Friday, May 11, 2012

Heaven forbid!

For a country that keeps fighting over religion, it surely is a surprise that India's other film industry, that being the religious film industry has never measured up.

As a kid, I was so fascinated by the colour and calamity of the Hindu religion. Gods and goddesses. Multiple arms. Weaponry. Creation without even having sex. Then the idea that gods walked among humankind. Just the sheer nature of the stories was so fascinating. But unlike Willem Dafoe and Charlton Heston, the people who acted in these films and television series were basically going down a dead end road.

Take Ramanad Sagar's Ramayan for example. I was in India in 1986 for six weeks when it was televised. The epic about the life and exploits of Ram, the obedient son and heir apparent of Ayodhya, who's forced into exile, and then spends 13 years trying to find his wife, kidnapped by the evil demon king, Ravana. The 78 episode-long series was one of the most watched by Hindus and non-Hindus alike, not only in India, but outside the country as well. Oddly enough, Doordarshan wasn't keen on the idea of making it either, because the broadcaster thought it might lead to communal violence. I remember, being an 11 year old kid, seeing people (and life) stop on the street just to be able to pay darshan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xtRWS29cg4

While the main actors, Arun Govil (Ram) and Deepika (Sita) were revered just as much as the characters they portrayed, neither found any fame outside the serials. Sure, Govil landed roles on the small screen here and there, but his star never really shone as much as you'd expect.

A few years later, B.R. Chopra produced the Mahabharat. At the time, I thought, "oh no, not again. Not another one of these". My grandmother forced me to tape these for her when they came on TV here in Canada. The story of the feuding cousins, the Pandavs and the Kauravs, told in an ornate 94-episode long series:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05uPstPKz04

The sheer splendour of the production, from the sets, the costumes, the acting, there's no way to describe it but stellar. The casting, impeccable. But still, it failed to produce any real results for Nitish Bhardwaj (Krishna), Arjun (aptly named, since he played Arjun), or any of the others. Rupa Ganguli (Draupadi) and Mukesh Khanna (Bheeshma) had very limited success afterwards, but again, it was mainly on the small screen. When compared to Bollywood, TV in India is basically nominal. (I should mention, that it was only about two years ago that I was fully able to understand the magnitude of this production, and spent three months watching the entire series from beginning to end. I must say, it blew my mind away).

But it isn't just televised religious serials that fail to garner much attention for its stars. The 1960s, 70s, and 80s produced many religious films; Har Har Gange, Jai Santoshi Maa, Shiv Parvati, Sampoorna Ramayana, Tulsi Vivah to name a few. They all had the formulaic elements that Bollywood subscribed to: intrigue, drama, comedy, song and dance, mystery, love. But they failed to succeed among the general public. There were people like me and my grandmother who loved the mythological aspect (me because I thought it was cool to see gods and goddesses with four arms, she because she was always devoted), and others like us were few and far between. They basically flopped.

There were, I should mention, a few notables that were able to balance a career in Bollywood while taking part in what I'd like to call Devotion-wood. Jeevan, who had that evil look in his eye, made his name as a baddie in many films, was also (oddly enough) regularly cast as Narad, son of Brahma, who wandered the cosmos, singing the praises of Naryana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9N2balkYes

Lalita Pawar had the same luck. She was typecasted as the evil mother-in-law because of that sinister look she had. Which probably bode well for her since she was cast a few times as Manthara in several versions of the Ramayan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqEfX2R7wXs, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmxF-gxNKks&feature=BFa&list=EL6aU_aIESFHE&index=27






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