When everything is loud, nothing is loud.
I can’t remember where I’ve read( or heard) this before, but to me, it’s one of the most vital guiding principles for good sound design — which, in turn, is an aspect of film whose contribution to the impact a film has on a viewer is often grossly underestimated. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a veteran filmmaker who once studied at India’s best film school, must surely be aware of this.
Which is why it’s strange how he pretends he doesn’t in his latest mega-budget outing, Bajirao Mastani, which eschews silence for most of its running time like a corrupt builder avoids the income tax department. Sanchit Balhara’s background score is nicely orchestrated, but dominates the film’s soundscape along with badly mixed-in battle sound FX a little too strongly. If you feel strangely exhausted when you walk out of this movie, you know what’s to blame.
A two-and-a-half-hour costume drama dedicated to the apocryphal love story between the great Maratha general Peshwa Bajirao( Ranveer Singh) and the Rajput-Muslim warrior princess Mastani( Deepika Padukone), Bajirao Mastani is a loud, clunky melodrama that is largely interested in providing derivative cinematic thrills whilst pretending to be lyrical and meditative. That said, however, it is also often visually-arresting( aside from when it isn’t — more on that later) and romantic enough to sustain interest.When everything is loud, nothing is loud.
I can’t remember where I’ve read( or heard) this before, but to me, it’s one of the most vital guiding principles for good sound design — which, in turn, is an aspect of film whose contribution to the impact a film has on a viewer is often grossly underestimated. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a veteran filmmaker who once studied at India’s best film school, must surely be aware of this.
Which is why it’s strange how he pretends he doesn’t in his latest mega-budget outing, Bajirao Mastani, which eschews silence for most of its running time like a corrupt builder avoids the income tax department. Sanchit Balhara’s background score is nicely orchestrated, but dominates the film’s soundscape along with badly mixed-in battle sound FX a little too strongly. If you feel strangely exhausted when you walk out of this movie, you know what’s to blame.
A two-and-a-half-hour costume drama dedicated to the apocryphal love story between the great Maratha general Peshwa Bajirao( Ranveer Singh) and the Rajput-Muslim warrior princess Mastani( Deepika Padukone), Bajirao Mastani is a loud, clunky melodrama that is largely interested in providing derivative cinematic thrills whilst pretending to be lyrical and meditative. That said, however, it is also often visually-arresting( aside from when it isn’t — more on that later) and romantic enough to sustain interest.
A disclaimer in the beginning absolves the film of historical accuracy — something that the Peshwa’s living descendants have objected to — and it’s the right choice: let the film about what is already fable-like be a fable, after all. What Bhansali attempts here, then, is a quintessentially Indian tale — that makes admittedly thoughtful and still-relevant observations on Hindu-Muslim relations — by way of modern graphic-novel-based cinema.
Bhansali’s famed opulence is visible in every frame of this film. You can see it in the depiction of Pune’s Shaniwar Wada, which looks like it could be the setting for a wuxia film. You can see it in the chandeliers, sheer curtains, necklaces, sarees, jewellery, and every other minute detail that Sudeep Chatterjee’s camera can fit within a frame. Yes, when we’re indoors, everything does look like a set, but it’s possible to cast that feeling aside and admire the sheer work that seems to have gone into it.
The problems occur in the film’s exterior shots. Beautifully-graded-and-composed shots give way to often-awkward green-screen work and obvious light sources, breaking the movie’s spell rather rudely. An epic battle sequence in the beginning would’ve been more rousing if the lighting hadn’t looked as fake. Some of the CGI work is competent; but then, there are scenes that look so embarrassingly bad that you wonder why a supposed control freak like Bhansali would keep them in the final cut.
The story hangs upon the love triangle that also involves Bajirao’s wife, Kashibai( played by Priyanka Chopra), who suffers the ignominy of him bringing home another wife( who is part Muslim, to boot, a fact that greatly angers Bajirao’s widowed mother — played superbly by Tanvi Azmi) . Her moral righteousness is up against Bajirao-Mastani’s powerful chemistry( what great fortune to be able to get B-town’s hottest real-life couple to play these roles) . However, unlike in Bhansali’s last film Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela ( 2013), where Singh and Padukone displayed smouldering sensuality, the love between the two is depicted here in a genteel manner.