Customer Reviews

Peter Brook's The Mahabharata

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

This is a heavily abridged version of Peter Brook's wonderful film. About 1/2 the film has been cut from this version. I owned the VCR version of this movie which is 325 minutes long. I had assumed this was a long-awaited reprint of an out-of-print classic. Instead, this is a HEAVILY abridged (170-minute) version of the show.

I bought this as a birthday present for my husband, after five minutes of watching painful cut after painful cut, we had to turn the film off. I will be returning it ASAP.

I have NO IDEA why the studio did this.

Amazon.com should mark this as an ABRIDGED VERSION.

I can only hope that the studio comes to their senses and released a version of the DVD that is the full 325 minutes, because the VCR tapes I bought 14 years ago are wearing out...

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.

I too grew up hearing stories of the Mahabharata and watched this adaptation on the BBC a few years back. This is theatre at its best, and it truly captures the essence of the Mahabharata. The stories and concepts are all covered, but those who are expecting an all Indian cast wearing traditional garb will be sorely disappointed. Hinduism is a way of life, a faith of choice and plurality. These ideas are reinforced with a multicultural cast. When I first heard that it was not an all Indian cast, my expectations for the play dropped dramatically, but I can assure you, what Peter Brook has done is astonishing. I look forward to watching this with my children, though after they have been inundated with bedtime stories from the Mahabharata.

I have been eagerly awaiting Peter Brooks' The Mahabharata on DVD, and today it arrived. How disappointed I was to find this version is a little over half as long as the one shown on the BBC and PBS. I have not watched this version yet, but I cannot believe it will be anything but a slice-and-dice version of the epic tale that I came to love in its television miniseries form and later on laserdisc. So a warning to everyone: if you want the full miniseries, THIS IS NOT IT!

Years ago I watched this on television and later video. I was blown away by the depth of the material and the performances of the cast. This is definitely no hollywood production but it is great theatre. I emphasize that it is just that - theatre.

I have since read the original Indian texts (translated) and it took me many months, the writing was complicated and it took me ages just to identify with the names (sorry but I have a Western upbringing). Once I got over this it is fair to say that the intricacies and subtleties of the full story are completely lost from Peter Brooks work. Completely! This is probably why so many people who are familiar with the text are so unhappy with this version.

Chopra's - very long (but well priced and a great series) - interpretation is far more faithful but lacks, in my opinion, the intensity that is present in Brook's work. Chopra's version whilst being far more faithful is also clearly aimed at Indian TV audiences (e.g., there are filler scenes that breakup the momentum of the story) also the audio quality on my DVDs and subtitling is poor.

I have since watched Brook's version many times and decided it is not really a story about the Mahabharata at all (it seems very different now) but nevertheless carries a story of its own (perhaps more of Brook's story) but its real strength is its ability to enthrall with very little else but strong characters and a few props.... that is just great theatre in my mind!

But it would be a mistake to take a 5 hour interpretation of the text as faithful - especially since Chopra took 94 episodes to do the same (which still misses some things in the text - I definitely recommend Chopra's version - definitely good value and conceptually much deeper than Brook's version). But the names are the same and Brooks version gives a taster to the wisdom of the text. I love Brook's (and strongly recommend it) version as a theatrical work but now believe it should never have been called the Mahabharata.

This is a disappointing, sliced and diced version of the long epic shown on public television many years ago. The cuts change the storyline and make it difficult to follow, especially in reference to the amazing 5+ hour original.

Buyer beware! This is not the original, full length version.

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.

I was entranced by The Mahabharata, as presented by Peter Brookes. Since my childhood, I have heard, read and seen The Mahabharata in my mother tongue, English and Hindi. Irrespective of the medium, it has always impressed with the great canvas on which human yet larger than life characters are etched but the grandeur of the drama has often masked the underlying philosophy - that the difference between humans and gods is infinitesimal, that every person is imbued with some qualities that are god-like (so that depending on circumstances anybody can appear god-like), even the so-called gods have human frailties and can be touched and befriended.
Peter Brookes has successfully denuded the characters of their physical attributes and forced us to really understand this philosophy that we too can become gods depending on which qualities we care to nurture within our selves.

I was raised on stories from the Mahbharata and my parents showed me this movie when I was about ten years old. Even though it is low budget and very, very long, I loved it.

I started showing it to my friends, who have no Indian background or knowledge at all and they loved it too. I'll never forget when we were about thirteen years old we started watching it at a sleepover and were too tired to finish. In order to see the whole thing before our moms came to take us home we would have to wake up at 6:00 am. I decided we would schedule the rest for another time, since sleeping in is a part of a sleepover. To my surprise my friends all woke up at 6:00 to see the rest.

It is an amazing story that grows bigger than itself somehow.

I was disappointed when this version came out that people were being negative about it without even purchasing it. I didn't heed their warning and purchased it anyway.

We live in a great age. We can get complete seasons of television shows. We can get movies with hours of behind the scene footage that enhance the experience. With all of these great things, why would a company abridge a great work like this? The six hour version was already abridged from the nine hour play. The nine hour play was abridged from a 5000 page book.

I tried to watch this version but I felt like I was seeing a flashback episode of a TV series.

We all have been awaiting a re-release of the six hour version. This is an insult to a great work.