Shyam Benegal
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Contents |
Briefly
Sunil Nair, Dec 24, 2024: The Times of India
Shyam Benegal came out of nowhere and lit up the Hindi film scene in the 1970s at a time when the industry was “an absolutely closed shop”, as a close associate recalled it. It was the age of melodrama and action – ‘Roti Kapda Aur Makaan’ and ‘Sholay’ were big hits – and every release flaunted a roll-call of stars. “There was no possibility for any young filmmaker to get into it at all,” is how Girish Karnad, who was then director of the Film and Television Institute of India, described it.
Benegal’s neorealism struck a deep chord with a generation keen on films that would mirror the social and political tensions of their time.
Benegal was introduced to the camera by his father, a professional still photographer, and early on, he became hooked to Hollywood and Indian films. His debut film ‘Ankur’ (The Seedling), a tale of sexual exploitation set against a feudal background with a cast of unknown yet riveting newcomers, ran 25 weeks at the landmark Eros theatre in Bombay. He had begun writing the script of ‘Ankur’ when he was in college in Hyderabad and spent 20 years looking for a financier before an ad film distributor agreed to produce it. Its success staked out new ground for the ‘art/parallel cinema’ movement that over time showcased new talent such as Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Om Puri, Govind Nihalani, Vijay Tendulkar and Vanraj Bhatia.
Benegal, who pioneered parallel cinema in India and created the 53-episode ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’, and whose last project was a 2023 biopic on Mujibur Rahman – ‘Mujib: The Making Of A Nation’ – passed away in a hospital in Mumbai, days after he turned 90 on Dec 14.
New cinema
Sunil Nair, Dec 24, 2024: The Times of India
Shyam Benegal grew up in a cantonment town near Hyderabad in 1930-40’s where his father, a professional still photographer, introduced him to the camera. The obsession with movies began early, his appetite whetted by Hollywood and Indian releases screened at a local hall for the morale of the troops. “There used to be two programme changes a week,” he once recalled. “…like in Cinema Paradiso, I befriended the projectionist so I could see both…”
Shifting base after his education, he began working at Lintas in Mumbai as a copywriter. The next decade and a half were spent on a prodigious number of ad films and documentaries. Traces of the social concerns underpinning his cinema are evident in the shorts he made, including the earliest ones, such as A Child of the Street, which took a compassionate look at juvenile vagrancy, and Close to Nature, a colourful take on tribal life in Madhya Pradesh.
His stint as a teacher at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) drew him closer to celluloid. But his bleak stories still had no takers among financiers. Lalit Bijlani of Blaze Advertising eventually stepped in. Both Ankur and Nishant, which came a year later, were set in the feudal lands of Telangana, a region under the Nizam. It was a world Benegal had seen up close in his formative years. Touted as his most striking works, the narratives and characters were situated in a rural milieu with a distinct dialect and attendant class-caste equations. Coming around the time of the Emergency, the two films spurred a movement of sorts and cemented his reputation as the high priest of the ‘New Wave’.
Benegal’s eclectic interests showed in the diversity of subjects. From Gujarat’s milk cooperatives (Manthan) to the life of a silent film era actress (Bhumika), from 1857 (Junoon) to feuding business families (Kalyug), his projects spanned periods and themes. A bearded, Renaissance figure at the centre of the ‘art film’ circuit, he was equally a mentor to actors, musicians, writers and technicians. At a felicitation to celebrate Benegal’s 25 years as a filmmaker, actor playwright Girish Karnad spoke of his innate ability to help artistes tap their potential. “He was not just a director but also a doctor, a psychiatrist, a father figure and a banker,” said Karnad.
The latter part of Benegal’s career was marked by biopics, including one on Gandhi’s years in South Africa and a tetralogy on Muslim women (Mammo, Sardari Begum, Hari-Bhari and Zubeidaa). By then, the ‘art film’ movement had dissipated. He had turned to a new set of collaborators, many from commercial cinema. His standout work in this period, however, was a part elegiac, part quirky interpretation of a Dharamvir Bharti novel, Suraj Ka Saatvan Ghoda. Occasional forays into television too made for interesting viewing: Bharat Ek Khoj, the mega-series based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India, and Samvidhaan, on the making of the Indian Constitution, were the best examples.
Benegal’s influence on the Indian film industry extended far beyond his own body of work. He headed a govt committee set up in 2016 to streamline the film certification process and lay down a framework that would allow more room for artistic expression.
SHYAM BENEGAL | 1934-2024
EARLY LIFE
Born in 1934 near Hyderabad, the son of a photographer. Made his first film at age 12 on a camera given by his father. His paternal grandmother and Guru Dutt’s maternal grandmother were sisters. But when he moved to Bombay in the late 50’s, he chose not to knock on his illustrious cousin’s door for a job
CAREER IN TRANSITION
Started as advertising copywriter in 1959, made ad films and documentaries before shifting to cinema and then television. He directed films on Dalda oil and Rexona bathing soap before turning into the vanguard of the ‘New Wave’ in Hindi films shorn of big stars and a formula-driven approach
DISCOVERY OF INDIA
The latter part of his career was marked by a transition to television. His most ambitious work came in the late 80’s: a year-long series based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India. It spanned centuries of history and highlighted its most dramatic chapters and enduring figures. The serial stands the test of time, its writing as complex and layered as the past it sought to unravel. Be it Aurangzeb or Shiva ji, Benegal steered away from stereotypical portrayals with help from eminent academics
AWARDS
Recipient of Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Dadasaheb Phalke Award, apart from 18 national awards. Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes for Nishant
BIOGRAPHIES
Apart from biopics on Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose, he used a nontraditional narrative form to explore famous lives. His first venture was a documentary on Satyajit Ray in 1985. His most recent film was the 2023 ‘Mujib: The Making of a Nation’
Talents that Benegal spotted
Dec 24, 2024: The Times of India
Shyam Benegal who began his career as a director with no prior experience in cinema, talent-spotted a number of artistes and technicians in the 70’s, many of them leading lights of the ‘art film’ movement. The list includes Shabana Azmi, Anant Nag, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Pankaj Kapoor, Govind Nihalani, Shama Zaidi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda.
