It's a turbulent time in the 1850s. India's getting subdivided. Not by a conquering external Army from the north nor a powerful internal Sultan looking to make a name for themselves.
But instead a bunch of bureaucrats and sleazy businessmen from an alien culture thousands of miles away looking to extract resources and control a territory that they understand little to nothing of.
Caught in the middle of all of this is a sultan of a medium-sized territory known as Wajid Ali. It's far to the North bordering on the Nepal and in some ways far from a lot of the petty squabbles and problems of the Indian subcontinent.
But its days are numbered as Lord Dalhousie comes in to strike the Kill. By manipulating contracts that will essentially conquer a territory without ever having to raise a sword.
Although the Salton holds himself in high regard and considers his kingdom to be a secure and unmovable object, he has to face the reality that no matter how Brave or intimidating he can make himself.
He simply can't take on the might of this overly manufactured and omnipresent Imperial force. It is a leviathan of the old but one who wields so much power that even the gods themselves can't put this Beast back into the ocean.
While all this is happening two high Royals who work on behalf of the King are spending their days dawdling around looking for any excuse to play the game of chess.
One of them is push their wife to near Insanity by more or less ignoring her.
And the other guy's wife has taken it upon herself to find a new man.
She's made such a regular occurrence of it that she's able to trick her husband when he accidentally catches the two of them in her bedroom, in their own house by claiming that he was running away from a group of soldiers on the search for eligible men for some wartime problem.
It all culminates in these two guys wanting to play a game of chess and enjoy life. Then realising that their entire world is crashing around them.
They can't even manage their own relationships and there's somehow supposed to be able to put up with the English! Kind of a fruitless Endeavour and really it's not one that even care that much about. It's actually a pretty interesting contrast.
You've got the Sultan and having to deal with the big picture politics of the day and these two other guys that more or less ignore those politics in search of a entertaining and intellectual game of chess. See you get this wonderful mixture of big dramatic politics mixed in with interpersonal experiences.
It's a really good and yet surprisingly simple film.
It breaks up its characters just enough that you can get dramatic scene with enough weight to make you care, but not spend so much time with them that you become bored and disinterested by their antics.
Top that off with really good costume design, some surprisingly decent camera movements and a stunning lack of musical performances and you have a coherent fairly well paste historical drama revolving around one of the most fascinating and depressing times in human history.
It's weird to think but this bigger-than-life picture is kind of short by Bollywood standards. Probably because they remove so much of the pointless extra content and secondary attractions that they stuff in the so many other films.
And I might make that sound like a negative but for a film like this it just works out better. There are in fact still a few songs but they're mainly just a little jaunty tunes that the main character sing along with one kind of big staged event at the very beginning of the film that only last for about a minute.
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