Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Sonu Sood, Ila Arun

Director: Ashutosh Gowarikar

In a standout scene, Jodhaa Bai and Jalal-ud-din-Akbar are sitting across each other. She’s written something she wants her husband to read. After waffling for a couple of minutes, he returns the beautifully-inscribed parchment to her, confessing he can neither write nor read: he was raised to be a warrior, not a litterateur. She lowers her eyelashes and says: ek patni apne pati ka naam kaise le sakti hai. He gazes at her, love-struck, as she blushes becomingly: the thing between them is electric.

It’s confirmed. Dhoom 2 was no fluke. Hrithik and Aishwarya are the hottest pair of lovers Bollywood has. You forget that these two are trying to be Shehenshah Akbar and his Mallika-e-Hindustan: this is a man and woman in the eternal act of finding love. And only in this moment, and others like this one, does Ashutosh Gowarikar's Jodhaa Akbar spark to life, because this is territory the director can traverse sure-footedly. He takes us into their boudoir, where they lie next to each other, a gossamer net keeping them less than an inch apart: you can sense their yearning. A sword duel between them turns into a stylised mating dance, where breaths mingle yet lips don't meet.

For the rest, where history comes crowding in, Gowarikar keeps his distance. The altercations between hungry-for-power siblings and an emperor struggling to rule a fractious bunch of satraps, the discussions between Akbar and his wise men, the taking stock of his praja by a wise and compassionate ruler, the epic scale computer-generated battle scenes — are all observed at arm's length. Clearly, even if he has done the smart thing and called his movie more imagination than history, the director wants to make doubly sure that he won't get more slammed than he already has, in the authenticity department.

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