Rating: 
Summary: A Starting Point For Westerners
Review: I went into this with some hesitation after reading the write ups as there seemed to be a bit of cultural polarization between the loved it- hated it groups. After seeing it for myself I think that this version of the great epic is a starting point that can be useful for beginners in their desire to find out more about this and other sacred texts from India and the East. I was thrilled by some aspects of this as it clarified a few points for me, but also disappointed with the extreme condensation of several of the salient points. Especially the pre-battle discussion between Arjuna and Krishna, which I had hoped would be more detailed than what was given. I understand that within the limitations of the single movie only so much can be covered. I do hope that some one undertakes a detailed documentary or miniseries to visualize this for those of us who lack the Hindi language skills. But still, I think this may serve well the purpose of introducing dedicated beginners in their desire to learn more about this amazing work.
Rating: 
Summary: Worst version of the great epic that I've ever seen.
Review: I'm totally baffled that people actually enjoyed this movie. The Mahabharata is the greatest epic of all time and this movie did not do it any justice. First of all, I think it's really hard to take the longest epic in history and make it into a 6 hour movie. It leaves too many important aspects out. That was my first problem with the movie. My second problem is that the characters were totally miscast. Anyone who has ever read the many different English translated versions of the Mahabharata or even the original in Sanskrit will tell you that Bhishma was a strong and powerful man who in this movie has been reduced down to looking like a beggar you see on the streets. The Pandavas and the Kuravas were Princes yet none of their clothes or anything in their appearance made them look like they belonged in a King's court. They lived in palaces yet in this movie, they were living in dimly lit areas that looked nothing like the magnificent palaces of ancient India.I have been a fan of the story of the Mahabharata since I was 5 years old when my grandfather would tell me the tales. When I first heard about Peter Brook's movie, I was about 13 years old and I couldn't wait to see the movie when it played on PBS. I was greatly disappointed. Nothing lived up to my expectations. The grand places and the beautiful Kings and Queens I had pictured my whole life as I had heard the stories were not there. The translation of the word Mahabharata literally means Great(Maha) India(Bharat), yet I found nothing in this version of the movie to be great. Brook's version waters down the magnificent tale and turns it into something very simple and common which this story never was. If anyone is actually interested in the story of the Mahabharata, I would highly recommend the many books that are out there, including the version by Krishna Dharma that you can buy here on Amazon. Now if you are the type that does not like using your own imagination to picture the story in your head and instead want to see a movie version, then I highly recommend BR Chopra's version which was originally a TV series on Indian TV that can now be purchased on a 16 DVD set. It's in Hindi but has English subtitles and does an amazing job of portraying the true characters of the Mahabharata the way it was intended.
Rating: 
Summary: A Challenge to the Western View of the World
Review: My wise cousin told me to watch this film before I come to visit her in India, and how right she was. The story of the "Mahabharata" permeates Hindu culture in much the same way the Bible has formed Western consciousness. But such a story! The basic tale is of a feud between two branches of a family, rulers, sons of gods but all too human. Having no prior knowledge of this great epic I found it a bit confusing at first, a lot of background is related in a brief beginning, the multi-national, multi-racial cast led to a little confusion among characters. But the story line quickly develops as the legitimate heir loses his kingdom to the other branch of the family in a crooked dice game. The tension builds as Yudhishthira gambles inexorably for higher and higher stakes, finally losing his brothers and beloved wife. He is offered one final chance to redeem all or escape, and agrees to throw the dice one more time against his brothers' advice, and loses. His reason--"I had to give the cheaters one more chance to save themselves." This is the first of many very complicated moral dilemmas presented, but there are no easy answers here. Is it permissible to lie to avoid a greater harm? Is cheating in a fight wrong, even if your opponent is guilty of many wrongs against you? At first it seemed that there were good guys and bad guys in this story, a notion sometimes reinforced in imagery, such as in the chariot fight between Karna and Arjuna, with black and white horses. But we quickly see that life isn't so simple--the good guy strongman Bhima kills his enemy and eats his heart with gory relish. Even the god-man Krishna urges tricks to defeat the enemy. The women in the story were strong, complicated, grounded. Can a woman love five husbands equally? Yes, in this world. Does the mother of five sons grieve for the sixth she abandoned long ago and who became the enemy of his brothers? Yes, and her pain is compelling. I felt I could watch this film many times and still not understand all of it. The vision of the world is so different from a western view--gods and men together in the world, good and evil existing within both. And I'm sure this wasn't a totally faithful rendition of the story. But compared to the impossibility of picking up the text cold and trying to read it, this is a wonderful alternative.
