Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12362 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-04-23
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Director's Cut, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 150 minutes

Amazon.com
Both stylish and stylized, Santosh Sivan's Hindi epic Asoka tells the heavily fictionalized but nonetheless compelling story of India's greatest emperor. In the third century B.C., the Mauryan king Asoka built a vast empire by means of ruthless conquest; but after the great Kalinga war he became sickened by the terrible slaughter he had caused, converted to Buddhism and dedicated the rest of his life to spreading peace and prosperity.

The film, though, concerns itself only with Asoka's rise to power, his love for the princess Kaurwaki, and his subsequent descent into brutality. Shah Rukh Khan is a brooding and temperamental prince who woos the lovely princess Kaurwaki (Kareena Kapoor) incognito and with the aid of the obligatory song-and-dance numbers. After a promising start involving mythic swords, heroic combat, and King Lear-like sibling rivalry, the film falls into a familiar Bollywood groove for a while until events overtake the unlucky lovers and Asoka turns mean when he thinks his princess is dead. She in turn searches vainly for her handsome hero, not knowing his real identity; and when the tyrannical Asoka attacks her kingdom she leads her people against his armies in a near-genocidal war. The finale, after a wonderfully staged battle that employs 6,000 extras, is genuinely touching.

Throughout, the film works best when striving for a realistic tone, though the fairy tale romance and song interludes are doubtless contrived to please the domestic Indian audience more than cynical Europeans. It's a shame that Asoka's true greatness is never realized on screen, as the story ends before his momentous conversion, but as a film that tackles big themes with real visual flair Asoka nonetheless deserves to find a worldwide audience. --Mark Walker

Customer Reviews

Asoka
This movie i would recommend this movie to anyone who loves a good love story you will cry you'er eyes out.And the main guy in this movie is so cute. WATCH IT.

HOORAY FOR BOLLYWOOD!!
Are you up for something completely different, something the likes of which I guarantee you have never experienced before? A film that has the lush aura of Franco Zefferelli's Shakespearean films combined with the extavagent sets of Liz Taylor's CLEOPATRA mixed with the whimsy of Baz Luhrman's MOULIN ROUGE as filmed by Akira Kurasawa? You say no such animal exists? Well, my friend you are wrong!

That film is ASOKA which stars the legendary Shahruhk Khan who is undoubtedly the most worshipped romantic leading man in the world of cinema today--bar none. I was going to say that he was the most lusted after, which is probably true as well, but there is something about SRK, as he is known, that seems to evoke an even more powerful emotion in women than mere lust. He is Rudolph Valentino, Gene Kelly, and, when he needs to be, Douglas Fairbanks. He's all of those and more, he's an original. And he's a very important part of what makes this film work so well.

There is so very much in this film to like aside from Khan that I hardly no where to begin. The cast is all superb, especially his co-star the incredibly beautiful Kareena Kapoor who plays Asoka's love interest the Princess Kaurwaki, she couldn't be more believable as the woman for whom he would gladly give up a throne. The sets and costumes and sets are gorgeous and whether or not they are true to the time period couldn't concern me less since the director's approach to this film seems to be more that of a romantic fantasy that of an historical documentary.

That brings us to the one element that sets Bollywood pictures apart from Hollywood films, the musical numbers! (Remember I said SRK had a little Gene Kelly in him.) The fact that anyone can burst into song and dance for no apparent reason at any given moment is one of the things I like best about Bollywood movies. There is so much joy and exuberance in these numbers that sometimes I just want to get up and dance myself, but since I look nothing like those pretty girls with their bare midriffs I've managed to restrain myself, so far. I know what you're thinking, but really after you get accustomed to it the songs won't bother you at all. In fact you might even like them. They're sort of a combination of folk and pop, and they're very catchy. I've always liked "foreign" folk music so I fell right into it.

But what about the story, you say. The story is mostly fiction based on fact. There was a man named Asoka who became a brutal monarch and then renounced his throne to spread the word of Buddha. He is in fact credited with having transformed Buddhism from a second-rate sect into a major world religion by sending forth missionaries. His personal life and his rise to power which are the subjects of this film,are the stuff of myth and legend. But that's always where the best stories are.

The dvd begins with a crawl that fills us in a tiny bit on the importance of the the man in the story we are about to see which is very helpful for those of us without any background in Buddhism. And our story itself begins with Asoka's grandfather the Emperor Chandragupta Mauya giving away all his possessions to the people prior to embracing his new life as a Jainist monk. Asoka is just a young boy and doesn't understand his grandfather's choice, nor does he understand when his grandfather tries to stop Asoka from keeping his sword for himself. His grandfather tells him that the sword is a demon and that once it is drawn it sees neither friend nor foe it only thirsts for blood, and that he should throw it away before it can do anymore harm. Asoka refuses, so his grandfather grabs it from him and throws it in the river himself, then leaves on his journey with the other monks. If only Asoka had left the sword in the river, but he doesn't. If only he had not drawn it, but he does. If only he learned from that first bloody lesson, but he doesn't.

There is plenty more to Asoka's story, the film runs well over 2 and 1/2 hours, but in that time it manages to pack in adventure, romance, comedy, drama, one really good battle scene and a couple of small skirmishes, plus song and dance numbers that run the gamut from free wheeling fun, to sensual and exotic desire. My God, how much more do you want from your first Bollywood experience!

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING? FOR EVERY BLOCKBUSTERS HAS A COPY OF THIS MOVIE. GO RENT IT. Really.

Oh, there is one tiny negative. The subtitles aren't the easiest to read, but after awhile I found that I didn't really need to read them word for word in order to understand and enjoy this film.

Don't let the cheap price and cover fool you!
I assumed that with the low price of the movie and the slightly cheesy cover that it was going to be bad.

I was pleased to find that it was nothing like I expected.

A largely fictional retelling of Asoka with added music and romance.

On the cover it has a quote from the Daily Mail saying that Asoka is an epic on the scale of Gladiator. While at first I had my doubts, I completely agreed a little more than halfway through the film.

It was so good I didn't want it to end. And the ending still breaks my heart.