Director: Pan Nalin
Starring: Bhole Baba, Hatha Yogi Baba, Pant Shirt Baba, Indrapal Singh
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Runtime: 115 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2014

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Rating notes: Strong drug use and nudity

Faith in general? Or a particular faith? The answer is Hinduism. And the focus is on a particular religious celebration, pilgrimage, gathering of 100 million people, the Kumbh Mela.

Film director, Pan Nalin, tells us at the opening of the film that he was urged by his father to go on this pilgrimage, to bring home something of faith, as well as faces and stories. And this is what he has done, roaming among the pilgrims, talking with them, exploring their faith and devotion, as well as finding all kinds of faces which offer portraits of contemporary India (and probably past India) as well as a range of differing stories.

It should be said that the film is visually most arresting. Just seeing the massing crowds and crowds, old and young, men and women, is spometimes overwhelming. But, to prevent the film from being too overwhelming, the director pauses very often, holds his camera on an expressive face and lets the audience contemplate, identifies a range of people from yoga practising experts to parents who have lost their children to some children themselves.

The director arrives by train, joins the throng, keeps moving. The key religious ritual is that of, using the word of the subtitles, a ‘dip’ in the confluence of three rivers where the celebration is held. This motif recurs during the film, people going into the river, washing, dipping, experiencing something of the sacred.

Audiences will have seen other world religious pilgrimages – which tend to be more orderly in their conduct, a visit to the Vatican, a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and, in the Muslim world, the image to Mecca for the Hajj. This celebration is a kind of mixed-gatherum, more perhaps akin to a crowded music festival, some groups focusing on one experience, individuals going searching, watching a Guru in extraordinary yoga contortion positions, reverencing images of the gods, quietly recollected.

The main narrative focuses on a young boy, who gives the impression of a worldly-wise street kid, glibly talking about being a Mafia gangster, committing murders during the day, arbitrarily choosing four intended killings, police and anyone he comes across. Someone remarks that the boy has seen too many movies – probably an understatement. He is cheeky, moves around amongst the people, swaggering. But a religious man, a Sadhu, semi-adopts him, trying to take care of him, shelter him, feed him, urge him away from his violently melodramatic imagination. At the end of the feast, he disappears, and the main searches for him, ultimately finding him living in a quiet village. There is an interview with his father, and the boy declaring that he himself wants to be a Sadhu, The influence of good example? A worthwhile ambition?

Another holy man adopts an abandoned child, making strong comments about Indian youth that (sounding like youths from other cultures) only interested in sex, drugs, their own self-centred lives. There is also comment about young girls becoming immediately pregnant than abandoning their child their children when they are born.

On the other hand, there is a lot of talk about ganja, smoking marijuana and linking it to spiritual experience.

Not everything in the film is religious. Quite an amount of the footage is about the logistics in managing 100 million people. There are glimpses of lines and lines of people sitting, waiting for the serving of food. There are the police, trying to manage traffic and movement. And there are quite constant images of the centre for Lost and Found, children straying away from families, husbands and wives separated, a full-time job for a large staff.

Which means then that the audience is immersed in the Festival, in the traditions of Hinduism, in the ordinary life of Indian people, colourful, surprising, sometimes dismaying. There is no explicit faith connection to other world religions, but audiences of different faiths or no faith will have the opportunity to contemplate and reflect on the phenomenon, so ingrained in millions of people, of faith and devotion.