Jodhaa Akbar (Movie-2008) : Bollywood Hindi Film

Jodhaa Akbar Movie Details :

Jodhaa Akbar Movie is an 2008 Indian Bollywood historical romance film co-writter, producer and directer is Ashutosh Gowariker. It film stars are Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, with Sonu Sood, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Ila Arun in supporting roles. Set in the 16th century, the film centers on the romance between the Mughal Emperor Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (Roshan), and the Rajput Princess Jodhaa Bai (Bachchan) who becomes his wife, on a marriage of convenience. A. R. Rahman composed the musical score.

Film Shooting Started at Karjat and the film was released on 15 February 2008. Upon release, it was a critical and commercial success. The film won the Audience Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the São Paulo International Film Festival, two awards at the Golden Minbar International Film Festival, seven Star Screen Awards five Filmfare Awards and two National Film Awards, in addition to two nominations at the 3rd Asian Film Awards.

• Directer : Ashutosh Gowariker
• Producer : Ronnie Screwvala,Ashutosh Gowariker
• Writter : K. P. Saxena
• Screenplay : Haidar Ali,Ashutosh Gowariker
• Story : Haidar Ali
• Starring : Hrithik Roshan,Aishwarya Rai,Sonu Sood,Kulbhushan Kharbanda,Ila Arun
• Narrater : Amitabh Bachchan
• Music : A. R. Rahman
• Cinematography : Kiran Deohans
• Editer : Ballu Salu
• Production Design : Nitin Chandrakant Desai
• Art Direction : Prashant Vichare
• Costume Design : Neeta Lulla
• Production Management : Inder Singh Bariya,Abul Syed ‘Hassan’ Ehsan,S.A. Ehsan,Ranjit Indori,Datta Jamkhande
• Assistant Director : Suvahhdan Angre,Rajkumar Bhagavant,Puneet Khanna,Karan Malhotra
• Art Department : Kanchan Bandawane,Sunil Gujar,Ramakant Kanojia,Sanjay Karole,Mitali Mahajan
• Sound Department : Sayed Aslam,Tarun Bhandari,Vipin Bhati,Ramesh Birajdar,Debajit Changmai
• Special Effects : Pankaj Khandpur
• Visual Effects : Vishal Anand,Abhilash Baby,Vijay Bharadwaj,Sameer Bhoyar
• Action Directer : Deepaksharmastunt,Ravi Dewan
• Production Company : Ashutosh Gowariker Productions,UTV Motion Pictures
• Distributors : Bharat Entertainment International,Bodega Films
• Genres : Action,Drama,History,Romance,War
• Release date : 15 February 2008
• Running time : 214 minutes
• Country : India
• Language : Hindi

Star Cast of The Film :

• Amitabh Bachchan as a Narrator (in voice)
• Hrithik Roshan as a Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar
• Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as a Rajkumari Jodhaa Bai
• Sonu Sood as a Rajkumar Sujamal
• Kulbhushan Kharbanda as a Raja Bharmal
• Suhasini Mulay as a Rani Padmavati
• Raza Murad as a Shamsuddin Ataga Khan
• Poonam Sinha as a Mallika Hamida Banu Begum (Akbar’s mother)
• Rajesh Vivek as a Chugtai Khan
• Pramod Moutho as a Todar Mal
• Ila Arun as a Maham Anga
• Digvijay Purohit as a Raja Bhagwant Das
• Yuri Suri as Bairam Khan
• Surendra Pal as a Rana Uday Singh
• Vishwa Mohan Badola as a Saadir Adaasi
• Prathmesh Mehta as a Chandrabhan Singh
• Shaji Chaudhary as a Adham Khan
• Manava Naik as a Neelakshi
• Disha Vakani as a Madhavi
• Abir Abrar as a Bakshi Banu Begum
• Indrajit Sarkar as a Mahesh Das/Birbal
• Aman Dhaliwal as a Rajkumar Ratan Singh
• Nikitin Dheer as a Sharifuddin Hussain
• Pradeep Sharma as a Sheikh Mubarak
• Balraj as a Raja Balraj Singh
• Sudhanshu Hakku as a Raja of Shimalmarg Kingdom
• Syed Badr-ul Hasan Khan Bahadur as a Mulla Do-Piyaza
• Dilnaz Irani as a Salima Sultan Begum
• Tejpal Singh Rawat as a Ni’Mat
• Shehzor Ali as a Raja Hemu
• Ulhas Barve as a Raja of Mankeshwar Kingdom
• Jassi Singh as a Raja of Bhadra Kingdom
• Raju Pandit as a Raja of Bhati Kingdom
• Bharat Kumar as a Raja Chauhan
• Rajiv Sehgal as a Raja of Virat Kingdom
• Unknown child actor as a young Man Singh
• Bhim Vakani as a Shahi Bawarchi