Rating:
Summary: The quest of what is right
Review: Peter Brook does an outstanding job depicting the universal human themes of this timeless Indian epic.I especially liked the international english-speaking cast and the haunting soundtrack.He focuses unwaveringly on this one idea: What is the right thing to do in any given situation at any given moment and how can we know it? If we choose a path, must we also not be prepared to choose their consquences, and if we are responsible for these consequences, can we be judged? I first saw Peter Brook's Mahabharata on public television and recorded it. I have watched it many times and each time I come away with greater understanding. The DVD was my Christmas present to myself! You will love it.
Rating:
Summary: if i could go lower than 1, then this product would win it!
Review: Peter Brooks's rendition of the Mahabharata does more injustice to the great Indian Epic than Xena the Warrior Princess does to Greek Mythology! When I first saw it, I took great umbrage to the great story which I would hear from my Grandmother as a little child. Ok, perhaps in a liberal sense of way, Brooks did capture the essence of the story, the ubiquity of the God! But the casting was horrendous, the fashion in which the characters were delienated was offensive, and it just is not worth paying money for this! Read the book, but please, avoid the Brooks version at all costs!
Rating:
Summary: A life changer
Review: Pours wisdom right into the soul.
It changed my life. The largest poem on Earth and it is about YOU! This 6 hour film is derived from the 9 hour stageplay.
Absolutely unique and tells you about the meaning of life.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Mahabharata, but good on its own terms
Review: Responses to this film tend to be bipolar. On the one hand there are those--usually, but not always South Asian--who find it downright offensive, a baffling misrepresentation of one of the world's great classics. On the other are those who are taken in by the film's sumptuous artistry and pronounce it profound and life-changing and...if they are daring or ignorant...claim that it manifests the essence of Indic philosophy and sensibilities.
I think a more balanced view would go like this. Firstly, nearly everything about Brook's presentation is dissonant with the real character of the Mahabharata and of its cultural matrix generally. Brook himself has said that he interpreted the Mahabharata as a metaphor for nuclear holocaust in the modern age, and indeed he seems determined to transform the work into a Greco-Shakespearean tragedy. The characters are uniformly ashen-faced throughout the film, even *before* anything bad happens, and the score is downright elegiac. Characters mumble on and on about the "savagery of this world", its loss of youth, and we get many closeups of faces paralyzed in existential anguish. Krishna--one of several characters terrifically miscast--is not even likeable. The presentation is claustrophobic and minimalist, in stark contrast to the dizzying variety and vastness of the original. Beyond this, the Mahabharata (the real one) is simply not a tragedy. If anything, it is a Divine Comedy. Far from Homer's heroes, the characters are not properly viewed as 'mere men' at all: they are incarnations of gods, demons, and assorted beings whose dramas extend in all directions of time and space, literally into infinity. The true multiplicity of 'Hinduism' shines forth in the work: we get to sample every item on the spectrum between the One Being and the infinity of worlds. The problem of dharma or rightness, meanwhile, is quite beyond Brook's purview. He has ripped the epic too far from its Indic roots, and what he gives us is very definitely a postmodern European imagination.
So, hats off to all those who feel betrayed.
But there is another story to tell. Considered by itself as a work of art, this film has to count among the most visionary and fascinating in recent decades. The visual and aural elements--the spare, elusive sets; the cool Mughal-inspired wardrobes; the gorgeous music which took literally years to produce--are a marvel, and create a world like few seen on the screen. Brook isn't famous for nothing, and his stage-honed directorial skill shines in every scene. I won't spoil the surprise at some of his choices, but they are consistently evocative and turn on the smallest gestures. The film is simply a feast. The characters are not particularly deep--though perhaps a little deeper than the originals--and the 'philosophy' tends to be half-baked and even self-obsessed. But stylistically it stands to challenge anything I've ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Not the Mahabharata, but good on its own terms
Review: Responses to this film tend to be bipolar. On the one hand there are those--usually, but not always South Asian--who find it downright offensive, a baffling misrepresentation of one of the world's great classics. On the other are those who are taken in by the film's sumptuous artistry and pronounce it profound and life-changing and...if they are daring or ignorant...claim that it manifests the essence of Indic philosophy and sensibilities. I think a more balanced view would go like this. Firstly, nearly everything about Brook's presentation is dissonant with the real character of the Mahabharata and of its cultural matrix generally. Brook himself has said that he interpreted the Mahabharata as a metaphor for nuclear holocaust in the modern age, and indeed he seems determined to transform the work into a Greco-Shakespearean tragedy. The characters are uniformly ashen-faced throughout the film, even *before* anything bad happens, and the score is downright elegiac. Characters mumble on and on about the "savagery of this world", its loss of youth, and we get many closeups of faces