It doesn't work for me...period!!

A week after its release, I watched Jodhaa Akbar. I had already read most of the reviews, had heard the CD umpteen number of times and was pretty impressed with the teaser pictures shown ahead of the release. Hrithink and Aishwarya looked like a million bucks and it was an Ashutosh Gowariker picture, he of the Lagaan and Oscar fame.
Maybe it was the weight of expectation, but the film hardly lived up to the hype. The lead actors made a fine pair, very pleasant on the eyes and they do seem to have made an effort. But thats about all that works for the film. The screenplay appeared rushed, just a narrative rather than a perspective of Akbar's life. Akbar is whiter than the whitest and Jodhaa can't quite seem to decide which century she belongs in 15th or 21st!
Therein lies one problem, as I see it, with Jodhaa Akbar.Most period films (historical, mythological, war etc etc), have a basic tenet - transport the viewer back in time. This is a peculiar problem to deal with simply 'cos the sky was blue then, it is blue now. So how does the film maker or for that matter the film goer visualize the times gone by?
Of course, the movie makers have to recreate that particular time in history or "period" for us - this is done by putting up the same kind of costumes, recreating the hairstyles, the surroundings, the machines (or the lack of them). But, I suspect it has more to do with our perception of the past.
The visual medium associated with that age would colour my imagination of that age.
E.g:
Recent past (say 200 years or so) - sepia/black and white. Landscape - golden brown, the pace slower (so we assume), the people more innocent (we are sentimentalists!).
Europe in the middle ages - dark, gloomy,purple of the soutane, the renaissance paintings
Indian myth - sculptures from temples, descriptions of jewellery of the gods, ravi varma paintings (human-like gods)
This is a tough proposition for filmmakers, but one they have managed to overcome to varying degrees. Films use certain tones to depict a time in history and the entire production design is oriented towards this tone. Consistency is of importance and at no time or place can this be compromised. So the outdoors and the indoors have to reflect history, the mood of the movie and have to age accordingly. Advances in CGI have definitely helped and so have filters and processing techniques. I have no idea of what these techniques are and how they work, but when I sit in a darkened movie hall, I do want to get swept away, dress up in fancy costumes, fly with the gods, scheme with courtiers, dance at balls, and generally have a good time!
These movies worked for me...I guess there's lots more that can be added:No particular order

• Lord of the Rings - New Zealand, magical in itself, was burnished in gold, the Shire was bathed in fairytale green. Mordor was a frightening CGI creation of rumbling grey, scary black. Gondor was a spectacular white fortress in the mountains. Hobbits were plump, cheery and small, the Elves - ethereal, translucent, Lothlorien - timeless. Wizards were larger than life, orcs - hideous, ents - old, nazgul - not so scary, and the ring - alive. In short - almost as Tolkien wrote it and I imagined it!
• Schindler's list - Filmed in B&W, the cruelties of the war are presented as such, without emphasis, which in itself is frightening. Shot documentary style, the lighting and sets are stark, much like the photos of the Holocaust that serve as evidence of the horror. Handheld camera helped to emphasize the rawness and gave the movie an edge
  
• The English Patient - Sweeping vistas of the desert, glorious costumes from the tailor of the royals, light and shadow-play that gives flashbacks the softness of memories, the beauty of war-torn Italy - the scene in the church with its murals is splendid. The book on which it is based, had an epic sweep - set almost at the end of WW2, it moves across continents and exotic cultures with ease. The sets are fantastic and take us back to a happier time where boundaries didn't exist and the madness of war hadn't whittled everything down to a strife-torn minimum.
• Elizabeth - Shekar Kapur brought an Indian sensibility to the tale of the "Virgin" queen. Lofty overhead shots, dark, brooding sets punctuated by flashes of red, fiery oranges create a movie that exudes the power of its protagonist. Tudor history was presented without its cliches and the designs created a lush, courtroom spectacle where anarchy and chaos lurk around the corner and can even be glimpsed out of the corner of the eye.
  
• Lagaan - Painstakingly recreating an entire village set in a hazy time of pre-Independence India is no easy task, given the limitations in budget and technology that India usually faces. Lagaan's filmmakers setup a village in Bhuj and Bhanu Athaiya recreated the costumes of pre-independence India and sourced antique and musical instruments from around the country. The Kutch desert serves well as a drought stricken village and the dialect displaces it to somewhere in UP
• Guru - Biopics even if they claim not to be so, are a tough proposition. More so, when the lifetime in question coincides with a time of huge change in the surroundings. Guru, inspired by Dhirubai Ambani's life was as much a story of India post-1947, as of the man. The film moves from the sepia-laced 1950s to the bell-bottomed 1970s, to the cooler tones of the recent past, seamlessly. The costumes and hairstyles keep pace with the times. Particularly interesting is the recreation of the Mumbai sea-front of the 1950s. Props change too - from the tram of the 1950s to the long "imported" cars and Ambassadors of the pre-liberalization India.
• All the mythologicals of the 1960s in Tamil cinema (mostly A.P.Nagarajan) - I know...this is oh, so inappropriate! But then, these movies with their cardboard sets, gilt-laden jewellery/walls/swords, actors weighed down by kgs of make-up, were all that people in a country where legend is part of life, imagined divinity to be. They featured amongst other things, some of the best music of all time in Tamil cinema, recreated the grandeur of the heavens (as evidenced by our temples), in an age where the most challenging special effect was to show a man landing a punch on another.
  
• More of the list - I am too tired to write descriptions!
• Vanity Fair (Mira Nair version)
• 1947 -Earth, Water (especially the blue tones)
• Marie Antoinette
• Spartacus
• Gandhi
• Saving Private Ryan
• Pride and Prejudice (TV Series, since it features Colin Firth