Unparalleled doyen of parallel cinema

TO understand the filmmaking feat Shyam Benegal pulled off, just imagine that you were a regular cinegoer of 1974 vintage. Cinema was the only means of mass entertainment in those days.

Would you rather buy tickets for ‘Roti, Kapada Aur Makaan’ (starring Manoj Kumar, Zeenat Aman), ‘Chor Machaye Shor’ (Shashi Kapoor, Mumtaz), ‘Majboor’ (Amitabh Bachchan, Parveen Babi), ‘Roti’ (Rajesh Khanna, Mumtaz), ‘Dost’ (Dharmendra, Hema Malini) or ‘Ankur’, featuring Anant Nag and Shabana Azmi and directed by Shyam Benegal — two actors and a director, whom you had never heard of? Worse, would you willingly subject yourself to a film with no songs and no dhishoom dhishoom?

And yet, somehow, enough people did that. The rest is history. For, ‘Ankur’ (The Seedling) truly sowed the seeds of what is often referred to as the Indian new-wave parallel cinema period — a decade in which realistic, thought-provoking films found an audience and produced a bumper crop of pathbreaking celluloid gems that are still talked about.

Benegal received numerous accolades, awards and honours; his craft and films have been analysed threadbare. But what is surprisingly under-appreciated is that unlike many stalwarts of parallel cinema, both before and after him, Benegal successfully managed to escape becoming a prisoner of a certain style or school of filmmaking. It astonishes one to realise that there is no Benegal brand or genre of direction, treatment and storytelling — such was his versatility. If anything, his style was straightforward, unpretentious and audience-engaging.

Moreover, he is not identified with a recurring motif or choice of subject. Look at his repertoire: while he started his career with three films — ‘Ankur’ (1974), ‘Nishant’ (1975) and ‘Manthan’ (1976) — that were set in rural India, dealing with the ills of feudalism, oppression and caste conflicts, he quickly shifted to the urban milieu with a period film, ‘Bhumika’ (1977), shot partly in black and white, based on the turbulent life of Marathi actress Hansa Wadkar in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

His next film, ‘Junoon’, (1979), produced by film star Shashi Kapoor, harked back to the 1857 mutiny, unspooling a poignant, cross-cultural love story between a Pathan chieftain and a young Anglo-Indian woman during a time of rebellion and bloodshed. Based on Ruskin Bond’s novella ‘A Flight of Pigeons’, ‘Junoon’ is actually one of those rare films which is better than the book.

‘Kalyug’ (1981) was even more unusual for those times, creating a contemporary version of the Mahabharata through the narrative of an internecine warfare between two branches of a wealthy business family. Produced again by Shashi Kapoor, the plush settings, urbane characters and central conflict in this corporate feud were worlds away from the universes depicted in Benegal’s previous films. It was, perhaps, the veteran director’s background in advertising and insights into Mumbai’s elite that enabled him to craft this work of sophisticated dramatisation featuring modern-day Pandavas and Kauravas.

All through his career, Benegal displayed this bold trait of refusing to be strait-jacketed and selecting stories that were cinematically and thematically different from what he had done earlier. But probably his most valuable piece of work was ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’ — a brilliant adaptation of Jawaharlal Nehru’s tome, ‘The Discovery of India’, into a 53-episode TV series telecast by Doordarshan in 1988-89. Benegal commenced work on the series in 1986 and brought alive on the small screen 5,000 years of India’s history. Not just that, the series added a wealth of impeccably researched material and chapters that hadn’t been covered by Nehru. Innovatively conceptualised as a docudrama, merging narration, dramatisation and discourse seamlessly, ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’ would not have had the authenticity, accuracy and depth of content had anyone other than Benegal been at the directorial helm.

In the 1990s, Benegal worked on his trilogy featuring Muslim women protagonists — ‘Mammo’ (1994), ‘Sardari Begum’ (1996) and ‘Zubeidaa’ (2001) — tales of feisty and spirited women from different classes, eras and circumstances, who fought hard not to be condemned to victimhood. Of these, ‘Zubeidaa’ mirrored commercial cinema in form and structure, ‘Sardari Begum’ came closest to artistic sensibilities and ‘Mammo’ was an apt example of Benegal’s simple, uncomplicated, empathy-filled storytelling.

Even though Benegal was the poster boy of parallel cinema, his movies did not have ‘art film’ written all over them and he was the least self-indulgent of the parallel cinema directors. No trademark camera angles, lighting, ponderous storytelling devices or repetitively angst-ridden points of view weighed down his work. Neither did long silences and minimum dialogue test the patience of the audience. He was also one of those parallel cinema directors who allowed his actors to emote, to express, to act, instead of insisting on everyone in his cast to underplay their characters, which had become a staple ingredient of art cinema.

That is also, perhaps, the reason why Benegal’s films connected better with Indian audiences. He didn’t consider film as a director’s medium alone, but that of actors and scriptwriters, too.

Apart from his village and Muslim women trilogies, Benegal also showed a penchant for directing biopics in the latter half of his long career. In 1996, he directed ‘The Making of the Mahatma’, focusing on Gandhi’s two decades in South Africa. This was followed by ‘Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose — The Forgotten Hero’ (2004). His last film, ‘Mujib — The Making of a Nation’, based on the life of the founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was released in 2023.

He also displayed a latent flair for satire and comedy with ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’ (2008) and ‘Well Done Abba’ (2010). The fact that he made three movies in the last decade of his life tells us why he is regarded as a legend.

In an interview, Benegal said he had once been envious of his second cousin Guru Dutt’s success. For sure, when they meet in heaven now, Dutt might return the compliment.