Filmmaker Shyam Benegal passed away at the age of 90 at Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai on Monday.
Shyam Benegal made a spectacular debut as the writer and director of Ankur (The Seedling, 1974), which sparked the parallel cinema movement in India just as mainstream Hindi cinema entered an exciting new phase with the rise of the “Angry Young Man” in the 1970s.
Ankur, a revivingly unique film, was widely praised both domestically and abroad for its scathing critique of India’s rural feudalism and caste system. This guaranteed a fantastic beginning to his film career as the 40-year-old Benegal turned into a “disruptor,” establishing himself as a modern master and a visionary in the years that followed with his potent storytelling and dash of social realism.
Shyam Benegal, who turned 90 earlier this month, died on Monday at Mumbai’s Wockhardt Hospital.
Shyam Benegal discovered a pan-Indian audience and foreign distributors, in contrast to arthouse filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. His work became more widely known as a result. The writer-director, however, did not stop at filmmaking. His impressive body of work includes a number of historic documentaries and television series, including Bharat Ek Khoj (1988) and Yatra (1986). Based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s book Discovery of India, the 53-episode Bharat Ek Khoj was an ambitious project that used an interesting story to introduce viewers to India’s 5,000-year history, myths, and culture. Samvidhaan, a 10-part series about the creation of the Indian Constitution that was directed by Benegal, began airing on Rajya Sabha TV in March 2014.
The parallel cinema movement of the 1970s and 1980s was greatly influenced by Shyam Benegal’s films and aesthetics. Benegal established himself as a powerful cinematic voice and a formidable force as he directed some of his best films, including Ankur, Nishant (1975), Manthan (1976), Bhumika (1977), and Junoon (1979). The director kept pushing his limits without tiring.
In addition to experimenting with television in the 1980s, he produced critically acclaimed films like Kalyug (1981), Arohan (1982), Mandi (1983), Trikaal (1985), and Susman (1987).
Shyam Benegal persisted in pushing the boundaries and telling the stories he believed in, in contrast to some of his peers whose careers took a backseat when the parallel cinema movement lost steam. In the 1990s, he broadened his career by directing biopics like The Making of the Mahatma (1996) and Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (1993), which was an adaptation of the well-known Dharmavir Bharati novel. He was the director of the critically acclaimed trilogy Zubeidaa (2001), Sardari Begum (1994), and Mammo (1994), which focused on female Muslim protagonists. He later produced Well Done Abba (2010), Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008), and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2005). At the age of 87, Benegal, a tireless master, directed his final film, Mujib: The Making of a Nation, a prestigious India-Bangladesh co-production.
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He received a lot of criticism despite the fact that the majority of his films are now regarded as classics. Some of his early films were deemed by critics to be poorly made. His films were deemed “socially relevant” and “didactic” due to his propensity to include messages or sociopolitical commentary. He was criticised for being a “naive and simplistic urban dilettante” and for not “fully comprehending rural ethos.” Benegal was turned down by arthouse filmmakers at one point in his career. Although Benegal’s films made arthouse cinema more accessible to the general public, senior filmmakers like Mani Kaul, an Indian pioneer of experimental cinema, believed that Benegal’s films diminished the essence of arthouse cinema. But Benegal remained unflappable and unyielding.
