OURS.
Psyche. One of the pillars of HIS empire burns right after, when Sambhaji and his warriors attack it to prove they won't go quietly into the night, and as the 'lion's cub' (his dad was said lion) he'll raze the Mughals to the ground if they believe the Marathas will go quietly into the night.
So after his horse drinks some Red Bull and flies over obstacles no horse should be able to cross, Sambhaji returns home to where his wife is waiting to crown him as the next emperor. Meanwhile, his stepmother is over there scheming to put her own son on the throne and has been trying to do away with Sambhaji for literal years, to no avail, and of course the plot gets discovered easily enough, the traitors are squished under an elephant's foot, and there's no actual confrontation with the stepmom, who just passes away at some point and you never even know why.
Wiki tells us that she's confronted by her brother, Sambhaji's army chief, but the version I watched never shows us this, and it's one of the big missed opportunities in the movie that would have given it a lot of emotional depth.
Anyway, the war between the two empires continues for years, but the passage of time is very poorly depicted; you have to pay VERY close attention not to miss the sudden appearance of numbers atop the screen indicating which year it is, and to be honest at one point I was like, who the hell ARE these people? In a couple of shots, only to later realize they're Sambhaji's family, all grown up at that point and so they needed actual actors for them.
This is just one of the problems plaguing the movie IMO, but anyway, moving right on, Sambhaji basically dominates the war field because the Marathas know how to use their own territory and lands against their enemy, and of course when his downfall comes it's from within.
See, his wife's brothers tried to get him to grant them authority over a region, and lol nah, both he and the wife were against it, so naturally this comes back to bite him in the ass when they betray him and it leads to his capture by the Mughals.
40 days of torture later, he dies, but his wife, who he could apparently commune with spiritually, crowns his stepbrother emperor, which of course leads to further conflict because, as stated earlier, the Marathas will NOT go easily.
I can confidently and honestly say Chhaava is pretty much made up of slow-motion shots of it's main lead, Vicky Kaushal, Vicky yelling dramatically to emulate a lion's roar throughout the movie, and battle sequences.
It's a GOOD movie, but it feels like it's only bare bones and nothing ever gets explored deeper beyond what's on the surface. The visuals are definitely stunning, no doubt about it, but visuals alone don't a movie make, and it's a bit like having an extra pretty shopping bag: beautiful to look at, but when you open it up it has very little actual substance inside.
We learn very little about his actual life beyond his warmongering to protect his people, which, while noble, doesn't lend an emotional connection. He and his wife are apparently deeply in love and very connected, but it's not explored enough, and we get them already married and she's practically pregnant before you can blink, which, again, would have been a great emotional anchor, but because the passage of time is so poorly handled, we don't get even that.
All in all, the story might tell all about Sambhaji the general, but it gives us very little of Sambhaji the man to counterpoint that, and while I'm not asking for emotional breakdowns every two seconds, there DOES have to be something more in every story you're telling to give it stakes, even and perhaps especially in ones that have actually happened.
Definitely not worth the money spent to view it in cinemas, it's best left to streaming.
xx
*images and video not mine
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