It is no one's idea of a famous queen whose brief reign was marked by gory violence and deadly intrigue.Worse than Hema Malini's unfortunate miscasting in the title role, the film is further weighed down by a highly Persianised dialogue, a story which crawls over its three-hour length and a script which fails to bare the character of the embattled queen and her times.Although the director defends his choice of the lead player ("who else," he asks, "has the royal carriage, the regal face and flashing eyes?") and says he is almost completely satisfied by her Urdu diction and acting ability, it is clear to anyone who will check the records that Amrohi has on the whole spun a yarn.The truth is that history leaves almost no description of Razia or her reign - in fact historical sources only make a passing reference to her presence in the long annals of the Slave dynasty. And her imperfect hold on the Urdu language doesn't help her image much as she moons around on swings and in barges.
The erstwhile dream girl looks anything but a dream - her dumpy figure and wooden expression is not to be mistaken for regal bearing or noble mein. Flowers are seen growing out of cement pots in medieval palaces and, as the camera pans over a battlefield thick with the action of war, two stray dogs are seen cavorting in mid-shot.The banquet sceneSmall details aside, the film's biggest disaster is Hema Malini. The gigantic spray-painted sets are coloured anything from lilac to loud pink.The costumes are all diaphanous chiffon and crepe de Chine. Mishra, the film's producer, "is a friend".Tacky Patches: It is not, however, the banquet scene alone that, touted as a spectacular, turns out to be routine far too much is wrong with Razia, and despite all the buildup of authenticity the film exudes an air of tackiness. In fact, says Amrohi, he compromised his search for perfection in Razia Sultan because A.K. "There is so much exaggeration that audiences feel let down," he said, ruefully admitting that the much-talked-of banquet scene, in fact, lasted under a minute and there was no question of producers footing the bill for mountains of food for less than a dozen people in the shot. Amrohi, the 65-year-old director who was driven for a decade by the vision of Razia Sultan, was desperately trying to retrieve the situation.
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Short of the king-size pearls flung by Razia for her handmaidens in the pool, stories about the making of the movie outstripped the legend of the queen herself.Last week they were proving embarrassing even for the film maker. It was claimed, for example, that for a banquet scene 45 lambs, 251 fish, 455 chickens and one and a half tonnes of biryani were prepared so that the actors would be stimulated by the aroma of real food.Fake props not being good enough, a sulphur-crested cochatoo had to be specially imported from Australia. Distributors were said to have paid anywhere between Rs 92 lakh and Rs 1 crore per territory.And publicists were working round the clock putting out tall tales about Amrohi's mad quest for creating perfection. Such being the background, little wonder that everyone got carried away. Beside offering dream girl Hema Malini in the role of a lifetime - as the 13th century queen of the Slave dynasty - Razia Sultan, it seemed, had everything going for it.Spectacular sets, fabulous battle scenes, glittering costumes and a smashing musical score - everything, in fact, associated with the highly-charged and eccentric Amrohi who created the legendary Pakeezah.
But last week, some of the hoardings had begun to disappear and the opulence appeared misplaced and wasteful.Within days of its release, Kamal Amrohi's epic Razia Sultan, said to be the most expensive movie to come out of the Bombay industry (estimates range from Rs 4 crore to Rs 10 crore), had torpedoed at the box-office sending shockwaves of despair through the national film producer-distributor network.Seven years in the making, the film had seemed to be of the stuff of which cinematic legends and box-office blockbusters are made. Hema Malini and Dharmendra: Non-performanceLast month, as the final phase of the publicity blitz was unleashed, the opulent billboards and hoardings seemed to be popping up at every street corner in every city.
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