Story of The Film :

Jodhaa Akbar is a sixteenth century love story about a marriage of alliance that gave birth to true love between a great Mughal Emperor, Akbar and a Rajput princess, Jodhaa. Politically, success knew no bounds for Emperor Akbar, After having secured the Hindu Kush, he furthered his realm by conquest until his empire extended from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal, and from the Himalayas to the Godhavari River. Through a shrewd blend of tolerance, generosity and force, Akbar won the allegiance of the Rajputs, the most belligerent Hindus. But little did Akbar know that when he married Jodhaa, a fiery Rajput princess, in order to further strengthen his relations with the Rajputs, he would in turn be embarking upon a new journey – the journey of true love. The daughter of King Bharmal of Amer, Jodhaa resented being reduced to a mere political pawn in this marriage of alliance, and Akbar’s biggest challenge now did not merely lie in winning battles, but in winning the love of Jodhaa – a love hidden deep below resentment and extreme prejudice. Jodhaa Akbar is their untold love story.

Production :
Origin and scripting :

Following the success of Lagaan (2001), its director Ashutosh Gowariker was approached by actor and screenwriter Haidar Ali with the idea of making a film along the lines of K. Asif’s historical epic, Mughal-e-Azam (1960). When Gowariker contemplated on whether he should make a sequel to Mughal-e-Azam or remake it, Ali suggested that he do a prequel to it; Gowariker agreed and decided to create a screenplay that would cover the early years of Akbar’s life from 13 to 21 years of age. In an interview with Syed Firdaus Ashraf of Rediff.com, Ali said on his decision to work with Gowariker:

Ashutosh is the only director who could do justice to a film of such a level. In Lagaan, he touched on the issue of casteism, the oppressed class, Hindu-Muslim unity, communal harmony, team spirit, management and nationalism. He weaved all this beautifully to make a hit film without preaching or lecturing. In the same way, I told him he could make a beautiful film by touching on such issues without preaching.

Gowariker had already finished his script for Swades (2004) when Ali pitched the idea. As a result, he decided to start his work with Ali after completing it. In December 2001, Ali began research on the marriage of princess Jodhabai, daughter of the Rajput ruler of Amer, Bharmal with the Mughal emperor Akbar, and prepared a basic story on the couple. One month after Swades was released, Ali met Gowariker and handed to him the story. Gowariker subsequently announced his next project, terming it “a romantic musical”, titled Jodhaa Akbar.

In March 2005, Gowariker started work on the screenplay with Ali while denying speculations that Firoz A. Nadiadwala and Subhash Ghai were producing the film. It was confirmed later in August 2006 that Gowariker would co-produce the film himself under his banner AGPPL productions with Ronnie Screwvala of UTV Motion Pictures, in addition to the latter distributing it. Ali and Gowariker completed the script in November 2005 and sought the help of Bhawani Singh, the Maharaja of Jaipur and his spouse, Maharani Padmini Devi to provide them with “creative inputs to make Jodhaa Akbar as realistic as possible.” K. P. Saxena was hired to write the film’s dialogues.

Cast and crew :

Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai were the first choice of both Ali and Gowariker for portraying Akbar and Jodhabai respectively. Gowariker believed Roshan possessed the regal bearing and physique required to play the role of a king. According to Gowariker, Roshan immediately agreed after the former merely mentioned that he was doing a film on Akbar. Roshan learned Urdu as a means of preparing for his role. For casting Rai, Gowariker sent her a SMS asking “Will U B My Jodha?” to which Rai sent a reply stating “Yes, I will” followed by a smiley. Sonu Sood was chosen to play Jodhabai’s brother Rajkumar Sujamal. Sood had rejected offers to feature in other projects as he wanted to fully involve himself in the film.

The role of Akbar’s mother, Hamida Banu Begum, was first offered to Saira Banu, who declined citing family commitments as her reason. The role subsequently went to Poonam Sinha which marked a comeback for her to acting since her brief stint in the 1970s. Actress and singer Ila Arun had wanted to work with Gowariker and approached him for a role in the film; Gowariker cast her as Akbar’s nurse, Maham Anga. Nikitin Dheer was selected to play Sharifuddin Hussain, the rebellious brother-in-law of Akbar, after impressing Gowariker during the auditions. Kulbhushan Kharbanda portrayed Raja Bharmal while Suhasini Mulay was cast as Jodhabai’s mother, Rani Padmavati. Actress Abir Abrar, niece of yesteryear actress Kumkum, was selected to play Bakshi Banu Begum, Akbar’s sister and Hussain’s wife. Indrajeet Sarkar was cast in the role of Birbal, but his scenes were cut from the film’s final version to reduce its duration.

