Kareena -missed facing Ash?
By:
Subhash
K.
Jha,
IndiaFM
Friday,
November
10,
2006
It
would've
been
the
casting
coup
of
the
year.
Had
J.P.
Dutta
not
revised
his
original
vision
of
Umrao
Jaan
Adaa's
poignant
journey
from
innocence
to
heartbreak,
Kareena
Kapoor
would
have
been
sitting
right
opposite
Aishwarya
Rai
in
Umrao
Jaan.
JP's original vision included the Nawab Abhishek Bachchan's marriage to another woman with his tawaif-beloved Umrao singing opposite the marital pair. JP wanted the bride to be someone who could rival Aishwarya's zillion-dollar beauty.
And who better equipped to fill the bill than Kareena? Since she was his god-child whom he had introduced in Refugee, JP had more or less zeroed in on Kareena as the bride in the Nawab's wedding sequence.
But then the script changed. Says JP, "What you're saying is true enough. I did plan to show Abhishek and his bride at the wedding with the Mujra being performed by the tawaif. But then I changed my mind and scrapped the sequence completely. It had been done in too many Kotha films. Remember Meena Kumari performing a Mujra at Raj Kumar's wedding in Pakeezah or at Sunil Dutt's wedding in Ghazal? And Hema Malini's Main tawaif hoon mujra karungi at Rajesh Khanna's wedding in Mehbooba? I didn't want to walk down the clichÉd path. My interpretation of the tawaif's tale had to be entirely my own. I didn't want to resort to any of the clichÉs. Besides, people who're cribbing about the film's length would've had more reason to do so."
JP isn't the least apologetic about the film's length. "Weren't Lagaan and Devdas even longer? And this year Rang De Basanti and Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna have gone beyond three hours?. Why single out Umrao Jaan for the 'crime' of exceeding the prescribed duration? I'm used to people objecting to my film's length. LOC was nearly four hours long. I can understand the need to prune down a film if it goes to those lengths. But here I'm doing a historical, with seven songs which occupy an hour. Where could I cut?"
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