Eklavya review

Eklavya invokes quite a bit of Shakespeare – the recital of one of his sonnets, a character’s Lady Macbethish declaration that the blood on his hands can never be washed away – but it’s mainly Hamlet that you see played out. The parallels are unmistakable – right from the point the film kicks off, when a royal parent is murdered, following which the prince Harshvardhan mopes around in a gloomy castle, given more to introspection than any actual action. Besides, he admits to have contemplated suicide at one time, he may have just seen the apparition of his dead mother’s spirit, someone he loves is mentally unstable, and most of all, something is rotten in the state of Devigarh. With all this, I was half-expecting Chopra to devise a graveyard soliloquy for his prince as the latter stumbled upon a skull. (“Alas, poor Yogesh…â€?)

B.Rangan reviews Eklavya, “the most expensive art film ever made in our country“.