Sreejit Datta

To capture Valmiki’s wonder on screen, filmmakers must look beyond the great battle and to the poignant love between Sita and Rama. Yugo Sako’s 'Ramayana, The Legend of Prince Rama' came closest to ciematically capturing the tenderness of Sita and Rama’s life in Panchavati. Is there a key to unlock, simultaneously, the poetic beauty as well as the spiritual depth of Valmiki’s Ramayana, for the purpose of turning the epic Itihasa poem into a beautiful cine matic adaptation? Some literary...

A still from Peter Brook's 'The Mahabharata' (1989) Every time Hollywood drops a blockbuster movie based on one of the foundational epics of the West, a collective groan seems to arise from a significant section of Indian cinephiles and the Indian audience at large: If they can do it, why can’t we? Yugo Sako’s brilliant Ramayana, the Legend of Prince Rama (1993) Be it Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004), Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024), or Christopher Nolan’s latest Odyssey (2026), we’ve...

A still from Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. If you have read epic poetry from ancient Greece or India, whether in translation or in the original, you’d know that the heroes in these great epic poems have their vulnerabilities. I’m not talking about physical vulnerabilities that ultimately prove fatal for them: Achilles’ heel or Duryodhana’s thighs, for example. No, but I point to the heroes’ vulnerabilities and weaknesses, understood within broader psychological, behavioural, emotional, and...