Chhaava Review

By most historical accounts, Sambhaji, son of the legendary Maratha ruler Chhathrapati Sivaji, was a brat child. As a youngster, Samba was said to have been such a sexual deviant that his father had him imprisoned. Laxman Utekar's Chhaava, adapted from Shivaji Sawant's book, however, doesn't even have a whiff of this bacchanalian version of Sambha (Vicky Kaushal). For one thing, the film is set in the period after Sambha's ascent to the throne after the death of his father, tracking his stand-off with an aging but still vicious Aurangzeb (Akshaye Khanna) for control of the Deccan. Far from being portrayed as a complex or complete character, Samba is mythologized as a single-minded Maratha warrior; as a devoted husband and a just ruler. In short, it is hagiographical cinema.

But even as hagiographies go, Chhaava is an exceedingly monotonous movie. For even after it establishes Sambha as a fearless leader and Aurangzeb as a capricious tyrant, it reestablishes these traits in every scene ad infinitum until the very last frame. We see Sambha roar - "roar", for he is "Chhaava", a lion cub - into battlefields brandishing his sword with gravity-defying strength. His short stints at home are marked by overly sanctimonious conversations with his wife Yesubai (Rashmika Mandanna); and doleful dinners with his generals in which the topic of conversation rarely wanders beyond dreams of a united and independent Deccan empire.

Sentimentality-laced shots of Sivaji Maharaj's pagadi and shoes, placed in an altar in the throne room, add to film's virtuous airs. Up north, in Delhi, Aurangzeb casts his half-hooded eyes towards the South and simmers in anger over the rising Maratha threat. Briefly, there is hope for a change of pace with the appearance of a menacing figure - Soryabai, played by a deliciously scheming Divya Dutta - only for her threat to remain underdeveloped.

Rishi Virmani and Irshad Kamil's dialogues are both the high-points and flaws of the film. The banter between Sambha and his poet-friend Kalash (Vineet Kumar Singh) sparkles with wit and verve. One memorable exchange comparing Kalash to salt, whose words may be added as required to improve the taste of a conversation, is a delight to witness, and actor Vineet Kumar Singh knows and applies this seasoning just right. But often, without much by way of narrative, the writing is made turgid with slogans and elaborate metaphors. It is like listening to the grandiose proclamations of a political rally.

Yesubai is in particular a victim of the film's holier-than-thou strain. Although Rashmika Mandanna voices her with a surprising polarity, she is still nevertheless playing a stereotypical Rashmika role. Her pleading eyes, her stoic suffering - all traits of a one-note underdeveloped character - are not very far off from the doting wife she plays in Pushpa, minus the playfulness.

If the film gets as close to its lofty vision it is because Vicky Kaushal holds it up on his very beefy shoulders. He plays it exactly as zealots of Maratha faith might imagine their heroes to be - valiant warriors whose bodies thrum with passionate bellows of "Jai Bhavani". Equally arresting, though, is Akshaye Khanna as a gaunt, venomous 70-something Aurangzeb.

The same strain of monotony in the film also runs in Rahman's score, which is glorious and rousing the first or second time it is heard, but quite annoying when the dirge-like droning theme for Aurangzeb is heard for the seventh or eighth.

Unlike the sweeping world-building of Mani Ratnam's epic Ponniyin Selvan, the settings are contained to the inner chambers of Sambha's throne-room and the gilded arabesque screens of Aurangzeb's camp tent, and unremarkable battle grounds in thick forests. The burden instead falls on Sheetal Sharma's meticulous costume design - from the Paithani sarees of Yesubai to the Angarkhas of Sambha - to give the film its sense of time and place.

Chhaava may center on a bold historical figure, but the film itself is anything but bold. It delivers defanged storytelling, content with borrowing well-worn tropes from the freedom fighter genre. The characters move through the story without truly influencing one another, leaving the screen much as they entered, and little about the film feels original or awe-inspiring.

Indeed, historical fiction is unfamiliar territory for director Laxman Utekar, whose biggest films - Mimi, Zara Hatke Zara Bachke - are frothy, lighthearted romcoms. In Chhaava, Utekar seems to have stripped away any trace of humour or playfulness, as if fearing it would dilute the film's roiling passions. Yet, for all its notable moments and memorable dialogues - particularly in the third act - the film ultimately feels like one prolonged, shriek-filled climax, too restrained to truly let loose.