Nishant was the film that introduced Naseeruddin Shah to the screen. A Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) student, he came recommended by Girish Karnad, the institute director, who had seen him on stage in Edward Albee’s Zoo Story. Shah was leading an agitation at FTII at the time. Ac- cording to Karnad, the reason for the strike was “stupid” but Shah was “passionate”.
Sent from Pune to meet the filmmaker, he landed up at Benegal’s Pedder Road apartment early in the morning dressed in cowboy boots and a corduroy denim jacket; he looked nothing like the dhoti-kurta clad villager he was to portray. Fortunately, Benegal still thought he was “more or less” right for the part.
Shah recalls in his memoir that the launch made him the envy of his batch, many of whom spread the canard that he had landed the role for “selling out” the cause. The demand that acting students should be cast in all diploma films made by batchmates in other courses was never met.
Smita Patil was similarly discovered by the director who saw her for the first time on television. She was reading the news in Marathi. “Her presence was riveting and attractive,” he recalled. Despite lack of professional training and an absence of ambition to be an actress, she was cast in a series of prominent roles by Benegal. “Her ability to take on different personas was a gift…she could do both glamorous roles and plain parts,” he once said.
Not all of Benegal’s finds were automatic choices. An FTII graduate from the previous batch, Shabana Azmi was not the first pick for Ankur. He had approached Waheeda Rehman, Sharda, Aparna Sen, and Anju Mahendru, all of whom turned it down. Then he heard of Shabana from an assistant. “When I saw her, I knew immediately that she was correct for the part although she was dressed in model-like clothes,” he recalled in an interview. He ended up offering her two roles, one in Ankur, the other in Nishant.
Benegal’s films
— Avijit Ghosh, Dec 24, 2024: The Times of India
Ankur : 1974 | Benegal’s first feature takes an incisive yet nuanced look at the variegated shades of feudal tyranny, sexual repression and caste discrimination giving a progressive yet absorbing turn to New Wave Hindi cinema. The closing shot of a kid casting a stone blends socially-conscious cinema with a call to action.
Nishant (1975) is a far more violent and menacing follow-up Manthan: 1976 | The making and shaping of the cooperative milk movement in Gujarat, and the hurdles that it faced along the way, finds a worthy celluloid presentation. Manthan was presented by 500,000 farmers of Gujarat. Each gave Rs 2 to fund the film. Benegal walked the talk
Bhumika: 1977 | Based on the bestselling autobiography of Marathi actress Hansa Wadkar, the movie with feminist overtones marks Benegal’s shifting landscape and locations: from hinterland to more urban settings. Smita Patil is super in a film where grey is the overwhelming shade of every character
Junoon: 1979 | Benegal further expands his celluloid canvas in this film based on Ruskin Bond’s novella, A Flight of Pigeons. The unrealised love story of a married, middle-aged Pathan and a teenage Anglo-Indian girl is set in the grim back- drop of the 1858 revolt. Along with Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi, one of the more authentic historical dramas
Kalyug: 1981 | A moderntake on Mahabharat where two industrial families are locked in a cruel and uncompromising face-off. In Benegal’s nifty hands, the film feels like a game of human chess, except that the characters are neither black nor white; just dark and messy. The film fetched the Filmfare Award for best movie
Trikaal: 1985 | A richly-lacquered and multi-layered work with a distinct Marquezian feel. This is a complex inter-generational story of love, longing and loss as seen through the sifting lives in a Goan family of Portuguese origin. The movie, embellished by sumptuous compositions of Vanraj Bhatia, fetched him the national award for best director
Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda: 1992 | A fascinating cinematic take on Hindi writer Dharamvir Bharti’s novel that blurs the lines between fact and fiction, truth and lies. What’s life, but different points of view, Benegal seems to be suggesting as in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon as both characters and stories intersect. A movie that carries the bitter taste of melancholia that lingers long after the lights come on
Mammo: 1994 | A mini gem that’s as much about personal insecurities as about the lingering pains of Partition in a Muslim family
Hari Bhari: 2000 | One of his most under-rated movies. The lives of five women in a rural Muslim family in Uttar Pradesh barely made it to the theatres. Who can believe that a movie which discusses sterilisation, child mortality, child birth at a young age, mother’s health, frequent child birth, girl-child education and malnutrition can be engaging too? But Benegal made it happen
Bharat Ek Khoj (TV) | The master’s grand epic. This is not just Benegal’s best work, but also the greatest television series ever made in India
Special mention | Susman, the weary lives of Pochampalli saree weavers, is told with honesty and empathy
