In the final scene of Junoon (1979), a film adaptation of Ruskin Bond’s novel A Flight of Pigeons set in the backdrop of the 1857 revolt, the moment finally arrives for the married, middle-aged, feudal chieftain Javed Khan, played by Shashi Kapoor. Ruth, the young English girl he is obsessed with, for the first time in the film calls him by his name – Javed. Javed is almost too stunned to sink in the reciprocity. He leaves immediately, exuding a sense of relinquishment, intense longing, loss, and the pointlessness of pursuit.
One way of looking at this melodramatic surprise is to restrict it to what the plot offers, that Javed turns his back only to honour his word to Ruth’s mother Miriam to leave if the British defeat the 1857 mutiny. But Shyam Benegal’s understated directorial touch infuses the ending with other meanings for the audience – not merely captive to the plot but peering into the conflicting impulses of a character’s psyche. It possibly also hints at Javed being terrified by the possibilities of wish fulfilment and his sense of inadequacy when Ruth actually responds to his feelings.
For Shyam Benegal, registering the process of how characters respond in the ways they do was as important as the film’s narrative, if not more. He believed what goes on behind the plot was the more elusive, challenging part: the pre-change, post-change or no change at all in a character’s thought process.
Benegal found his cinematic voice five years before Junoon. Taking a break from his career in making ad films, he made his first feature film, Ankur (1974), followed by Nishant (1975). Both were socially conscious films, reflecting on themes of caste, sexual repression and exploitation in a feudal milieu. He did this, though, without resorting to polemics and platitudes. The absorbing narrative remained faithful to the characters and worlds they were portraying. Benegal then explored themes of the milk cooperative movement and its underlying social dynamics and challenges in Manthan (1976).
The 1970s established Benegal as the key figure of parallel Hindi cinema. Year after year, his films won national awards in different categories. At the same time, his body of work remained remarkably eclectic, as was seen in Bhumika (1977), a cinematic adaptation of the life of a silent film actress. Bhumika subtly captured different shades of characters and the power dynamics of their social settings.
Benegal was born to a still photographer father in 1934 in Tirumalgiri, part of the erstwhile Hyderabad state. He grew up in a cantonment town before completing his master’s degree in economics from Osmania University. An early passion for films led him to what was then an unconventional career in ad films, first as a copywriter and then as a filmmaker for Lintas. Besides feature films, he also explored different genres like documentaries, including one on Satyajit Ray.
The 1980s saw a further expansion of his already wide-ranging repertoire. Kalyug (1981) was his modern canvas for the Mahabharat, weaving moral ambiguities and dilemmas of the epic into a 20th century tale of power and intrigue involving feuding industrial families. Four years later, Trikaal (1985) again showed his grasp over period drama as he recreated a tale around the liberation of Goa in 1961. In the same decade, he turned his gaze to storytelling on the transition effects of the new economy on rural handloom workers. The result was Susman (1987), a film often underrated but which has stood the test of time for its delicate portrayal of the subject.
More significantly, the most challenging project for Benegal in the 1980s waited until the very end of the decade. It wasn’t for the silver screen but for television, as Doordarshan commissioned him to make the 50-plus episodes of the series Bharat Ek Khoj, a dramatised version of Jawaharlal Nehru’s book Discovery of India. This was to coincide with the birth centenary celebrations of Nehru in 1989.
Though Nehru’s book, published in 1944, was mostly a reflective work and didn’t involve original research, Benegal’s did try to weave together available resources to give the series a wider base of interpretations. Moreover, in laying out the frame for capturing the key aspects of India’s nationhood and cultural personality, from the Indus Valley civilisation to the modern era of anti-colonial struggle against the British, Benegal’s efforts were for all to see on Sunday evenings. Besides his ambitious breadth of historical narratives on screen, he also pooled together a stellar assembly of acting talent of that time for the series.
The most challenging project for Benegal in the 1980s waited until the very end of the decade. It wasn’t for the silver screen but for television, as Doordarshan commissioned him to make the 50-plus episodes of the series Bharat Ek Khoj, a dramatised version of Jawaharlal Nehru’s book Discovery of India.
Benegal’s sense of period recreation on screen was evident in his series Samvidhaan: The Making of the Constitution of India in 2014 for Rajya Sabha TV. So was his interest in looking at certain phases in the long biographical arc, which he did while turning his gaze back to the South Africa years of Mahatma Gandhi in The Making of the Mahatma (1996). One of his projects Mujib: The Making of a Nation, a film on Bangladesh’s founding father Mujibur Rahman, was released as late as 2023.
His approach to cinematic adaptations of historical texts or periods had a blend of meticulous detailing as well as original interpretations. This was true for how he handled works of literature too, as is evident in his engaging take on Hindi writer Dharamvir Bharti’s novel on which his film Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda (1992) was based. At the same time, his thematic persistence and knack for exploring different aspects of a theme was seen in his tetralogy of films on Muslim women: Mammo, Sarfari Begum, Hari-Bhari and Zubeidaa, the last being a bit more mainstream than the others.
Besides Benegal’s formidable range of work in Indian cinema, which won him national and international acclaim, his equally remarkable legacy is that of spotting talent or mentoring talent, including Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Kulbhushan Kharbhanda and Rajit Kapur, to name just a few.
In bringing together a new grammar of informed sensibilities and finely etched portrayals to the Indian screen, Benegal left an eclectic register of cinematic craftsmanship. Amidst a number of subtexts in his storytelling, the most enduring was his ability to bring dignity to ordinariness. That itself was a point of departure, especially in the time he began making films. That he could keep his narrative focus on the process also meant he could place the ordinary and the banal, and the extraordinary and the heroic, in the same frame.
That was such a relief if you were watching his work.
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