February 16, 2010  Tuesday  Sri RamaKrishna birth day according to the Bengali calendar.

After reading the previous WHSW column " 'Slum dog Millionaire' worst film I have seen, says Karnad" mailed and posted on  February 8, 2010; my friend Frank Parlato who is a Vedanta scholar and a staunch devotee of Swami Vivekananda wrote:

Girish;
I wonder if you would consider a contrarian view:
which is that a film about Vivekananda could never never be done by worldly filmmakers. never.
Even Attenborough's film about Gandhi- while good as far as it goes -would never -using the same standards he used to make Gandhi- measure up to Vivekananda.
it was filled with faults and historical inaccuracies and dramatizations... that simply did not happen...
consider the last words of Gandhi to the attractive female photographer just before he was assassinated - implying that he was attracted to her physically.... showing him lustful in the end....
that's big filmmaking....
But it is not good enough for Vivekananda.
the Gandhi film was manipulative like so many big films are....
of course Gandhi the film was helpful to popularize the patriot leader to a modern generation and boost the ideals of Indian spirituality worldwide.
it was great propaganda... and good entertainment...
but to try to make a film on Vivekananda - a much larger more important figure - a man who has created the modern age in effect- on this line - it will surely fail. it will be impossible I suspect for any filmmaker of this era...
Vivekananda is too complex to be captured on film by people who do not understand him;
whose monetary interests supersede the ideal of truth in presentation
How can you film a man's life if you do not even know that life?
There is no book that has even come close to capturing him.
If you read all the books that were ever written, read all his letters, all the reminiscences about him and by him, read every word ever written about him and his guru and the holy mother and all the brother disciples and then read anything and everything ever written about him in any newspaper or magazine - of his day- critical or otherwise, then read every letter available ever written to him or about him and read again every word he himself ever wrote that we have available - then read the lives of the people who knew him - as far as they are available, and then study the culture and the history of his times - not only India but England and America too and then re read everything you ever read - you will get a small glimpse- of Vivekananda - a view that will change with every available day when something new comes along .... some new discovery - and then after 30 years or so of constant study, you will have a small, small glimpse- and then even then you might say you could take a stab at a film? No, not even then.
Go back and study it again. every letter every book every lecture every scrap or tidbit of information... no matter how small ... and you will see yet another picture....
For a modern big budget filmmaker who has to make a profit to try to read a quick book or two and get a screen play and then bang it up and ham it up and add some fictional episodes to make it sell .... all done in a year or so or even a decade - will be a travesty. and frankly I doubt it can happen, and should not happen.
Someday there may be a movie about Vivekananda- when he wills it. Maybe in a hundred years...
He said let the world work out what i have done. it will take a very long time for them to do that...
and again "I have given them enough for 1500 years..."
Nothing will be done without His will....
The modern filmmakers - even an Attenborugh - could never measure him with their tiny yardsticks...
Why trust them to try? .... why lament it not being done? be thankful that none of these fools have tried.
They have made a mockery of many historical figures from Mozart to Alexander.
To try it on Vivekananda will certainly not do...
Trying to sculpt Shiva they'll fashion a monkey.
In any event when Vivekananda wants a film about his life - he will surely make it you can be sure...
No one will be able to resist it.
It will not fail for the lack of you or I hoping and wishing.
In the meantime his message and impact on the world goes on and on....
It will take a very long time for people to realize it even remotely...