Friday, February 10, 2012

Mahabharata 1989 by Peter Brooks - Opening Scenes.flv




Like many others I am in a trance having seen Peter Brook's Mahabharata. A Universal cast,extremely subtle rendition, one can go on and on about this extraordinary film. But I choose to talk about today of little vignettes of the film that have my favorite Indian God Ganesha. Peter Brook presents Ganesha in such utter fascinating a fantasy, he is everything Indian,wise, witty and humorous too. With his extraordinarily beautiful head gear, Ganesha calls himself the 'First scribe', indeed!





But the magic does not end there..true to Indian Dharma of the oneness of all Gods and their meeting in Vishnu the all powerful avatar. In a delightful scene, Ganesha suddenly removes his head gear to unveil for the first time Krishna! Everything comes in a full circle, the God who appears to be a mere recorder of history is also the maker of the same history! That is perhaps Dharma as we know it.


( Video courtesy Youtube)

3 comments:

Raj said...

Didn't know about this one. After reading this, I will definitely watch it. :) Ganesha's head gear does look extraordinarily fascinating.

KitchenKarma said...

Like you I was totally fascinated by Peter Brooks Mahabharata :-) I was blown by the photography and art direction and Draupadi played by Mallika Sarabhai...

Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury said...

Raj you must watch this! Catch some of the scenes on Youtube, especially one where Yudhishthir is questioned by the lake. @ Suchi wasn't too bowled by Mallika in this one..thought she 's a power house performer..I had liked Rupa Ganguli far more as Draupadi.