World View
IF I MENTION India in this column, the first thing to come to mind will be Bollywood. However, centuries before Aishwarya Rai’s bejewelled belly jiggled its way onto screens Asia-wide, a story was told which would give birth to a film gem. The Mahabarata is an ancient Sanskrit epic poem. The title translates as “the great Bharata dynasty”, but may mean “the history of great India”.
Traditionally ascribed to Vyasa, the Mahabharata is a compendium of myth, philosophy, semihistorical material about ancient India and the roots of Hindu tenets. Told through dynastic struggles in which kings kill brothers, games of dice decree the course of history and children are borne of fish, the epic meanders between deep, meaningful, fated events. You may not automatically think this is the stuff of film legend.
However, when it was televised in the 1980s by the Indian national channel, Doordarshan, Cabinet meetings were rescheduled so ministers could watch it. Directed by B R Chopra and Ravi Chopra, this version was so immensely popular it was even telecast in the UK by the BBC, and is familiar not only to Hindus the world over but also to many lay people.
My first encounter with the Mahabharata, however, was Peter Brook’s masterful 1989 celluloid version, en epic feat of cinema clocking in at six hours. There are few films that have kept me glued to the screen for the entirety of their running time, but this marathon journey is one of them. Peter Brook’s assured direction is complemented by Jean-Claude Carrière’s screenplay, which he adapted from the RSC stage version, also directed by Peter Brook.
As a result of this history, the film has a theatrical quality which is perfectly suited to its subject. There is an underlying artificiality: it is rather odd to hear a Ganesh, elephant headdress and all, enunciate in the Queen’s English his offer to scribe for Vyasa. However this cultural discrepancy is part of the key to its powers to enrapture. Every story sounds very familiar, whilst the film’s world as a whole is enchantingly exotic.
As Peter Brook comments, the Mahabharata is “a work which only India could have created but which carries echoes for all mankind”.
1st Jun 2006