(2001; Hindi) Curious coincidence: After I had already chosen this DVD earlier in the week, the afternoon before watching it I read Robert D. Kaplan's article, "India's New Face," in The Atlantic: "'There was no Kalinga effect on [the chief minister of Gujarat Narenda] Modi' … referring to a war fought in the third century B.C. by the Mauryan Empire under King Ashoka against the kingdom of Kalinga on the eastern coast of India. Ashoka's forces slew 100,000 civilians. Yet the slaughter left Ashoka with so much guilt that he dedicated his life thereafter to nonviolence and the peaceful development of his empire."

Director/co-screenwriter Santosh Sivan's movie incorporates several Bollywood singing-and-dancing numbers, enticing (but PG) flesh and bloody combat, goofy humor, and a tragic love story with ancient history and legends.

After accepting Jainism, King Chandragupta Maurya in giving up his throne to his son Bindusara, tells his little grandson Asoka as he casts his sword away: "This is not just a sword. It's a demon." Nevertheless, the boy retrieves the weapon from the waters.

Grown to manhood, Prince Asoka (Shah Rukh Khan) frustrates his half brother Susima's efforts to eliminate him from competition for the throne. But when his mother Dharma takes a vow of silence, he departs from Magadha into self-exile. On his journey he's greeted by a wiseman: "Your destiny transcends the throne."

Crossing into Kalinga (modern-day Orissa), calling himself Pawan, a soldier in the Magadha army, he rescues the child-prince Arya and the boy's beautiful sister Princess Kaurwaki (Kareena Kapoor), whose royal parents have been murdered, from multiple tormentors; the pair has been deprived of their rightful lands through the prime minister's intrigue.

After engaging in individual combat and comic relief (the 19th tactic of fighting blindfolded) with Virat, Pawan teaches Kaurwaki sword fighting while he learns how to court her with flowers and flowery words. His former anger is transformed into love, regardless of Kaurwaki's discovery that she was a foundling and adopted: "You are my warrior, my princess."

Following fast upon their wedding, a messenger arrives with word of Pawan's mother's illness. During his absence, the village where Kaurwaki and Arya have been in hiding is destroyed by the prime minister's men. Upon his return, believing his princess and her brother had been killed and obliterated in the fire, with Virat as his loyal companion, Asoka vows vengeance: "death not victory."

Wounded and taken to a Buddhist monastery in Vidisa, Prince Asoka regains his health, though his heart remains unhealed. On her wedding day, Devi (Hrishitaa Bhatt), a beautiful Buddhist maiden who has been administering to Asoka's wounds, saves him from assassination, only to have her nuptials ruined. As compensation, Asoka, suffering from guilt at not having been Kaurwaki's defender and resigned to having lost his true love, marries Devi, who realizes: "I cannot take her place." But his father the king expresses disfavor toward a Buddhist daughter-in-law.

After Asoka's brothers' conspirators murder his mother, he swears retribution: "I will destroy everything." With his father's death, he confronts Susima over inheritance of the throne; abhorring his turn to violence, Devi, who is pregnant, leaves Asoka following the slaying of two of his three half brothers.

Pursuing his grandfather's dream of uniting India, Asoka attacks the democracy of Kalinga without provocation where his third brother Sugatra has taken asylum; employing pitiless savagery, his army slaughters innocent civilians by the tens of thousands. Even Virat opposes "evil" Asoka: "You are nobody's friend."

A messenger Vitasoka from Devi brings word to the great emperor Asoka of the birth of twins: "You have won the tears of widows and the cries of children." At the conclusion Asoka begs forgiveness from Kaurwaki's spirit. "Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance," remarked Winston Churchill.

Not what I was expecting: too much singing and dancing and fighting, ending before the emperor goes forth to spread Buddhist enlightenment.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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