THE film's Rs 4.5-crore production budget, the biggest Shyam Benegal has ever worked with, does not quite show . For moviegoers weaned on the notion that equates size with artistic merit, spectacle with narrative energy, the director's refusal to play to the gallery in The Making of the Mahatma , bankrolled jointly by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and the South African Broadcasting Corporation, might come as a bit of a letdown.
After all, shouldn't an epic slice of history actually look like one: grand, glossy, hyper-heroic? In Benegal's hands, it need not. Indeed, Mahatma is anything but an awestruck testament to an infallible, larger-than-life demigod. The crowd scenes are not allowed to swamp the film's soul. There are numerous moments when high drama is only a tempting platitude or a grand gesture away, but they are not permitted to upset the script's even keel. Benegal's Mahatma is epic not so much in scale as in depth. That sets it in a league quite distinct from Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi .
Mahatma was shot and processed entirely in South Africa where, as Benegal points out, "costs are at least four or five times higher" than in India. "By Indian standards, Rs 4.5 crore is a big amount," he says. "But in rand terms, it's a small budget." That, however, is not the prin- cipal reason why Bene- gal's Gandhi is no deity on a pedestal. Nor is the fact that the screenplay, authored by Fatima Meer, Shama Zaidi and Benegal himself, deals with the man before his apotheosis, during the years leading up to his emergence as a mahatma held in awe not just by his followers but also by alien politicians who opposed him tooth and nail.
The pivotal aspect of Mahatma is Benegal's conscious delineation of a great soul as someone who, notwithstanding his nobility and moral unflappability, is essentially a mortal being. Albeit, a mortal being who rises above his human condition to lead a nation to freedom and attain immortality. Shorn of all gratuitous external gilding, the film is an expertly modulated portrayal of an uncommon leader of men as he experiments, for the first time, with non-violence, with self-denial, with truth, in South Africa. Especially memorable is Benegal's treatment of Gandhi's rather uneasy, often dysfunctional, relationship with his wife Kasturba (Pallavi Joshi) and elder son Harilal.
"I tend to feel that Kasturba's influence on Gandhi was immense," says Benegal. Gandhi, he points out, was the first person to bring the gender issue to the forefront of our political discourse and "Kasturba played a key role in shaping his perceptions". Does this interpretation stem from the book the film is based on, Fatima Meer's The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma ? "When you make a film, a process of transformation is bound to take place," explains Benegal.
"The book is a simple, lightly-written account of Gandhi's early years. It deals with his childhood as well," says the director. The film skips the boyhood years and begins with Gandhi's arrival in South Africa. "A great deal of research material on Gandhi is available in South Africa, especially at the Institute of Black Research with which Fatima Meer herself is closely associated."
Mahatma has fetched Rajit Kapur, who plays Gandhi, a best actor national award. But the Bombay stage and TV actor nearly didn't play the role. "It took me months to find Gandhi," recalls Benegal. His first choice was Naseeruddin Shah who had accepted the offer. But he got busy with other engagements and Benegal had to begin shooting. "It was then that I thought of Rajit, who was already in the cast to play another part," says Benegal.
Released in South Africa, premiered in London by the Satyajit Ray Society and scheduled to be screened in New York in early December before being exhibited all over the US, the film has so far yielded around Rs 1.2 crore for the NFDC, which expects a neat profit at the end of the day. Viewers in India will see the film, which is all in English, in October. "We are planning a gala release on October 2 in some metropolises," says an NFDC official. "We're negotiating with prospective sponsors."
Does Benegal expect a windfall at the box office? Hard to predict, he says. But Gandhi's relevance, he asserts, can never be in doubt. "Indians are by and large veering round to the view that there was much more to Gandhi than what they already know. The name has many resonances," says Benegal. Just as a film like the Mahatma ought to do in this era of pulp patriotism ( Hindustani, Kaala Pani ) and instant history ( Bombay ).
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