Siddhartha 1972   R, 90 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Conrad Rooks
Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Simi Garewal, Romesh Sharma, Pincho Kapoor, Zul Vellani, Amrik Singh, Shanti Hiranand, Kunal Kapoor
A young Indian (Shashi Kapoor) leaves his family and travels in search for the meaning of life through spiritual enlightenment. On his journey he falls in with holy men, meets a courtesan who teaches him sensual pleasures, and eventually becomes a rich merchant. Based on the Herman Hesse novel. 1 User Review
| User Review |
| | Three-dimensional version of the Herman Hesse novel | Paxcorpman 02/06/2007 | Rooks managed to do two things worth doing in this movie. First, he told the Indian version -- the "real version" -- of the story of one man's enlightenment-through-life-experience, using India as the background. It was physically stunning, beautiful beyond compare, to see India still this way, as it was through the early Seventies when Rooks made his film in Northern India.
Second, Rooks made a better use of some of the characters than even Hesse did, which is often only possible through a medium such as film. This movie contains the first real kiss in Indian cinema, and the first real love-making in an Indian film. In particular, Sashi Kapoor's eyes, after his first act of lovemaking, showed his feeling of loss of innocence, as his background through the sadhu years was overturned by one act.
Having lived in India for several years, and had the honor of meeting Conrad Rooks at a dinner party -- a small one at that -- in Bombay, I was thoroughly entranced by finally seeing the film we spent all evening discussing in 1971 in Bombay (OK, for modern purists, Mumbai...). It will remain one of the strong memories of my life, and in my mind, rates much higher than the two stars of the rater at the head of this site. As a work of art, I would give it a 3.5 or 4 star rating, and say, I have rarely enjoyed a movie made from a book as I did this one.
Paxcorpman@aol.com |
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| 1. Siddhartha (1972)
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