UNRELEASED PICS!
When the REAL life Emperor & King met the REEL life Emperor!
On the MAGNIFICENT set of Agra Fort!
2nd pic is on completion of shoot!@srbachchan @anilkapoor @iHrithik @sussannekroshan @juniorbachchan #AishwaryaRaiBachchan #SunitaGowariker #10YearsOfJodhaaAkbar
When asked how difficult it was for him to do this, the director revealed, "Well, I must admit that it was tough (laughs). When it is a dramatic story, there is so much drama, so many different character graphs, and other character arcs that need to be justified. In a film like this especially, you have a lot of mannerisms of that era, where a person visiting the emperor would bow down and salute thrice. That needed to be shown, because if you don't show it, then you haven't entered that world. All these nuances added to the film's length, and the scissors fell on the character of Birbal. There were two scenes of Birbal, which went out of the film and later, we included them in the DVD as the deleted scenes. The final film was 3 hour 20 minutes... I'm not very proud of the length, but at least I could bring it down to that."
When asked if he would make Jodhaa Akbar differently now, he states, "No, it would have been the same."
There were protests against this Hrithik-Ash starrer in 2008. Even Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film faced the protests for Padmaavat. When Ashutosh was asked if it is risky for filmmakers to make historicals now, he answered, "Not at all. It doesn't have to be historical; I might make a contemporary film and have a social issue that I want to discuss and raise questions about. That can get into controversy too. Controversy is not just limited to historicals. Anything which is issue-driven can face this. I feel filmmakers and writers should go out and make what they believe in. Otherwise, we will cease to be creative. Any art or cinema needs to grow. A thought needs to be taken ahead. The thought is the biggest thing. Thinking minds mulling over society, mulling over life are the ones who are able to create images or words in literature. For art, literature or cinema to grow, we need to have the freedom to tell what we want to."
He added, "When you delve into history, you will find that only some facts are written in books. You then have to fill in the blanks. When you are filling those blanks, there is a huge responsibility, because you have to imagine it with great care and try and see how you can tell the story, while setting it in that time period. Also, when it's history, everyone wants to know exactly what happened. If you make a mistake, you will get criticised. These are the challenges, but it's all in the preparation. With every film I make, I do as much preparation as I can to fine-tune the details. In the case of Jodhaa Akbar, the credit goes to the entire team that came together to create something that has found universal appeal."
Were Hrithik and Aishwarya his first choice for the film? He answered, "Absolutely! I feel very fortunate that I thought of them and was able to cast them for it. I remember that Dhoom 2 had released then, and everyone knew how they worked well on screen. It gave us an additional thrust and confidence. For audiences, it was interesting to see them as Jodhaa and Akbar. For me, Hrithik is the new-age emperor. Aishwarya too now holds the tag of Jodhaa. We have seen her play so many parts, but never a princess. Here she plays both, a princess and an empress."
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