The Mahabharata (Peter Brook)
1989 BFI Blu Ray restoration 2026
The Indian The Mahabharata is one of the longest poems known. It’s about 1.8 million words in total. So any adaptation into a play or film will be lengthy. From the Jean Claude Carriere and Peter Brook stage play version of The Mahabharata (running time nine hours) there emerged a three-hour feature film and now a five and a half version that’s been lovingly restored by Simon Brook. In this glowing 8k restoration scanned into 4k we have a definitive film image. Yet this is also a definitive theatre image. For this new Mahabharata isn’t a hybrid or a straight film record of a play but a subtle and vivid fusion of both art forms.
Shot in the brilliant artifice of a studio it remains theatrically suggestive (You’re free to imagine so much) and yet directed to focus your attention on camera movements and editing that’s minimal in its representation. The Mahabharata becomes a thrilling intimate epic about godlike and human aspirations and ambitions. A myth enacted through its many action-driven, reflective and moving mortal stories.
The five sons of King Pandu called the Pandavas were fathered by the gods. All five are married to one woman named Draupadi. One of the sons (Yudhishthira) loses his kingdom to his cousins in a game of dice. The Pandavas and Draupadi go into exile for twelve years. Then with the help of the incarnate god Krishna assisting Arjuna, who of the five sons is the greatest of all warriors,
they go into battle against the Kauravas. Each side is the offspring of kings and gods. There is a terrible war that threatens the order of the universe. The framework for the story is a dialogue between
the sage Vyasa and the deity Ganesha which is transmitted to an unnamed Indian boy who represents the history of the human race being informed of its Indian origins of creation.
A key moment in The Mahabharata is just before the battle commences. Arjuna is reluctant to fight for he doesn’t understand the reasoning behind the conflict, for him it’s one great illusion. Arjuna steps off his chariot to be advised by Krishna who tells him that meaning can only obtained by going inside oneself and achieving a perspective of great detachment from the events of life. Arjuna is consoled and convinced by Krishna and allows the battle to begin. This is a beautiful and heart-stopping scene of reflection before war making you think of the eve of the battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V and T.S.Eliot’s The Dry Salvages.
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
Arjuna’s doubt echoes Draupadi’s frustration during exile that everyone is caught in “a game of moving shadows.” Such philosophical interjections puncture the battle scenes and other confrontations. Peter Brook, in a documentary extra, talks of The Mahabharata asking the great questions of life, especially those concerning free will and fate in a vivid, colourful and very entertaining way (the poem is so much part of Indian culture that it’s been regularly turned into a comic strip).
Brook has assembled a multinational cast of European, Indian, Japanese, African and other Asian actors. He did not want to produce an exclusive ethnic Indian film. His superb casting renders the myth to be universal. Everyone brings a passion and also distance to their character. Nobility and vulnerability are present. Power-seeking thwarted by human frailty. Great courage and yet distrust of each other. Kinship jostles with separateness. A wide emotional range that’s thoughtful and intelligent. You always sense the actors want to faithfully interpret Brook’s vision and ideas. They talk like all too-human descendants of the gods but never falling into a ponderous, Hollywood costume epic tone. At each decision they attempt to counter their destiny and it seriously matters.
I’d argue that the photography, great set design and costumes of The Mahabharata are as much an auteur statement as the writer, director and performances. Not forgetting the music of Tsuchitori Toshiyuki. So William Lubtchnsky (D.O.P.) and Chloe Obolenssky
(Set and costumes) take a well-deserved bow. The look and space of this created world is minimalist employing sand, fire, water and rocks with actors dressed beautifully and simply. It may be an artificial setting but never a heavily stylised one. If the multiplicity of arrows decorating the body of Bhishma, the patriarch of the Kuru clan, and an army walking forward with a barrier, created by shields, evokes Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood then that’s fine. Peter Brook, as a master of theatre, acknowledges a master of film spectacle. Such scenes are shot in medium close ups and are intense and involving, bringing to mind Ancient Indian paintings: though we never forget the other battles occurring are in the mind creating an intense philosophical engagement with the contradictions thrown up by life and death, good and evil.
Of all the other films directed by Peter Brook I feel that The Mahabharata is the one that will last. It’s one of the greatest stage-to-screen adaptations ever made and Brook’s masterpiece.
