Harishchandrachi Factory Marathi Movie Review

 Perhaps, it won’t matter to the whole world that there was a Dadasaheb Phalke. And that

there was a film made on the pioneer 96 years after he made his first film. But it should matter to us, both Dadasaheb Phalke and the film deserves to be made on the genius.

The art of film making itself was invented at the dusk of the 19th century, in 1895, almost two  decades before Raja Harishchandra. The first full length feature is said to be The Story Of Kelly Gang, made in Australia in 1906. The IMDB itself lists 766 film titles made in the year 1913, the same year that Dadasaheb Phalke directed first feature film from India, Raja Harishchandra.

So why should it matter to the world that a person has made a film on its first director? It was

Promotional Poster for Raja Harishchandra

not like it was the first film in the world. But firstly about Phalke. The year is 1913 India has only woken up to the fact (after the snooze alarm in 1857,) that it has enslaved itself for too long for any dignity to remain. Technological development was thrust upon the people, but mostly it was feared. The film has chronicled the same in a very funny and apt manner through the depiction of the fear of trains and cameras.

(OFFTRACK THOUGHTS: It should look so odd the juxtaposition of the nascent industrialisation against starving, dirty and superstitious India. If you think we are definitely doing great now, what with our bai and rickshawwalla carrying cellphones. Think again, we are still battling with our century old practices of sati. And just a couple of decades ago when a politician had an unusual foresight of the IT Age, Rajiv Gandhi, without trying and testing we panicked that it might give rise to unemployment. A machine that was thousand times faster than a calculator meant all the clerks and accountants would become obsolete.)

So a country that still battling inhuman practices like honour killings, imagine a man almost a century ago maddened by this dream. To go to an England that might be more racist at the time and to convince people to teach him the art, the dream that is the most profit making industry of the country. How ironical then that it took us so long to tell a story of this wonderful man and his journey.

Mokashi’s tribute is commendable for the many risks it has taken. Although it is true that we are yet to contribute to the world’s cinema legacy except for our Ray films, the stories that we tell here relevant and specific to India are important too. Something that we have so successfully done with literature, irrespective of the language. Why haven’t we managed to do the same with cinema. It perhaps lies deep into our approach towards cinema. We tend to look at cinema as an extention of the street theatre and oral tradition, at heart a source of popular entertainment. We do not believe that we might be able to extract something cerebral from cinema.