A SURREAL SHOWDOWN OF UNBRIDLED RAGE

Released in the wane of January, Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi picks up the slack of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat

- SHILAJIT MITRA

Kangana Ranaut's Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi goes beyond antiwar - it's 'anti-water'.

Characters lost in deep, stately thoughts flare up when offered a glass of refreshment; one of them, a brute Britisher, hangs a little girl who brings him a drink of water, only because she shares a name with the belligerent Indian queen. Hoarse with warcry, these throats must remain droplessly dry, the writers seem to insist, and taste only the first splatter of blood. How else can they attain the peculiar croak of angered religiosity?

Kangana stars in and co-directs this sandy opus with Telugu filmmaker Krishna Jagarlamudi, who allegedly left the film midway. The story remains the same. After the death of her husband Gangadhar Rao, Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi takes centrestage in the rebellion of 1857. At a textual and sonic level, this is period filmmaking by the books: Amitabh Bachchan does the voice-over, and Kulbhushan Kharbanda squeezes in fake dramatic tension with his patently stressful voice while Shankar Mahadevan cuts in with melodic sermons on 'desh-prem vs self love', penned by Prasoon Joshi.