Akshaye Khanna is easily one of the few great things about this film. He deserved more scenes beyond expressing the same sentiment, over and over again
Chhaava movie review
Director: Laxman Utekar
Actors: Vicky Kaushal, Rashmika Mandanna, Akshaye Khanna
Rating: 2 stars
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The first time you watch Aurangzeb in this movie, especially among badly dressed buffoons for his minions in the Mughal Empire—at least I was quite struck by Akshaye Khanna under so much prosthetic make-up.
To the point that I thought they could’ve cast anyone in that role. How would we even observe his actual expressions (a bit like Naseeruddin Shah as Gandhi in Hey Ram, if you may).
Only, that once you watch this old man, with MF Hussain’s flowing, silver hair and beard, sunken cheeks, slight bobbing of the head, walking with a minor hunch, yet a regal gait; gently murmuring, rather than looking menacing like a typical villain…
You realise Khanna is easily one of the few great things about this film. He deserved more scenes beyond expressing the same sentiment, over and over again.
Mainly because he serves as a quiet counterbalance to what’s otherwise such an overloud, overlong, overbearing drama. Wherein, practically all the characters, lead included, seem to be on an overdrive, perennially going overboard. You stop caring for what’s beneath it all, after some time.
At the centre, of course, is Chhaava (literally, lion’s cub), which is the nickname for Chhatrapati Sambhaji, who’s otherwise best known as the son of the great Maratha, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. A Russian academic recently described the latter to me as Maharashtra’s Alexander; indeed, India’s, why not?
Lay audiences, on the other hand, I suspect, may not know as much about the escapades of Sambhaji. Chhaava is both a period actioner and a historical drama. It’s based on a novel of the same name by Shivaji Sawant.
It’s with films like these—say, even Tanhaji (2020), more recently—that I often crave the company of a proper researcher/historian, who can simultaneously apprise me of facts, along with fiction. Maybe I should take along someone from Bombay University next time.
Of course, I’m kidding! We don’t go to theatres to crack a UPSC exam. This is a picture, for God’s sake. The primary purpose of which ought to be entertainment.
Of course, that’s never the only purpose.
Mainstream movies also dabble in mythmaking. You figure so while you watch Chhaava, part human, part indestructible Hercules, fly hundreds of feet up in the air, piercing swords through necks as he pulls a lion’s jaw apart, battling the king of the jungle inside a well. Those are fine sequences, actually.
Does actor Vicky Kaushal, in this part, totally slay onscreen? Oh man, he’s given it his all.
And in certain low-angle shots of him in the throne, he’s as real as any actor likely to play the Maratha warrior-king. Sometimes one forgets he’s the son of one of India’s top action directors (Sham Kaushal) and therefore likely to know more than a thing or two about stunts.
Starting with horse-riding, perhaps, that was once an important skill for anybody aiming to be a Bollywood star. One must also not forget: Kaushal began his career with the minimalist Masaan (2015). The transformation from then to now is visually compete.
That said, I feel the filmmakers sold him the stunt set-pieces, really. As against a more engaging, emotional connect. He enters the screen vanquishing Mughals in Burhanpur to announce that he doesn’t believe in shor (noise), but simply shikaar (the hunt).
Which is quite contrary to what we watch him do thereafter; that is roar, and roar some more, pretty much all through. His colleagues in the military (Viineet Kumar Siingh, Ashutosh Rana, et al) are perhaps even louder.
This Uttar-Dakshin story is about the battle for Swarajya, as it were, in the Deccan region, being the Maratha empire—“Sahyadri, Godavari, Raigad, Jalna, Nashik, Konkan…”—resisting, and taking on the Mughals from the North of India, once Chhatrapati Shivaji is no more.
There is Aurangzeb’s son, Akbar, willing to ally with Sambhaji to finish off his own father. Likewise, there are betrayers within Sambhaji’s cohort, chiefly a queen-mother of sorts in their midst (the lovely Divya Dutta). Loyalty has hardly been medieval history’s strong suit.
The way this drama plays out is more like commercial breaks, lacking in detail, between battle scenes after battle scenes. It’s as if the filmmakers are merely interested in coverage of their script, which has enough and more in it to expand into a series.
What the film lacks, hence, is a directorial touch. By which I don’t mean there aren’t amazing sequences to be awed by, after all.
There is much of that—from the river of blood; more dead bodies than leaves on trees; and of course, the exquisite guerilla warfare that the Marathas, as per popular lore, were well-known for. Fatigue inevitably sets in, though.
By a filmmaker’s touch/flourish, I mean a confident/easy rhythm, thehraav (to inhale moments), character-graph… Budgets can’t buy that. You don’t even get to notice/observe AR Rahman’s music.
A set of breathless, disjointed, key scenes could well be stitched together for a long-running TV show too, no? Maybe, could watch that. As always, wholly up to you, whether you’d watch this.
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