Originally posted by: inlieu
Aunty,
Again, it's quality vs quantity. The 4 minutes were worth gold to me, at least. From Oxyartes' looks of pure discomfort throughout his crowning by his future son in law to Olympias smilingly observing her son's plan being put into motion, I loved every bit of it.
What Alexander counts on is that the enormity of the faith he shows in Oxyartes, who had probably never dreamt of being Shah, has burdened him with a sense of gratitude and immense responsibility to live up his new Emperor's expectations. You can see that Alexander truly respects his loyalty and counts on Oyxartes to uphold his name and administrative policies in his absence. Based on this, I do not see how he could have refused to accept being crowned. 😆 I loved the reference to wada vs koshish, and it reminded me of what Roxanne had said previously about her respecting people who keep their promises.
I don't think there was any question of Oxyartes refusing; he is too much in awe of Alexander and too frightened about the likely fate of Bactria if he did any such thing. As for the vaada vs koshish, Alexander seems to have such a store of aphorisms up his sleeve. I suppose he learnt most of them from Aristotle.
I totally loved how, after praising Oxyartes' nek dili, he makes it a point to highlight the fact that nothing comes for free. If I give you something (my trust), then I expect something in return - the underlying message being that I am the emperor and I expect my wishes to be fulfilled without objection. He knows that Darius was killed in order to protect Bactria from being sieged by Alexander and that father and daughter will also put the awaam's best interests first in this case. The look on the lion's face as he's zeroing in on the kill - ouf! He looks at Oxyartes and knows that he's got him with his claws.
The master stroke is asking for Roxanne's hand in public despite her refusal to marry him in private - very similar to what he did to get Barsine to stay back as she was escaping the arena. She would not want to see her father dishonored, or his loyalty, for which he is known, to be questioned in any way. It is amusing to see Oxyartes squirm because he does not want to say no, but at the same time he is reluctant to just pronounce a yes without his daughter's explicit approval.
This is a very interesting point that never occurred to me: you are a really clever child! 👏 In the case of Barsine, he says that in public to galvanise the Farsi janata to get into action and stop her and the other two. Here, he is boxing in both father and daughter into a corner from which they cannot escape.
I am curious as to whether she had told her father about Alexander's proposal and her response to it. Roxanne responds with a yes a little too quickly: one, to put her father out of his misery and two, to appear to be doing this for the people of Bactria. Hence the whole line about them being fortunate that Alexander should choose his life partner from Bactria. It is for this very reason, that she cannot go back on her word.
My dear, as I noted above and wrote in the post as well, there is no question of her going back on her acceptance. The likely cost of any such stunt would be too high. She is a very quick thinking girl, so she makes the best of things in an moment, and this is to save her father from that sticky situation.
A public acceptance of his proposal puts her in a defensive position that she needs to be careful about, because of the impact on the awaam of any misstep on her part. Especially after his public proposal that shows he respects the new Shah and his daughter for their nek dil and wants to strengthen the bond with Bactria. With such a generous gesture and attitude towards his new subjects, no one would question that he had anything but their prosperity in mind. I do think he is genuine in his use of that adjective for Roxanne because all said and done, he did notice her emotion and level of despair at the loss of Bessus, to whom she must have been very loyal, as her father had been.
All this is not really relevant, except for @bold. She has no choice but to accept, and she is clever enough to realise that. She also knows that Alexander will think oddly of such a ready acceptance seeing what nasty things she had said to him in private. So she finesses her decision by sugarcoating it with that reference to the marriage being a source of pride for Bactria.
Of course, Alexander sees through it and knows she's up to something. Let's hope she's not stupid enough to try to poison him - that will be a laugh riot for Alexander. 😆
Yes, that would be hilarious!😆 I marked "stabbing him with a dagger" in your quiz, largely because of the Moshius precedent
Finally, though they might just cashier the whole matter, as they did with the mystery of how Alexander entered Halicarnassus. Let us assume, as most here do, that Roxanne will try to take revenge on Alexander and of course fail. However, there is a catch to this. Would she want to endanger the life of her father and the security of the Bactrians, on whom the Macedonians would wreak a bloody revenge if Alexander was killed? So perhaps nothing will happen at all.
But also I agree with Deepika that Alexander cannot possibly land up in Bharat straightaway, for nothing there is ready to "receive' him! But I cannot for the life of me imagine HOW he is to be held back , unless they show the crossing of the Hindu Kush and the fighting in Afghanistan in detail. Which seems most unlikely.
Why would he woo her, for goodness sake? As you said, he could have just sent a message and ordered for this marriage to happen if he so wished. The fact that he asks her for her hand in private is, in the first place, a big deal because he had no need or obligation to do so. She didn't refuse him in a polite way did she? She hurt his pride and he wants to make sure she understands this insolence is not something he is going to tolerate. He also understands that dealing with her may not be straightforward, but he is game for whatever she throws his way, dagger or otherwise.
