Adi Shankaracharya (1983)

Given that I don't know a lot about Hinduism, there were many things that didn't make sense to me in Adi Shankarachary (G. V Iyer) - a film about Sri Shankara, a philosopher and reformer (the film is said to be the only film ever made in Sanskrit!). Using explaining intertitles, repetition and contemplative images of nature, Iyer strives to put Sri Shankara both in a historical setting and a spiritual context. This character of the film is both challenging and interesting to watch, even though I, admittedly, got a bit tired of the style towards the end. Shankara criticized many aspects of the religious expressions in his contemporaries: he attacked the sacrifice of animals and he rejected the cast system. On the other hand, Shankara is presented as an exegetic reader of the holy sources, where there seems to be a strict order in who can comment and how the comments are delivered. Discussion and debate was emphasized but regrettably the film never really explored how these discussions were carried out - this is something I missed. Even though the film's attention to myth and storytelling was spellbinding at times, there was many things about the film language I didn't feel comfortable with - what probably was intended to look awe-inspiring started to seem pompous to me. The same goes for the way the lines were structured around religious discourse. Maybe the thing to say here is that I am so utterly unfamiliar with certain religious notions of knowledge/the I/the soul that I weren't able to make much of these spiritual conversations shown on the screen.