A. R. Rahman, Javed Akhtar, Nitin Chandrakant Desai and Ballu Saluja were signed up as the music composer, lyricist for the songs, art director and editor respectively, thereby collaborating with Gowariker for the third time after Lagaan and Swades. Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of Tata Elxsi, were in charge of the film’s special effects. Kiran Deohans, known for his work in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Aks (2001) and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham… (2001), was the film’s cinematographer. Gowariker chose Ravi Dewan to be the stunt co-ordinator for Jodhaa Akbar based on the latter’s experience in handling historical films, such as 1942: A Love Story (1994). Chinni Prakash and his wife Rekha, Raju Khan and Ash Kumar were the film’s choreographers.

Costume Design :

Neeta Lulla, who had earlier worked with Rai in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas (2002), was chosen to handle the film’s costume designing. Lulla found Jodhaa Akbar to be “one of the most challenging films” she had done. This was because she had to design costumes not only for the lead actress, but for every cast member involved in the film. Lulla did extensive research for a year and a half on the type of clothes people wore during the Mughal Empire. She went to Jaipur to procure information on what type of fabrics were worn during that period. She schematically designed clothes by providing yellow, orange and red colours for the Rajputs and gold, brown and beige colours for the Mughals.

Keeping in mind the grandeur of the Mughal Empire during Akbar’s time, Lulla used the Zardozi and Kundan types of embroidery for Roshan’s and Rai’s dresses. The fabrics for designing the costumes as well as the shoes were bought from Delhi, Mumbai and Jaipur, while authentic embroidered Mojaris were used for footwear. Lulla designed clothes of dark brown, black and green colours for the character of Sharifuddin Hussain after taking the characters’ persona into consideration.

The jewellery used for the costumes were purchased from the jewellery brand company Tanishq. Jodhaa Akbar marked the company’s second venture into films after the fantasy film Paheli (2005). A team of 200 craftsmen worked for 600 days to fashion and mould jewels made of gold gemstones. Around 300 kilograms of jewels were used. Rai and Roshan wore thirteen and eight sets of jewels respectively throughout the film. The set, which Aishwarya wore in the scene where Jodhabai is wedded to Akbar weighed 3.5 kilograms. Rai later mentioned in subsequent interviews that the toughest part of playing her character was to wear the jewellery as she found them quite heavy to bedeck. The jewels were designed using miniature paintings from Mughal literature and Akbar’s autobiography by Abu’l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, the Akbarnama as influences. The scabbards used by the lead actors in the film weighed two kilograms.

Film Shooting :

Film shooting started in early November 2006 at Jaipur with the climax sequence with Hrithik Roshan and Nikitin Dheer, and the Second Battle of Panipat. Palace scenes featuring Rai as Jodhabai before her marriage to Akbar were filmed at the Roopangarh Fort in Kishangarh. The sequence featuring the Battle of Panipat was shot in the Dhula region located on the outskirts of Jaipur. To prepare for their fight sequences, Roshan and Rai learnt sword-fighting and horse-riding a month before filming began at Mehboob Studio and Mahalaxmi Racecourse respectively. Rai had learnt sword-fighting and horse-riding while filming The Last Legion (2007) because of which she had little difficulty in her preparations.

Dewan worked with Desai in designing the armour and ammunitions. The cannons were made of carbon fibre with iron inserted on the inner portions to make sure the cannonballs were fired smoothly. The swords were initially made of both wood and fibre but were later made of lightweight carbon fibre due to the actors not being able to manoeuvre them easily. All of the stunt sequences were rehearsed everyday from 3 am to 7 am before they were filmed. A team of 250 stuntmen and 5,000 extras were used for all the battle scenes, which were filmed for 20–30 days at a stretch. Ashutosh wanted the climax to be perfect because of which the extras, who were people from nearby villages and were used for Akbar’s and Hussain’s armies, would often get tired standing in the same position for an entire day. Some of them would not be present the next day. As a result, Dewan placed the 250 stuntmen in the front rows of both armies so as not to show how exhausted the villagers were.

Deohans employed six cameras to film the climax scene from different angles. He was influenced by films such as Gladiator (2000) and Troy (2004) as he found the “basic colour” of those films’ locations similar to that of Rajasthan’s arid surroundings.[58] The lighting was used depending on the scenes filmed. Further shooting took place at Sambhar Lake Town, and the forts of Amber, Amer and Agra. The scene where Akbar prays to the Islamic scholar Moinuddin Chishti for a successful conquest of India was filmed at the Ajmer Sharif Dargah.