Exactly, as I had discussed in detail in my previous post. I think he tries to reach out to her and is rebuffed, so now he wants to show her what he can do if he so chooses.
There is a whole undercurrent of do not mess with me in this segment aimed at both father and daughter, and ultimately Alexander succeeds in making his point: that he is in control of his destiny and that whatever he gets is because of his tadbeer and not taqdeer. He refuses to accept defeat from a so called taqdeer which would have said, "you tried but she rejected your offer so forget it and move on". The look on his face as he turns to her and remembers her words was something like "here's my way of dealing with your rejection".
Yes again!
Nope, not our Alexander. He knows what he wants and he does not believe in wasting time unnecessarily on things that for him, should be a breeze. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's trying to tame Roxanne, but he is making sure that she gets a hint of what she's gotten herself into. She may have an affect on his heart, but not on his mind - he didn't get this far as a conqueror without having superior control on the latter.
I am not sure that he'd expected her to refuse. In fact, I think he was aiming for Oxyartes to be put in a position to make that decision or for Roxanne to say a reluctant yes. What he was a little surprised by was how she abruptly spoke up to say what "sounded" like a willing yes before her father could say anything, and how she seemed to immediately try and mount a convincing defense of her decision. A little to eager to please which of course Alexander will never fall for - he thinks the lady doth (not) protest too much! 😆 He had a subtle look of triumph that was expressed beautifully through his eyes and the curvature of his lip.
As for what one could read from Alexander's glances at Roxanne while he was talking to
Oxyartes, and then later, the look in his eyes as he comes down from the podium and stands opposite her, I was struck by the fact that our three readings- Deepika's, yours and mine- are so different one from the other. But that is the beauty of a nuanced and very capable performance. It can say different things to different viewers.That is the real fun in watching such a superb actor!
Why does he want to get married the same night? Yes, maybe he wants to see what she's up to as soon as possible and sort it out. But I want to take a more simplistic stance and say, he wants her and is not willing to wait to be with her. It will be on his terms and not someone's defined/scheduled date. Also, she's thrown him a challenge of sorts, and he's not about to back down that easily and that final closeup of his face as he declared that the wedding would be tonight said it all.
Well,maybe. But in his overall approach to her, the royal persona dominates, which is as it should be.He does not tell her that he loves her, which is very natural and astute, for if she does not reciprocate, he will lose face. He is more, I think, keen to show the father-daughter duo who calls the shots, and then again, he does want to be up and going as soon as he can.
I was extremely impressed with but not surprised about the fact that Rohit can communicate all of this with the narrowing of his eyes, the angle of his chin and the glitter we see in the last scene as he looks not just triumphant, but also eager to begin the next phase of his life with this woman who has captured his fancy. All in all, we see in this episode, once again, how well Alexander understands human psychology.
He has a micrometer inside his head, which helps him adjust angles and planes to perfection, I think! I used to think this of Rajat's Jalal, but Rohit is exactly the same.
There are a couple of more points that stand out as far as Rohit's performance goes. One, he manages to dominate the scene even when he is standing - usually the stance of a subordinate- and Oxyartes is sitting (on being told to do so). Two, during the wedding, he does not display any heightened eagerness to get up close and personal with Roxanne. He does not, unlike Jalal in Jodha Akbar, try to hold her hand, or look long at her face when he is feeding her the laddoo. I liked both these aspects a lot.
I too was disappointed by the lack of "appropriate" emoting on Aparna's part in terms of the turmoil she experiences, which I would have wanted to see better communicated through facial expressions and dialogue delivery. Well, let's just say it was standard issue - I have been expecting far more from Alexander's to-be shareek-e-hayaat and it doesn't help that Rohit is killing it in every scene. Shame, because her intro episode was pretty good and she emoted very well. She hasn't turned out to be the firebrand we were expecting, but maybe the CVs will have a couple of surprises lined up for us.
I don't have any such hopes. In the opening scene, it was not she who stood out, it was her lines. Without that prop, as was the case on Friday, she was stranded, and fell flat. Compare this performance with Laachi's in her good scenes, as the one where she desperately clutches at the hands of Puru who is being dragged away by the soldiers, and you will get what I mean. There was so much scope, but she could not produce anything.
Bamni's injury is supposed to be the segue into the Chanakya track where Puru will go and meet him in Taxila to ask him to help his ailing father. I am already starting to think back to the scenes where Alexander was frantic with worry for Philip as he lay in bed suffering from his injuries and the Greek haakims were called in.
What an odd way to introduce Chanakya!😕
Edited by sashashyam - 7 years ago