Alan Price©2026
The Mahabharata (Peter Brook)
1989 BFI Blu Ray restoration 2026
The Indian The Mahabharata is one of the longest poems known. It’s about 1.8 million words in total. So any adaptation into a play or film will be lengthy. From the Jean Claude Carriere and Peter Brook stage play version of The Mahabharata (running time nine hours) there emerged a three-hour feature film and now a five and a half version that’s been lovingly restored by Simon Brook. In this glowing 8k restoration scanned into 4k we have a definitive film image. Yet this is also a definitive theatre image. For this new Mahabharata isn’t a hybrid or a straight film record of a play but a subtle and vivid fusion of both art forms.
Shot in the brilliant artifice of a studio it remains theatrically suggestive (You’re free to imagine so much) and yet directed to focus your attention on camera movements and editing that’s minimal in its representation. The Mahabharata becomes a thrilling intimate epic about godlike and human aspirations and ambitions. A myth enacted through its many action-driven, reflective and moving mortal stories.
The five sons of King Pandu called the Pandavas were fathered by the gods. All five are married to one woman named Draupadi. One of the sons (Yudhishthira) loses his kingdom to his cousins in a game of dice. The Pandavas and Draupadi go into exile for twelve years. Then with the help of the incarnate god Krishna assisting Arjuna, who of the five sons is the greatest of all warriors,
they go into battle against the Kauravas. Each side is the offspring of kings and gods. There is a terrible war that threatens the order of the universe. The framework for the story is a dialogue between
the sage Vyasa and the deity Ganesha which is transmitted to an unnamed Indian boy who represents the history of the human race being informed of its Indian origins of creation.
A key moment in The Mahabharata is just before the battle commences. Arjuna is reluctant to fight for he doesn’t understand the reasoning behind the conflict, for him it’s one great illusion. Arjuna steps off his chariot to be advised by Krishna who tells him that meaning can only obtained by going inside oneself and achieving a perspective of great detachment from the events of life. Arjuna is consoled and convinced by Krishna and allows the battle to begin. This is a beautiful and heart-stopping scene of reflection before war making you think of the eve of the battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V and T.S.Eliot’s The Dry Salvages.
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
Arjuna’s doubt echoes Draupadi’s frustration during exile that everyone is caught in “a game of moving shadows.” Such philosophical interjections puncture the battle scenes and other confrontations. Peter Brook, in a documentary extra, talks of The Mahabharata asking the great questions of life, especially those concerning free will and fate in a vivid, colourful and very entertaining way (the poem is so much part of Indian culture that it’s been regularly turned into a comic strip).
Brook has assembled a multinational cast of European, Indian, Japanese, African and other Asian actors. He did not want to produce an exclusive ethnic Indian film. His superb casting renders the myth to be universal. Everyone brings a passion and also distance to their character. Nobility and vulnerability are present. Power-seeking thwarted by human frailty. Great courage and yet distrust of each other. Kinship jostles with separateness. A wide emotional range that’s thoughtful and intelligent. You always sense the actors want to faithfully interpret Brook’s vision and ideas. They talk like all too-human descendants of the gods but never falling into a ponderous, Hollywood costume epic tone. At each decision they attempt to counter their destiny and it seriously matters.
I’d argue that the photography, great set design and costumes of The Mahabharata are as much an auteur statement as the writer, director and performances. Not forgetting the music of Tsuchitori Toshiyuki. So William Lubtchnsky (D.O.P.) and Chloe Obolenssky
(Set and costumes) take a well-deserved bow. The look and space of this created world is minimalist employing sand, fire, water and rocks with actors dressed beautifully and simply. It may be an artificial setting but never a heavily stylised one. If the multiplicity of arrows decorating the body of Bhishma, the patriarch of the Kuru clan, and an army walking forward with a barrier, created by shields, evokes Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood then that’s fine. Peter Brook, as a master of theatre, acknowledges a master of film spectacle. Such scenes are shot in medium close ups and are intense and involving, bringing to mind Ancient Indian paintings: though we never forget the other battles occurring are in the mind creating an intense philosophical engagement with the contradictions thrown up by life and death, good and evil.
Of all the other films directed by Peter Brook I feel that The Mahabharata is the one that will last. It’s one of the greatest stage-to-screen adaptations ever made and Brook’s masterpiece.
Alan Price©2026
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film, poetry • Tags: Alan Price, film, poetry