As of now, more than many
people have written reviews on this movie, so here goes another.
I forced myself to go watch this movie a 2nd time, as the first time NOTHING made sense to me. It did not feel like an SLB movie at all. So the whole time I was sitting in the theatre for the second time, I wanted to JUSTIFY each and every character: he/she is this way, because of these reasons, etc.
Now, I was able to do that for 98% of the movie, yes. All the questions which came to my mind, I tried to find answers there itself.
The ONLY scene which deserved no applause nor justification nor appreciation was the Jauhar scene. EVERYONE belongs to a cultural background where there are some XYZ rules, yes, but the fact that SLB glorified this scene for close to 20 freaking minutes, now that’s what I felt absurd.
SLB cannot do justice to history. I think ALL of us know this by now because he portrayed an able king who falls for another woman in case of "Bajirao Mastani". One will see that it’s only a love story and that you actually DO NOT get to see the other sides of Bajirao as an able king at all. He only fights for his lover without giving a damn about his wife. I watched THAT movie ONLY for Priyanka Chopra.
But in case of "Padmavati"( yes, and not Padmaavat), you can HARDLY relate to ANY character. The Hindu king has an ego which is 2 times his size, the Muslim king is in love and is obsessed with the Hindu queen whom he has HARDLY seen or know about! He only hears the words of the Pujari who say, if Padmavati is beside Khilji, he can acquire all the lands that he lays his eyes on. So what does this basic thing tell you about the plot? HE NEVER WANTED PADMAVATI out of LUST. It was only for conquering and winning. Now, all those people who are saying Khilji was a bad person AFTER watching this movie, REALLY need to do 2 things: 1) GO BACK and open your history books to see, khilji was NEVER a man of lust in history at all! He only wanted more kingdoms under the Muslim/Turkish rule. He NEVER fought any kings for any woman.(I also think SLB kind of portrayed Aurangzeb instead of trying to portray Khilji, because everyone knows what a terror Aurangzeb was. Or maybe it was just for drama.)
2) DO NOT EXPECT SLB to deliver historic movies, like Lincoln or The Iron Lady who do justice to the persons they are based on. It’s pretty obvious by now he only wants to make love tragedies. Not focus on giving the audience a deep impression of our rich history.
He is great at what he does, but at the end of the day, mediocrity’s vein runs in his body too, if not pretty evident. All of the aahn- Bahn- shan of Rajputs is so very clearly written throughout the movie’s face. Now I do not know if I must laugh at this or not, because the whole movie is what the Rajputs "would do" and "behave like", and the stupidity of the king is so evident in so many scenes, that one might wonder if SLB did the scenes that way only to give a tight slap across the protestors faces, to show them of their own stupidity.
Anyways, to conclude this not-so-short review, go and surely watch a movie of this grandeur, but with ZERO expectations that you may LEARN something historic. Nope. That’s not gonna happen. All the while it’s a drag, especially the 1st half. The movie only picks up a bit of speed in the second half showing Padmavati as an able Rajput Queen, only to kill her in the end with utmost stupidity. There is NO smoothness b/w scenes. Some scenes are stopped at an absurd time without any proper flow. So if you’ve got 2:43 minutes on your watch, then yeah, watch it. But even if you do not, no loss as Amazon Prime is the online marketing partner. So that movie will be up in NO time on Prime to watch as well.
P.S: NO ONE gave standing ovations or applauded at the climax.