Will Bollywood ever explore anything beyond love? Not if Bajirao Mastani is any indicator

Sanjay Leela Bhansali is surely a master of visual opulence. He makes sure that every frame looks like a classic painting. We have known this since the 90s, courtesy Khamoshi and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.

Apart from his own films, he is also believed to have handled the song sequences of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1942 A Love Story, one of the few aesthetically shot films from the early 90s, when tackiness ruled the roost. Many actors have delivered their best performances with him. He also has a rare gift of music. He brings the best out of musicians who work with him. Have a look at Ismail Darbar’s career; does he have any other success of note apart from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas?

Bhansali has now started composing himself, thus entering an elite group of directors that include Satyajit Ray and Vishal Bharadwaj. But in spite of these talents, he delivers yet another film that is not only a mere disappointment but a severe injustice to the subject matter.

Yes, Bhansali’s forte has always been the star crossed love stories, so much so that his films are now beginning to seem repetitive despite their novel settings and jaw dropping visuals. Why take up the life of a famed warrior if he just wanted to deliver another Romeo Juliet? Even a cursory reading of Bajirao’s biography shows that he did live a very exciting and adventurous life apart from the love triangle. It could have been a plot dense with geopolitics and warfare. Did he really not find these aspects interesting? Peshwa Bajirao fought 40 battles and lost none, but this film barely shows one and a half.

That is exactly the problem with Bajirao Mastani. The trailer is misleading and it gives an impression as if it has all the ingredients in equal proportions. But make no mistake; most of the battle scenes come in the first 20 minutes and if you have seen the trailer, you have already seen the best parts.

They do look great but the film soon gets done with this part and settles down with the love story which feels like another Goliyon … Ram Leela with a second woman thrown in. So, the rest of the film turns out to be a languorous and clichéd melodrama instead of the high-voltage, period saga suggested by the trailer.

To be fair to Bhansali, he has already made it clear that the film does not have much to do with history. But that should be all the more reason to expect more interesting adventures since they are not bound by facts. All the creativity and imagination seem to have been spent in staging elaborate song sequences and it does not help the case that some of these songs are reminiscent of songs from his earlier films.

The the general excuse Bollywood has been using for decades is, “people want entertainment, not history.” It churns out more than a 100 films every year and almost all of them turn out to be love stories. Just how many love stories can a country take? As for Bajirao Mastani, the main drawback here is that it does not even entertain enough. As mentioned already, the good parts are finished quickly to pave way for a bundle of slow moving clichés, thus sacrificing the initial momentum.

This brings us to the larger picture. Bhansali has the right to make whatever he wants. The bigger issue is with Bollywood itself. As an industry, it is very dangerously one-dimensional. Every film industry has their own formulas, conventions and clichés but over the years Bollywood’s bag of tricks has shrunk perilously.

Its inability to conceive and deliver anything other than a love story mars its more ambitious productions. The adjective “epic” has been used liberally to describe this film but apart from the grand sets and song sequences, there is nothing that can be really termed epic. Bhansali has chosen an interesting personality but only choses the parts that fit with his usual tropes.

Most of the characters and plot devices are also typical Bhansali staples. There is the matriarch from Goliyon Ki Rasleela.. Ram Leela, there are scheming relatives just like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and there are two heroines dancing together just as they did in Devdas. This is exactly what makes Bajirao Mastani a very disappointing experience because it was supposed to be his magnum opus, a film that he waited for a couple of decades to make. Bhansali finally gets to do it after several aborted attempts. But yet he only shows us repetitions, just with better visuals enabled by a bigger budget.