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I have seen the movie thrice now and as written in the blog, i was so enthralled by the visuals the first time that I had to watch it again to understand the nuances.Sadly though thee were very few character nuances and story development
One can blame those things on the lack of authentic historical evidence and gaps ,but the creative leeway taken in the form of so many long song dance sequence and a lot of other things, makes you wish if slb had actually given more time to development of characters.
Mastani' character is the most conflicted and least nuanced.She had some wonderful dialogues which sadly fall flat because we never get to understand how she convinced herself to fall in love with a much married man and leave her house in order to live with him.
While peshwa makes it clear that their meting ends there,in bundelkhand and we see a love making sequence with kashibai after he returns to shanivaar wada.
This is what is baffling, he clearly loves his wife and whatever attraction he had for mastani wasn't meant for perusal.
Now when Mastani comes to peshwa, how and when bajirao gets so smitten as to marry her is not clear?
What we understand is that bajirao honors women and doesn't like the way Mastani is treated.Is that enough for him to go against his wife with two kids and family.One scene they are fighting and two scenes and three songs later they are madly in love.
The radha- krishna metaphors are thrown in thrice for the sake of justification but they never make sense.Neither when mastani's mother let's her leave bundelkhand nor when Mastani justifies bajirao's love for her to kashibai.
Martha empire was always on war and was never so rich to begin with. This is even spoken about in the movie,but the grandeur of everything in the movie is complete opposite .Peshwa isn't the ruler and peshwas were chitpavan brahmins, not known for revelling in riches.Their treasury was exhausted because of constant wars.
Most disappointing are the malaria nd pinga dance sequence.They just spoil the sequence and growth of the movie,What is a peshwa ,a prime minister even doing in that rogue club doing haha haha haha dance.
Just before pinga and after pinga, kashibai is hating on mastani and telling her how she can never give her a place in her heart,she humiliates her ever so sweetly .
But then they dance happily , forgetting everything ,complimeting each other like childhood friends.Doesn't make any sense at all.
Dancing wasn't looked upon well in those times ,which is very well evident in the movie. There is a reason nach girls were given seperated quarters for entertainment.
And then we see peshwain herself dancing like no one is watching.Where was rao' s mom then I wonder.lol
Anupamaa
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