Asoka - Movie Review
Published: June 16, 2010
Starring Shahrukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor
When monsters become monks, it’s usually the stuff of legends. But Asoka—a bloodthirsty emperor who later renounced violence—was a real person. The 2001 film Asoka, about his early life, captures in mesmerizing fashion how such an unlikely conversion could take place.
Asoka was the favorite grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, the emperor of the kingdom of Magadha in the third century BC. Chandragupta beat back the armies of Alexander the Great, conquered most of the Indian subcontinent, and then adopted the Jain religion, renounced his throne, and died from fasting. The empire fell to his son Bindusara, whose heir apparent was Asoka’s eldest brother Susima.
And that’s where the film begins. There’s no trace of the Asoka who would one day convert to Buddhism and become one of the world’s first great humanitarians, a man who made nonviolence the law of his vast land. Shahrukh Khan plays the young Asoka, a skilled and merciless warrior with ruthless political ambition, a role perfectly suited to Khan, who always shines as an antihero. Asoka is an animal in a kill-or-be-killed courtly world, but when he’s temporarily exiled and gets mixed up with a woman on the run, Kaurwaki (Kareena Kapoor), his love for her humanizes him—and Khan and Kapoor make a scorching pair. When Asoka is falsely told she’s dead, he’s shattered, marries another—a Buddhist named Devi (Hrishita Bhatt)—violently assumes the throne, and becomes even more brutal than before. The story is bolstered by striking art direction, tight editing, and fantastic performances by supporting actors.
The lavish final battle scene—which included 6,000 extras—is refreshingly low-tech and all the more realistic as a result. The aftermath is gory and moving as Asoka searches among the corpses for his lost love. (According to historical records, Asoka was horrified by the magnitude of death he’d caused at the Battle of Kalinga.)
There are a couple of detracting elements that break the film’s powerful spell. The use of comedy is a distraction rather than a relief. That’s not an indictment of masala (Bollywood’s traditional blending of genres), but in this case, it doesn’t work. The drama is too captivating to downshift out of it. Also, the songs seem too contemporary for a historical pic.
Finally, the film was criticized for its historical inaccuracies (Devi was actually Asoka’s first wife; he married Kaurwaki later). The criticism is unfair to some degree given that it’s necessary to take liberties with true stories in order to create a narrative arc, but since the film’s explanation of Asoka’s profound change doesn’t jibe with the facts, his confounding transformation remains, unsatisfyingly, a mystery.
Asoka is rated Worth Watching.
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