Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Mahapurush (The Holy Man)

Ray, 61m, 1965

This is possibly the least of the Ray movies. This is comedy bordering on social satire. Movies with a message are not his forte.

This is about a conman posing as a Guru. He claims to be several thousand years old and to have encountered the likes of Jesus and Buddha. He has a following and offers magical solutions to problems. A group of friends take on the task of exposure. Lacking in any kind of psychological depth or richness of characters for which Ray is known, it evokes little mirth and the climax turns out to be far short of hilarious. In any case, it is a relief to encounter a Ray film in which it is unnecessary to search for adequate words or to go hoarse in the strain of being eloquent. Unbroken perfection is also tiresome and this flawed non-entity of a film cuts him down to human proportions.

Prasad Mukherjee as the Guru gives gives a versatile acting performance.

2 comments:

Nathanael Hood said...

It's important to remember that even the best directors can misfire every now and then.

One hopes that film-makers learn from their mistakes in order to create better films.

S M Rana said...

@Nat:

Even uniform excellence can get monotonous. After all, even Shakespeare had his ups and downs!