On Altered Desitiny and Friendship as Fundamental

Besides being fabulously over-the-top (suddenly, self-exiled prince runs into a woman dancing on a mountain top/cut to her in a waterfall/cut to her coming to him for milk when he was learning to milk a cow), Asoka carries a tremendous and powerful message with political implications.

Asoka is a prince who should not ascend to the throne based on birth order, but destiny has chosen him to rule. The film is full of themes that show that birth is not relevant, but the life you make for yourself is. When Asoka believes the woman he has fallen desperately in love with has been killed, he becomes a killer himself--a strong warrior with an evil soul. He has only one friend who attempts to stop him from his lawless rampage but cannot.

Asoka meets his first love on the battlefield at the end of the film. Suddenly, in her eyes, he sees what he has become. The film is truly a tragedy, for it is precisely the clever, Jacob-like qualities in Asoka that protected him early in the film that get out of control and overtake him. And without love, he has no one else's eyes through which to see himself. He cannot see his pride, then. It is only at the end of the film that he feels remorse, because he sees in the eyes of his love the evil man he has become.

This film, then, is about friendship. Friendship is the thing that draws us outside of ourselves in order to evaluate ourselves and our actions toward others. Even more than friendship, the film is about erotic love--a species of friendship. It is this love that speaks to him more than the love of his second wife, which is less erotic, more than the existence of his children, more than his one friend and protector. It is erotic love that actually has the force needed to change Asoka. In the end, this love drives him to repent and renounce his ways and become a Buddhist. It is only in the self-giving, then, that accompanies love, that the redemptive possibility is open.