After the completion of the first schedule of filming—which took in 60 days—by the end of December 2006, the second schedule began on 8 January 2007 at Desai’s ND Studios based in Karjat. Desai took “lakhs of photographs” of Amer Fort and Agra fort. Using the photos as reference, he erected sets consisting of the inner portions of both places in his studio. Filming could not take place entirely at the forts due to heavy traffic of tourists coming there everyday. Consequentially, only the outer portions of both the forts were filmed on the spot during the first schedule while the scenes featuring the inner portions were filmed at Karjat. The inner portions that were erected by Desai included the Dīwān-e-Ām, Dīwān-e-Khās, Jodhaabai’s inner chambers and the fort’s gardens. The entire set measured 1,600 feet long, 600 feet wide and 68 feet high, which according to Desai was equivalent to “seven floors of a high-rise”. Concrete, fibre and asbestos sheets were the materials used to create the interiors of the forts. The cost of the entire set at Karjat was estimated to be around 120 million.

The song “Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah”, which was choreographed by Prakash, featured about 12 assistant choreographers, 400 dancers and 2,000 extras acting as the citizens of Agra.[65] Prakash used the dance steps featured in the songs of films such as Ganga Jamuna (1961) and Guide (1965) as reference. The song was planned to be finished within 10 days but took 15 days to complete as Prakash felt it was “difficult to stick to a deadline when you have a crowd this big.” He credited his team for finishing the song as he believed it would have taken “a month” to film without their co-operation. The music video for “Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah” had a production cost of ₹25 million ($575,000). It was the most expensive Bollywood music video at the time, matching “Dola Re Dola” from Devdas (2002).

A total of 80 elephants, 100 horses and 55 camels were employed throughout the entire film. The battle scene featuring Roshan and Ulhas Barve, who plays the King of Mankeshwar, Chittorgarh district, was filmed in June 2007 at Jaipur. Shooting was completed in October–November 2007 at Karjat. Due to the amount of money spent on the costumes and sets, the budget of the film, which was initially 370 million, increased to 400 million.

Jodhaa Akbar Movie Songs / Music :

The score and soundtrack of the film was composer is A. R. Rahman, making his third collaboration with Ashutosh Gowariker after Lagaan, and Swades. The official soundtrack contains five songs and two instrumentals. Rahman scored the prewritten lyrics by Javed Akhtar, except for the songs “Khwaja Mere Khwaja” and “Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah”. The former was written by Kashif while the latter was by Javed Akthar himself. The music was released on 9 January 2008 and the CDs were out by 18 January. Aakash Gandhi of Planet Bollywood reviewed the album, saying, “Jodhaa Akbar compositions are magical, spectacular, invigorating and above all a wholesome experience you rarely get in soundtracks these days. When you cannot pick a favourite you know the benchmark has been set consistently high. Indian music has just added another soundtrack to its eternal treasure.” According to the Indian trade website Box Office India, with around 11,00,000 units sold, this film’s soundtrack album was the year’s fourteenth highest-selling.

• “Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah” – Mohammed Aslam, Bonnie Chakraborty
• “Jashn-E-Bahaara” – Javed Ali 5:15
• “In Lamhon Ke Daaman Mein” – Sonu Nigam, Madhushree
• “Mann Mohana” – Bela Shende 6:50
• “Khwaja Mere Khwaja” – A. R. Rahman
• “Jashn-E-Bahaara” – Instrumenta
• “Khwaja Mere Khwaja” – Instrumental (Oboe)
• “Khwaja Ji (Extended Version)” – Ratul Roy Hriday

“Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah” Full Video Song :

• Composer : A.R.Rahman
• Singer : Mohammed Aslam; Bony Chakravarthy
• Lyrics: Javed Akhtar

“Mann Mohana” Full Video Song :

• Composer : A.R.Rahman
• Singer : Bela Shende
• Lyrics: Javed Akhtar

Jodhaa Akbar Movie Review :

This film review are Mostly Positive from Critics, IMDB Public Reviewing site give 7.6 Star Out Of 10 Star with Reviewers are 29,683.

Fantastic movie by Ashutosh Gowariker! Amazing story plot. Great cast- Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Sonu Sood. Amazing music!! Definitely worth seeing. A great re-telling of story and setting for a great history. Though there’s a huge controversy for the history part of the story (which the whole point of the movie really was), Jodha Akbar is an ideal, Disney-ish version of the history therefore making it an entertaining, romantic movie. I’ll definitely watch it over and over again. an epic movie. A long-limbed story that is utterly simple in structure, but decorated with enough character interplay and side plots to keep the movie ticking over to a powerful finale. loved it. fantastic.

Critics Rating by Taran Adarsh, from Bollywood Hungama give 4 star out of 5 Star.

Jodhaa Akbar Movie Box Office Collection :

INDIA

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