Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Mughal-E-Azam!

The title Mughal-E-Azam means "The Great Mughal", which is in reference to the emperor Akbar, known as Akbar the Great. Akbar means "The Great". "Mughal-E-Azam" therefore means "The Great The Great The Great". A movie would have to be pretty good to live up to such an overweening appellation. Fortunately, Mughal is the Indian Gone with the Wind, a grandiose epic spectacle which subsumes any silliness into itself like the Yellow River flooding over an impudent field.

This opening goes harder than the combined cinemas of most countries.

The real Akbar was almost as effective as he was ambitious, conquering vast areas for the already powerful dynasty he inherited. He took a Hindu wife and designed to bring Hindus and Muslims together under his syncretic vision of the Dīn-i Ilāhī. His son Jahangir did, as in the movie, lead an uprising against him, but it wasn't for love - like all real-life revolutionaries, he was just a prick who wanted power for himself. Jahangir's rebellion was put down but his stepmothers bailed him out in an act of shameless enabling upon which he squandered no reflection; his own son Khusrau would attempt to coup him in turn, to which Jahangir showed none of his father's forbearance - he had his own son blinded for his disobedience. Worse still, his other son, Khurram (later Shah Jahan), rebelled as well, and Jahangir made peace. And you thought your parents played favourites.

What a cunt.

Mughal, then, is somewhat of an inversion of George Fatfuck Martin's Cheetodustcore soap opera G*me of Thr*nes in that it glosses over a grimdark cutthroat historical reality with a romantic myth that compels sympathy for the upstart prince if you don't give any thought to the thousands of innocent men who die in the setpiece battle just so he could try to bang Anarkali (Madhubala), the Helen-of-Troy of the drama.

"um sweety my eyes are down here" - madhubala

So the film's morality might be a little unorthodox, but you're going to pretend to care now, after cheering for Gone Girl and the bugs from Star Ship Troopers? Film is an amoral medium and if you think otherwise, you've been programmed. Hitchcock made this point repeatedly, such as in Strangers on a Train, in which he has the villain drop a piece of evidence he plans to use to frame the hero down a drain, at which point you and every other viewer started rooting for the villain to retrieve it. Mughal even anticipates and rubbishes the moralistic critique in the following exchange:

Media literacy soyjaks rekt AGAIN.

More to the point, Mughal shames most Hollywood period epics with its lavish set and costume design, and the colourisation (which was undertaken in accordance with the director's original vision; belay your epic bacon Orson Welles quote on Ted Turner's crayons) only renders it more psychedelic still.

Among their many crimes, the Beatles must answer for making this uncool (in hell).

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Dhoom!

A perfect movie for a rainy day.

In the 2000s, which I remember because I'm the oldest man alive, I recall having the observation that the 2000s, unlike previous decades, had no aesthetic of their own. That they were somehow simply an outgrowth of the 90s. Much later, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, I came to find this was a discount-Lindyman opinion that cropped up almost weekly on the internet, like that anime-food-looks-good tweet or the rest stop with the fast food outlets. Yet, were this observation true, Dhoom, and its sequel Dhoom 2, couldn't very well embody the precise aesthetic "2000s MTV", which they do.

Screens 2 & 3 show the same thing with like a half-second delay. Pointless, yet stylish (which is a point in itself).

The movie begins with a 24esque split-screen sequence in which cool-guy motorcycle bandits knock off an armoured cash transport. 24 premiered in 1999, but so did The Sopranos, and noone questions the 2000sness of that. As though the opening were a dream, we then cut to our straight-man hero, Jai Dixit (Abishek Bachchan) waking up to find his hot ass wife (Rimi Sen) performing 2000s MTV antics that remind 35-y/o boomers of a time when MTV was basically softcore with 10s, instead of now, when it's hardcore with 3s.

There was a decade of Midriffcore called the 2000s... Here in this pretty world Heterosexuality took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Hotties and their Midriffs Fair, of Low Rise Jeans and Stripper Heels... Look for it only in VEVO channels, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind...

Officer Dixit, whose name, to the delight of Anglophone viewers, sounds like "dick shit", is called to Marine Drive to investigate the bike gang's bullshit and ends up running with goofball petty thief Ali (Uday Chopra), who admittedly is more like a comic-relief sidekick from a 90s flick, but perhaps time works differently in India. I'm not sure if the 80s-style buddy-cop formula was popular in India before this, but it's fun to imagine Bollywood repurposed it long after its remarkably undistinguished heyday in the west and casually turned it into kino. I think Jai is supposed to be a Hindu and Ali a Muslim, but my knowledge of Indian social dynamics is extremely limited, so I can happily ignore any s*cial c*mmentary that may be intended. Suffice it to say you have an Abbottesque straight man and a Costelloish goofball, and together they ride motorcycles, get in fistfights with street toughs, and bicker with each other entertainingly.

Exciting chase scene from Dhoom or average day in London? You decide!

One thing that makes Dhoom so endearing is its unselfconsciousness. There's great wisdom and modesty in filling your movie full of cool, fun things because they're cool and fun, from fast cars and motorcycles to MTVesque jump cuts and slo-mo to full music videos playing throughout the end credits. Compare and contrast buck-toothed Hollywood productions neurotically, apologetically commenting on every genre convention they employ.

>mfw disney's marvel's captain iron man turns to the camera and says "um, so i guess that's a thing now"

The success of Dhoom would spawn a sequel every bit as entertaining, with more stunts, more banter, more midriffs and locations on three continents. Sadly, a belated third entry (Dhoom 3, 2013) would fail to hit the right notes, borrowing more from the srs bsns angst of Christopher Nolan pictures than the colourful flair of 2000s MTV. With few exceptions, the 2000s were the last decade to produce worthwhile movies, many of which don't feel "2000s" because they're set in past eras (Pirates of the Caribbean 1, Lord of the Rings) or strange dream worlds of their own (South of Heaven). For the extremely small niche audience that wants time capsule kino for this half-forgotten decade, Dhoom will tick that box.

Christina Aguilera would be proud.