But beauty without terror is not art; it is wallpaper. The Geeta Govinda is supposed to be dangerous. It asks: Is longing for God more real than finding Him? The film asks: Will they get back together by the third act?
Cinematographer Ravi Varman deserves a National Award for shooting water. The Yamuna in this film looks like molten sapphire. The Vasanta (spring) sequence, where every leaf turns gold and red, is a painting come to life. Costume designer Anu Vardhan’s work—the peacock feathers, the blue silk, Radha’s blood-red ghagra—is immaculate. geeta govinda movie review
There is a specific, almost unbearable tension in watching Geeta Govinda . On one hand, you are witnessing perhaps the most visually sumptuous Indian film of the decade. On the other, you are watching a sacred 12th-century Sanskrit poem get flattened into a 21st-century soap opera. Director Arjun Rajput has managed the impossible: he has taken Jayadeva’s ecstatic, radical poetry of divine longing and turned it into a lukewarm, aesthetically pristine music video about “toxic relationships.” But beauty without terror is not art; it is wallpaper
This framing device is the film’s anchor, and it is made of lead. By filtering Radha-Krishna through a modern man’s therapy-speak (“She has abandonment issues,” he mutters during a rain sequence), the film neuters the divine. Radha is no longer the Mahabhava (the great emotion); she is just a girl with a jealous boyfriend. The film asks: Will they get back together by the third act
Rajput, unfortunately, falls off.