The Best Picture Oscar victory of Slumdog Millionaire, along with the surprise commercial success of director Danny Boyle‘s film, only serve to underscore the reality of India’s emergence on the world stage. Now, in the form of the superlative, gorgeously photographed six-part documentary The Story of India, there’s a deeper exploration of the country’s rich culture and history to further contextualize that ascendancy.
Hosted by acclaimed British historian-filmmaker Michael Wood (Conquistadors, In Search of Myths and Heroes, Legacy: The Origins of Civilization), and neatly segmented into six hour-long episodes that stretch back 50,000 years, this title is a fascinating and surprisingly intellectually spry exploration of India, from the country’s historical roots and its culture, customs and people to its present-day status as a rising
economic leader in the global marketplace. A complex and at times contradictory land of history and myth, opulence and poverty, spiritualism and science, India is now recognized as the world’s largest democracy. Yet it also remains a place barely known to many Westerners, only 60 years removed from winning its independence from Great Britain.
Even though this ancient civilization is poised at the precipice of an immense economic expansion — with its computer
technology, industrial production and the professional acumen of an
educated, upwardly mobile middle class powering exponential growth even in the face of recession elsewhere — India’s real fortune has always been its wondrous culture, and the astounding diversity of its people. From the deserts of Turkmenistan to the Khyber Pass, from war-torn Iraq to the palm-fringed shores of Kerala, personable multi-hyphenate Wood journeys across the Indian subcontinent and beyond to uncover the fabulous sights, dramatic history and dazzling achievements of the world’s oldest and most influential civilization.
One of the more interesting portions of the film is its opener, “Beginnings,” which covers 50,000 to 1,000 B.C. All non-Africans can trace their lineage back to India, and Madurai Kamaraj University Professor R.M. Pitchappan’s research in Tamil Nadu offers up a fascinating confirmation of this; geneticists testing the DNA of remote tribal villagers confirm migrational history when they discover a genetic marker identical to that of the earliest known man. Equally interesting is a portion of the movie that examines the Brahmin religious chants. Dating back tens of thousands of years, before human speech, they do not conform to any human language, and are thus unable to be transcribed; instead, they’re passed down only orally, and featured in a ritualistic 12-day ceremony that concludes with the burning down of the very huts in which the celebration is held.
As one might surmise, The Story of India touches on Hinduism significantly throughout, but also somewhat lightly at times. It highlights dharma, or virtue; artha, or wealth and success; kama, or pleasure; and moksha, or enlightenment, but at times reduces creation myth to ham-fisted voicover (“The first humans came from a golden egg laid by the king of the gods in the churning of the cosmic ocean”). Furthermore, the religion’s mutually sustaining caste system is given somewhat of a free pass, reduced to a colorful symbiotic quirk which will strike some Christians (or even agnostics) as cruelly hegemonic. That said, this is still an engrossing portrait of a country on the rise — and a place that Americans should definitely want to learn more about.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a snap-in tray, The Story of India comes spread out over two discs. Presented in widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions, the program comes with 5.1 surround sound and closed captions and audio descriptions for the visually impaired. Its sole supplemental bonus feature comes in the form of nine minutes of “sights and sounds” footage, some replicated in the program’s credits, which spotlights arty, time-lapse photography as well as portraits of Indians from all walks of life. It’s a double-edged sword; a title this rich and in-depth packs a lot into its massive running time, alleviating the real need for any further non-fiction featurettes. Still, a brief making-of featurette or some other behind-the-scenes material would be nice, given the quality of what else is here. To order any DVD release directly from PBS Home Video, click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. For those interested, The Story of India is also available on Blu-ray. A- (Movie) C- (Disc)