'Mohenjo Daro' Review: A disservice to history and cinema
By Deepa Gauri
Published: Fri 12 Aug 2016, 2:25 PM
Last updated: Mon 15 Aug 2016, 5:21 PM
Mohenjo Daro
Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker
Starring: Hrithik Roshan, Kabir Bedi and Pooja Hegde
Now playing at theatres in the UAE
Rating: 2/5 (only for all the effort they took)
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Mohenjo-Daro is at the heart of the Indus Valley Civilization, an era we know of little, and yet has defined the course of human history.
A filmmaker with strong credentials, Ashutosh Gowariker, however, does cinema and history a disservice with his film Mohenjo Daro, a fully fictional work lacking in depth, novelty, and creativity. Worse, it takes the audience for granted.
His film, starring Hrithik Roshan, is all of Bollywood's formula transposed into a make-believe world of the Indus Valley Civilization, where everything is utterly clichéd, and every character behaves as in some B-grade Hindi film.
Why, Ashutosh, why? You can make your fairy tales; you have the creative freedom to do it. But why do you drag a whole civilization into your cinematic ambition and make a mockery out of it?
Unintentionally hilarious all the way, Mohenjo Daro is an opportunity for great cinema that lies tattered to bits with a treatment that has zilch conviction or innovation. At a time when cinema is reinventing itself with bold experimentations, this comes as an aberration.
So we have Sarman (Hrithik Roshan), who lives with his uncle and aunt (both terribly filmy), who dreams of unicorns, fights crocodiles, and wants to go to Mohenjo Daro to sell indigo.
Off he goes, and let us say, he goes to where he truly belongs. He also finds his love - the daughter of the grand priest - Channi (Pooja Hegde, whose costumes have holes at all the wrong places).
Ashutosh teaches the Indus Valley people to kiss too - as we see Sarman and Channi engaging in one of those liplock moments that Bollywood just cannot execute with any finesse.
Then there are the supporting actors in usual order: A trusted comic friend, a mad man who warns about the past, a chieftain who is cruel (and also sells gold and timber to Sumerians -black marketing thrived then too perhaps), his son (Arunoday Singh -terrible, in one word) who eyes Channi, plus two cannibals, crocodiles and what not.
The film flows in utterly predictable grooves, and the narrative is hampered by songs from AR Rahman (which are quintessential ARR and - I dread to say this - so out of place).
With sets that look as dead as the ruins of Indus Valley, obligatory dialogues about farmer power and social justice, reference on how human greed could have caused the decline of the civilization, and even a scene that is a replica of the Lagaan poster, Mohenjo Daro falls flat and fails miserably.
Hrithik Roshan as a performer holds his ground no doubt but this is no job that has taxed the actor in him. Pooja Hegde, meanwhile, is impassionate and troubled with those weird costumes.
If Ashutosh made this movie for kids, well, you are giving them a wrong lesson in history and taking away all their wonder of a great civilization. If not too, this big budget extravaganza is a zero-creative predictable Bollywood cliché-land.