The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana. Mahabharata or Mahabharat may also refer to:. Andhra Mahabharatam (11-14th century AD), the Telugu version of Mahabarath written by Kavithrayam (Trinity of poets); Mahabharata (Indonesia), 1157, the Indonesian, Javanese translation of Mahabharata.
This is not a movie review but the review of a television serial on the epic Mahabharat by Ekta Kapoor.I was eagerly looking foward to Ekta Kapoor’s version of Mahabharath titled Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki, so much so that I even paid for an add-on package from Tata Sky just to catch Mahabharat every night from Monday to Thursday. Was expecting something not just bigger than the previous Mahabharat by B.R. Chopra, but a better product overall. Very high expectations, i know!I became a fan of Mahabharat mainly due to the spectacular and historic Mahabharat of those good old days directed by B.R. Chopra and Ravi Chopra. The epic was aired every sunday morning, for 2 years between 1988 – 1990. The great thing about it was every character seemed to be born to play their role.
Mukesh Khanna was brilliant as Bheeshma, when you think of Lord Krishna the picture of Nitish Bhardwaj in those costumes still comes to mind. Every other character right from Duryodhan (Puneet Issar), Arjun (Arjun), Shakuni (Gufi Paintal), Bhim (Praveen Kumar), Dhritrashtra (Girja Shankar), Draupadi (Rupa Ganguly), Karna (Pankaj Dheer), Yudhistir, Nakul, Sahadev and even Drona were just perfect for their roles. Its like you cant imagine anyone else in those legendary roles.So it was an uphill task for Ekta Kapoor right from the day she decided to remake the epic. After the first episode that was telecasted last night on 9X at 9 PM, i was sorely disappointed.It looked like a normal Ekta Kapoor’s Saas Bahu serial!
To start off it wasnt realistic, atleast Ekta Kapoor should have had a look at Jodhaa Akbar, a costume drama which was presented in a very realistic way by Ashutosh Gowariker.The camera was rolling all over the faces from every angle possible, a lot of thundering, lightening and noise. The characters from whatever little we got to see of them, just didnt look the character, they looked like models with a perfectly toned body in a costume drama for a historical. Maybe its too early to judge them, time will tell. The costumes except for Duryodhan’s was pretty good.Coming to the performances, Anita Hansandani as draupadi, one of the most important characters in Mahabharat, was horrible.
Dialogue delivery was the biggest flaw. She shrieked at the top of her voice, cried like she does in all those saas bahu series and in comparison to Rupa Ganguly, failed miserably. The intensity in her performance was just lacking. She made the strong character of Draupadi look weak! Shakuni is bald, he was pretty good although his laughter was sometimes annoying. Dushassan looked evil, performed well. Duryodhan looked like a evil superman in those costumes.
Dont want to comment on Aryan Vaid’s performance just yet, more on him in the coming days!Overall, after one episode it has been a major disappointment. Hopefully Ekta Kapoor can make it more realistic and Anita can improve her performance! Will keep updating this post, who knows the characters might grow on me and my opinion might change.Ekta Kapoor’s Kahani Hamaray Mahabharat Ki is aired every Monday to Thursday from 9 to 9:30 PM Indian Standard Time on 9X.Do drop in your comments and views on Kahani Hamaray Mahabharat Ki!UpdatesEpisode 2 (8th July 2008) – Ved Vyas starts narrating the epic tale of Mahabharat to Lord Ganesh.
Shantanu is smitten by Ganga’s beauty, accepts all her conditions and marries her. Ganga kills his sons one after another, till their 8th son, Bheeshma is born. The pace is fantastic, doesnt drag like most historicals.
Performances were top notch today. Saakshi Tanwar, Parvathi of Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, looks ethereal as Ganga.
Kiran Karmarkar, Om of Kahani, is perfect for the role of Shantanu. The locales of Ladakh are breath taking. I still hate the excessive background music, thundering and camera zooming in on the faces of actors. How i wish, Ekta makes it slightly more realistic and different from her daily soaps. More tomorrow. Today’s episode rating – 8 / 10.Episode 3 (9th July 2008) – Shantanu breaks his promise, questions Ganga.