paralyzed in existentialist anguish. Krishna--one of several characters terrifically miscast--is not even likeable. The presentation is claustrophobic and minimalist, in stark contrast to the dizzying variety and vastness of the original. Beyond this, the Mahabharata (the real one) is simply not a tragedy. If anything, it is a Divine Comedy. Far from Homer's heroes, the characters are not properly viewed as 'mere men' at all: they are incarnations of gods, demons, and assorted beings whose dramas extend in all directions of time and space, literally into infinity. The true multiplicity of 'Hinduism' shines forth in the work: we get to sample every item on the spectrum between the One Being and the infinity of worlds. The problem of dharma or rightness, meanwhile, is quite beyond Brook's purview. He has ripped the epic too far from its Indic roots, and what he gives us is very definitely a postmodern European imagination. So, hats off to all those who feel betrayed. But there is another story to tell. Considered by itself as a work of art, this film has to count among the most visionary and fascinating in recent decades. The visual and aural elements--the spare, elusive sets; the cool Mughal-inspired wardrobes; the gorgeous music which took literally years to produce--are a marvel, and create a world like few seen on the screen. Brook isn't famous for nothing, and his stage-honed directorial skill shines in every scene. I won't spoil the surprise at some of his choices, but they are consistently evocative and turn on the smallest gestures. The film is simply a feast. The characters are not particularly deep--though perhaps a little deeper than the originals--and the 'philosophy' tends to be half-baked and even self-obsessed. But stylistically it stands to challenge anything I've ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Finally on DVD. Peter Brook's Mahabharata
Review: The Mahabharata is the longest poem ever written (15 times the length of the Bible) and literally means ''the great story of the Bharatas'' (the legendary first king of India). It begins when a young prince meets an old poet, Vyasa, who says that he is going to tell him the history of his race and the history of mankind. Ganesha (who has a human body and an elephant head) becomes the poet's scribe. The narration includes the origins of the human species, Vyasa's birth and other major events. But the story focuses on the rivalry between two groups of cousins (the Pandavas and the Kauravas), how they were growing up, how the developed their rivalries and what kind of values, preferences and "life styles" they were developing. Then comes a game of dice between the two groups, to be followed by the exile of the Pandavas into the forest and their planned revenge, including the organization of a big army. The entire poem seems to be a long preparation for the "pearl part", the Bhagavad Gita, which takes place just before the big battle between the cousins. This is a private long dialogue between Arjuna (brother number three and in charge of the army of the Pandavas) and Krishna (who serves him as his charioteer and in fact is the human incarnation of the God Vishnu), while the two armies are eager to start killing each other. The main subject is guidance to straightforward and resolute action. To present the quintessence of such long and complex epic in 330 minutes is a tremendous challenge. Peter Brook has the credentials for such enterprise. He was director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and has been for many years director of the International Center of Theatre Creation in Paris. He has worked in many projects with Jean-Claude Carriere (President of the French School for Film and Television). Carriere wrote a mini-script of the Mahabharata (Methuen Drama, 1988) and Brooks translated it into English. The poem came to New York in a nine-hour full stage version (Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1987). It was followed by a six-hour film version which was telecasted in Europe in 1989 and by PBS in 1991. Finally, there was a three-hour movie version which was presented at movie theaters. The 330 minutes version was available in an impeccable Laser videodisc format and I anticipate is the one made on DVD. The cast is composed of a selected group of 42 international actors (India, USA, Burkina-Faso, Japan, Vietnam, Italy, England, Senegal, ....etc.). The music was composed by Toshi Tsuchitori; the songs were interpreted by Sarmila Roy (there is a beautiful CD with the film music).
Rating:
Summary: Indian philosophy come to life
Review: This excellent multinational production of the Mahabharata feels almost Shakespeaerean at times - the language so eloquent and poetic, the themes so profound and universal, the action so epic. Truly great literature brought to film. Briefly, the Mahabharata is a tale of two rival sets of brothers, cousins to eachother, each born into royalty and with divinely guided paths in life. The result, however, is a great war, death, destruction, but a final glimmer of light preserved. Vishnu after Shiva.
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Peter Brook's five-hour version of the Mahabharata is theatrical, philosophical, spare, poetic. It is rendered in gentle, nearly monochromatic hues and with often silent backgrounds, interspersed with periods of hauntingly beautiful music. The actors are gifted, if a bit too grand and mythic in their presentation. As in the written versions, the characters motives are seen to be, in turns, grounded and human, and unearthly and enlightened. Such a powerful mix, and such a penetrating vision of life -- all from over three thousand years ago! I highly recommend this film, anbd the special features of the DVD make it that much more valuable.
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