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Designer damning of an epic...
The very first frame leaves you speechless! It carries a card stating – ‘Concept developed by Ekta Kapoor!’
So that’s it, then? Maharishi Ved Vyas – go take a walk… your ‘undeveloped’ concept has struck big time fortune in being ‘developed’ by Ekta Kapoor.
But jokes apart – and it is hardly a matter of jokes – it really is the height of self-aggrandisement. How can one even think of daring such a sacrilege and that too about a work that is part of the Indian psyche since eons and an author, who is held in the highest of the esteem all across.
But we shall move on and have a close dekko at the ‘development’…
Let us take the first episode as the window of things to come and see what happens here…
We have a highly stylised (as usual) Makarand Deshpande wailing at desolate spots as Ved Vyas (bow down in gratitude, Rishi Vyas – at least, you are there in the ‘developed’ fare). He bemoans the destiny that brought the war of Mahabharat and then, leads us to the Cheer-Haran sequence in the story.
Can you believe it? The makers have betrayed such lack of grey matter that they have wasted the greatest highpoint in the tale without a build-up. This scene cannot be shown in isolation. It has a poignant trail of intrigue, insults, ambition and sufferance behind it and that has to be traversed first before reaching it. That’s what Ved Vyas has done in the epic.
But then, why pine for that? This is Ekta-developed travesty of Mahabharat and not the Mahabharat, anyway!
Now to the Cheer-Haran scene. Even after minutes into it, you look lost. Who are these people? Where are the Yudhishthar, Arjun, Bheem we have known all these years? Where is Duryodhan, Dussashan, Mama Shakuni? The persons on your screen seem like aliens.
And you feel you have, by mistake, come to some Greco-Roman tale being shown.
All the characters have been ‘styled’ & ‘draped’ in a manner that is alien to he Indian psyche. You thought you knew the looks of Bheem, Arjun and Duryodhan – think again. Here are the designer Bheem, Arjun and Duryodhan – and your perceptions be damned.
But perception is the key to Mythology. Nobody really knows how the Paandu’s & the Kaurav’s dressed. You imagine them in various garbs according to your own traditions. That’s true world over. That’s how Greek mythology looks different from that of Chinese or Indian. You cannot mix and make a bhel-puri of them. You cannot clothe Zeus like Vishnu and vice versa.
But this exactly is the faux-pas that the makers of this Mahabharat have committed and that, too, in the name of modernity. A big song and dance is being made by the production house and its stylists that they have given a mod look to the characters. Is borrowing dress & drape ideas from Greek gods and slapping them on our epical characters being modern? Is looking as Hercules modern and as the good old Bheem backward?
What kind of a mental slavery is that? You try to make a Ben-Hur out of Mahabharat and hold your head high on that? But excuse us – you should be hanging it in shame (doesn’t matter if you are a Manish Malhotra or whatever…!)
Coming back to the Cheer-Haran, we have a bald Shakuni tittering so annoyingly that you feel like switching off the set till he lasts in the scene. Actually, Shakuni’s diabolical complexes arouse from his being physically handicapped, but here he is not even lane, but just a regular guy physically. That is, once again, missing a paramount point of Ved Vyas.
And that’s the last straw!
Anita Hassanandani as Draupadi is a sin committed, no less. It is one of the profoundest characters of our heritage and Anita has turned it into an ear and eyesore. Instead of pathos, she projects infantile muck. She howls and screams like a banshee, emotes like a hellcat and reduces the character to ashes in no time.
So much for the Ekta-developed characters!
Even technically, it is a routine Balaji affair with faces being molested by zoom lens, left, right and centre. Even the lighting is jerky – the shamed Paandav’s seem to be standing in faint light in the close-ups and in regular light in the long-shots.
The most rankling bankruptcy of imagination comes when Sudershan Charka appears in full view of all present and starts clothing Draupadi. If that was the case, Duryoudhan and clan wouldn’t have gone about doing it. Actually, they never saw the divine intervention – Draupadi’s drapes just went on lengthening and they were totally confounded as to what was happening. And that’s what stung their frustration all the more.
After making such a pathetic hash of the greatest scene ever in world literature, the makers now set out to go back in time to king Shantanu and his tryst with Ganga. They are played by Shakshi Tanwar and Kiran Karmarkar and the twosome brings some composure to the otherwise frenzied level of acting in the serial. But their problem is that all the time they look like Om & Parvati and are difficult to connect as Shantanu & Ganga.
The subsequent episodes have shown another character – Bheeshm (Ronit Roy, who else?). Once again, Bheeshm has been clothed as if he is coming straight out of some Roman senate and despite the bulging muscles, Ronit looks haggardly in the face. But he underplays and that’s a mercy! Still, he doesn’t have that larger than life persona of Bheeshm and falls flat in creating him on the screen.
One could go on and on about this systematic vandalising of an epic that is genetically entrenched in us. Look guys, you would do well to realise that trips to Laddakh, fat purses and FX tables do not a Mahabharat make. Instead of ‘developing’ the concept, if you could just ‘follow’ it – you would have etched your niche in the history of Television. But now what place you deserve for this designer damning of the epic – why don’t you decide yourself.
Actually, forget Mahabharat – this bizarre exercise does not even make exciting fiction.
-Vierendra Bhargav
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