This story is from February 22, 2008

Nothing official. Period.

ARPITA BASU / TNN / Feb 22, 2008, 00:05 IST

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Creative license? Or commercial compromise? How much creative liberty can a film-maker take to express his vision of history?

doweshowbellyad=0; A still from Jodhaa Akbar. More picsOnce upon a time... The stories begin the same way. It is how they are told thereafter, that separates history from fiction. On celluloid, this dubious line has often been blurred.
Whether it makes for a better cinematic experience or not, it does trigger a debate each time: How much creative liberty can a film-maker take to express his vision of history? This question has kept Ashutosh Gowariker��s extravaganza Jodhaa Akbar, away from screens in Rajasthan.A section of Rajputs and some historians alleged that the film is historically inaccurate, as Jodhaabai was not Akbar��s wife, but his daughter-in-law. Three years ago, Ketan Mehta��s Mangal Pandey �� The Rising got historians up in arms over ��anomalies��.
The film did not acknowledge the contribution of Begum Hazrat Mahal, was not shot in Uttar Pradesh and did not mention Pandey��s native village, they alleged. Even Rani Mukerji��s scooping back was criticised for not being suitable for a courtesan of that era. In Hollywood, the iconic The Ten Commandments, too, was not spared the historians�� scanner. Troy, The Patriot, Gladiator, Elizabeth and even JFK, that had to go back a mere 30 years in time for source matter, were criticised for thawing into fiction.
Attempts to ��rewrite�� history on screen have often opened a chapter of controversy. ��A film-maker can never depict history the way a historian can. He has to be allowed the license to interpret history creatively, but that freedom must be exercised responsibly,�� feels Moinak Biswas, head of the department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University. ��I have not watched Jodhaa Akbar, but I was surprised to see how in Mangal Pandey, complete lies were taken to the level of a spectacle.

That was no creative license �� it was nothing but commercial compromise. In India, history is viewed as a myth or legend, and popular cinema only reinforces that.��
Feels Shruti Ghosh, a film buff and former student of the department, ��No amount of asides from existing documents can tell you how Akbar proposed to Jodhaa. You have to use your imagination. But if a film-maker is presenting an official version of history, he must specify exactly how ��official�� it is.��

While a professor of history at a city college stresses that historical facts should never be distorted, historian Samita Sen differs. ��Sloppy research cannot be justified in the name of artistic license, but if aesthetics requires some changes to be made �� changes that are not politically motivated �� a director can be allowed that freedom. Ultimately, it depends on the claim made by the film-maker,�� she says.
We do not watch a period film for a lesson in history. And yet we choke on our popcorn when we see something our text books haven��t told us. The question is, do we want to watch archival records in black and white on a 70mm screen? At the cost of losing out on a thousand swirling Madhubalas reflected on the mirrors of Sheesh Mahal? The Sheesh Mahal didn��t exist during Akbar��s time, did you say?

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