When Bollywood finds it difficult making an authentic movie on historical backdrop, expecting any authenticity from a movie that has a pre-historical setting is rather imprudent.
Mohenjo-Daro as a Bollywood movie we all know is not going to be a documentary basing on the archaeological findings of the ancient Indus-Valley civilization that was built around 2,500 BC, ruins of which had been dug out not before 1920.
History books have little information to offer besides the decent civic planning of the city and some artefacts, notable among which are a bronze statuette of a dancing girl, aptly dubbed as “Dancing Girl”, a seated stone sculptor, “The Priest King”, ‘The Shiva-Pashupati Seal’ and the four feet long ‘Seven-stranded necklace’, which may have offered the out of clue movie makers enough cinematographic liberty to allow free reins to the imagination of their artistic team, consisting of the director, art director, music director, costume designer, hairdressers, singers and actors with their own trademark skill and style, including in the dramatics and dancing.
Going by the trailer of Mohenjo-Daro, which suggests that the movie surely has made full use of such cinematographic liberties- Kabir Bedi, whose get up seems to have been inspired from the seated stone sculptor-the ‘Priest King’, is made to wear a bi-horned headgear solely to look a tribal lord, if not a pagan. Worse is Puja Hegde-probably taken after the ‘Dancing Girl’, who looks anyone but from the Harappan civilization. Not because of her pretty charm, but because of the designer saree and sleeveless blouse--again the colour white of her dress is deliberate, which is a futile way of suggesting simplicity and lack of fashion.
Hrithik Roshan remains Hritik Roshan, the same flexible dancing dude, wearing a headgear and dhoti; he is allowed to dance and sing a typical AR Rahman composition in his own voice, like a peacock to win over his pea-hen. Many ‘extra’ Harappans with covered faces-sadly and inexplicably there, dance beside them like the worthless extras in any commercial movie who are there only to give contrasting company to highlight the charm of the ‘hero and the heroin’ in a song-dance
scene.
Inspiration also seems to have been taken from the elaborate public bath, known as the ‘Great Bath’-the brick-built pool with the waterproof bitumen lining excavated from the Mohenjo-Daro site. The beautiful pool that features in the song setting is a result of this, albeit designed as something akin to the types we find in five star hotels.
Hrithik defends all these faux-pas in the name of entertainment lamenting the absence of sufficient information about the city and the society in historical texts.
He may be right. The entertainment is what will send the movie to the 100- crore club and not any futile attempt to be reasonably authentic in the absence of sufficient historical information. But the trouble is the title. Well, if it is the entertainment that matters in the end, then the movie makers should have spared the title ‘Mahenjo-Daro’ to escape criticism. But the fact that they have used it to catch the fancy of anyone who has had at least some education to go through school history textbook to learn whatever little about this ancient civilization, and draw him to the movie theatre if he is not already enamoured of a Hrithik release.
But if it is solely the title of the movie that is going to draw you to the movie theatre when it is released, then you are definitely a serious type, if not a scholar, who is anxious to see what popular celluloid stuff can be made of what the history texts have so little to offer. If you want to know the life style of the inhabitants of the dead civilization, you will be let down for obvious reasons. In a way it is good to see the ancient as modern. All your misgivings about the pagan-ness of the dead civilization are gone, at least for that two and a half hours that you will spend watching the movie. But when you come out, watch out that you don’t curse the team that made an easy foray into making a difficult movie for spoiling the taste of your imagination that had stemmed from of your studious learning about the text book Mohenjo-Daro.