Padmaavat

Sanjay Leela Bhansali's epic, drawn from Padmavat, a sixteenth-century poem by the Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi. The source is itself fiction, and the film still set off the most violent argument over a film India has had in recent years. The story turns on Padmavati, queen of Chittor, her husband Ratan Singh, and the Delhi sultan Alauddin Khilji, who wants to take her. Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh star. During production, members of the Rajput Karni Sena assaulted Bhansali at Jaigarh Fort in Jaipur and wrecked the set. The shoot moved to Kolhapur, where unidentified men attacked that set with swords and petrol bombs. As release approached, roads were blocked and vehicles burned in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka. The film was postponed and its title changed from Padmavati to Padmaavat. Bhansali's cinema is as vast as ever: enormous sets, heavy fabric, deep colour. But the film ends on a scene that exalts the queen walking into fire, and that choice drew its own argument in India. Who it is for: viewers who can take Bhansali's visual excess and Ranveer Singh's deliberately outsized performance. Who it is not for: anyone who thinks the film is history. The source is a poem, and presenting mass self-immolation as heroism is a serious flaw.