A few days ago I mentioned the cheeseball glory that is Dhoom 2.

Today, we do a Bollywood 180 for Jodhaa Akbar, a sweeping historical drama based on the life of Akbar the Great.

Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai star in both. I’m glad I saw Hrithik in this before I saw Dhoom 2, and that is all I will say about that. (Aishwarya…does her best.)

Nutshell: In 16th-Century India, Jalaluddin is the young emperor of Hindustan, handsoming his way across the country, trying to be wise and just and whatever. Jodhaa is a stunning Rajput princess who’s married to Jalaluddin as a gesture of solidarity between Hindus and Muslims. Will these two incredibly genetically blessed people ever fall in love? Will Jalaluddin ever reconcile the two religions at war under his reign? Will this movie’s eight bajillion subplots ever get resolved? We’ll find out…in real time. (This movie is awesome, but it is also about eight years long.)

Let’s hit it.

In reality, this movie is in fact only three and a half hours long, but that is still a damn long movie. Jalauddin and Jodhaa meet at about the one-hour mark; they declare their feelings for each other at around the three-hour mark. (No joke.)

So, there are a lot of subplots here, including Jodhaa’s foster-brother being denied his birthright and joining Jalaluddin’s brother-in-law in a rebellion, Jodhaa being a trained fighter, a random quasi-foster-brother of Jalaluddin’s who tries to murder everyone in the harem and gets his ass dropped from the roof TWICE, a sassy comic-relief eunuch who gets taken to prison for no reason and then magically appears later like nothing even happened (I am still bitter about this one), and there’s a vegetarian feast that becomes a whole issue, and Jalaluddin’s wet nurse-turned-advisor is a stone bitch (who I secretly love the most of everyone), and an advisor who gets assassinated, and an assassination attempt on Jalaluddin, and like five other plots we won’t even get into.

It’s the kind of movie where half-hour debates about enacting or repealing a tax is a major plot point not once, but twice. It’s the kind of movie where Jodhaa writes a letter to her brother before her wedding, doesn’t send it, then like a year later the wet nurse sends it as a trap and tells Jalaluddin that it’s Jodhaa’s ex-betrothed, and Jajaluddin is like “HOW COULD SHE DO THIS TO ME” without ever getting any facts or asking Jodhaa or getting a positive face ID from the random person out in the bushes or anything.

All this said, I really liked the movie.

Obviously the major narrative here is the romance between Jalaluddin and Jodhaa, and by extension, the state of religious harmony in the Empire, and the movie manages to make this thread strong enough that you can handle all the subplots. (Almost.)

The good news: Jalaluddin is a seriously stand-up guy. He takes things seriously (you just watch him repeal those unfair taxes!), he believes in religious freedom, he tries to understand where people are coming from. When Jodhaa gives two conditions to the marriage (no conversion, and permission to bring an idol of Krishna), he not only agrees, but seems to respect her for asking. He tries to pick good advisors and then trust their advice, which means that when an advisor lies to him and he believes it, you can sort of understand. (Except that one time he didn’t even try to get a positive ID from the dude in the bushes or ask a servant or anything, probably because he was so busy repealing taxes that he just forgot.)

Jodhaa is the typical sweet, morally-upstanding ingénue, but she has her moments. One of the best is when her dad has pledged her to Jalaluddin, and she asks her mom for advice, and her mom gives her a vial of poison and is like, “Better this than to let him touch you!” and Jodhaa’s face is a delightful mixture of abject horror and, “THIS is your advice? Wow, mom.” Another is when Hrithik is doing one of his two contract-mandated shirtless scenes (sword-training), and she stumbles across him and then just openly pervs for like five minutes. Get it, girl.

Their story is romantic in the old-school sense: on their wedding night, when he sees that she’s not exactly thrilled about the marriage, he offers her a divorce; when she declines, he still gets up and goes, because he knows she’s not into it. This is delightfully not-rapey! (He still sneaks up on her when she’s praying so he can get a look at her unveiled face, but I’ll take what I can get.)

They begin a chaste courtship.

Then he thinks she went out to meet some dude in the bushes (literally to meet some dude in the bushes. I can’t even), and banishes her back to her parents’ palace. When he finds out he was wrong and goes to get her back, she isn’t having it, and it turns out that to win her heart and entice her back to the palace, he’d better do something awesome. (That thing is to repeal a tax. No joke.)

Once she’s back, their relationship progresses (at a glacial pace) until finally, they declare their passionate love!

(Actual shot from the scene.)

However, despite the usual Sweeping Historical Epics problems (historical inaccuracy, glossing over complicated theo-political issues, NOT DOING A FACE ID OR FACT CHECK OR ANYTHING ON THAT DUDE IN THE BUSHES), I genuinely enjoyed it. (Ila Arun, particularly, is someone whose career I will be catching up on posthaste.) Also, it’s hard to find a more gorgeous movie: the costumes are STUNNERS, the cinematography is thumbs-up, and A. R. Rahman did the music, which is an automatic awesome.

Verdict: Definitely worth a rent. Plan snack breaks.

For those on the fence, one of my favorite scenes; after the wedding, some Sufis visit the palace to perform for the Emperor on the occasion. He listens; meanwhile, Jodhaa is stuck in the bridal tent freaking out about what’s just happened (and what she thinks is about to happen).

This version doesn’t have subtitles, because the only clip I could find with English subtitles was blurrier than the Zapruder film, so I went with this one. (Your eyes will thank me!). Lyrics and two English translations are available here and here.