Ganga reveals her identity and goes into detail about the curse that they got from Brahma, also the curse of the 7 kids that she eventually killed by drowning them into the pure water of River Ganga. She takes Devavrat (Bheeshma) their 8th son with her, promising Shantanu that she would return him back to the place he belongs to, when the king of Hastinapur needs him. Devavrat is trained and educated by Parashuram. Devavrat, now 16, returns to Hastinapur and blocks the waterflow of Ganga with his arrows That ends the 3rd episode of the epic Mahabharat.The 3rd episode was much slower in pace compared to the 2nd, filled with excessive dialogues and unnecessary special effects. Performances were once again good. The actor portraying the role of young Devavrat, suits the character.
3rd episode rating – 5 / 10Episode 4 (10th July 2008) – Devavrat and his father battle, Ganga intervenes and reveals their identity to each other. Devavrat is now committed to his father and Hastinapur.
16 more years pass by and Devavrat has now matured.The 4th episode was like Kanav said in the comments below, a complete disaster. The background music is deafening, trademark Ekta Kapoor slo-mo effects and camera work continue to irritate.
A realistic feel, so very important for a historical is completely missing. 4th episode rating – 3 / 10. No I agree with Raavan this was stuff that is daringly different and away from the calendar art that we’re used to. It’s a notch up on everything on tv so far. But yes Anita awas disastrous and the Pandavas not seen.
Think it was just a gimmick as a first ep and it managed to surprise though that’s all. I love the styling and the sets and locations, very classy stuff. Think the actors need to get believable as the charcaters they play. It could also do with some ‘thehraav’ its a little all over the place right now with too much of Makarand. And by the way Indicine the name’s Ved Vyas not Vedav. It’s just pronounced that way. I feel drawing comparisons between chopra’s and kapoor’s mahabharat will not be a fair judgement to the show.
Kapoor’s effort to give mahabharat a contemporay look is certainly commendable. It will be premature to talk about the performance of the main characters.except Draupadi.
She is good otherwise, except her diction which is not up to the mark really. But I appreciate her effort and well, I liked the fiery element in her performance. The performances of Vyas, Draupadi and Dushshasan were high pitched on the first day, while Duryodhan’s was a subtle one. I didnt like Dhritarashtra and Shakuni.They are crude. The makers have also missed out on minute details.
Though Ganga took extreme care to immerse her first son in the water, but from the second time onwards she didnot bother to sit even and just dropped them into the water. The first time they chose to drop the baby into a pond hahahathey must have forgotten to shoot it near a riverBut the actors looked good and fresh on their indi-grecian attires – one of the few reasons that has kept me glued to a show ater a long time. Hii all, well i too watched the two episodes of kahani hamari mahabharat ki.
But i noticed one thing and thought of sharing here. It ws said that Lord Ganesha wrote the story of mahabharata from his teeth (Danta) thts why we see his one Danta broken.
But in this story i saw he ws using the peecock feather to write i donno Ekta ignored this thing!!! I had heard the news tht she ws soo perfect to make the story tht for the role of bala krishna, she ws searching the boy who kundali matches Lord Krishna’s. But she forgot this thing!!!! Oh come on guys!
Dare to think differently. I hate ekta and no one hates her more than me but i do applaud her for her attempt. She gave a new breath to the old epic. She has made it viewable for younger genertion by eradicating all those heavy urdu dialogues. All the other attempts to revive ramayan and other epics have failed to match the original bcos they copies the original and re-made it. Thts wht there were heavy comparison and they failed to live upto the expectation.
She “made” the mahabhara rather than re-making it. But i fail to understand one thing, why are pandavas or all hastinapur rajas and jantas dressed in black. Maybe bcos thts the color of truth. I loved dushyasan.
He looked so evil i wanted to kick him. Ya but the pace in the first episode was too fast. There were no heavy dialogues of draupadi with her sasur and gurus. But then who knows what actually happened apart from ved vyas who is dead! The second episode started with ganapati bappa travelling on mouse, never seen before.
It was very cute and I must say she has used all the accessories of ganpati to his benefit, like putting a gold chain on his trunk to hide the trunk glued to his face. In short I am quite impressed with ekta’s mahabharat and i am glued to my tv from mon-thurs at 9 pm. I just pray she continues like that and improves! I agree with some of the comments that give about Ekta’s Mahabharat but it is not the Mahabharat of India, she already said (Kahani Hamare Mahabharat ki) so this is the Kahani of Balaji Telefilms and she narrated it.
Only the one word for this serial is that HOPELESS HOPELESS HOPELESS HOPELESS and HOPELESS. This is because she only repeat the same actors of her serial not new faces why this. She always save money by using same actors in here every serial. Every actor’s performance is HOPELESS even Saakshi Tanwar, when ever i see her on screen i only remember her as Parvati of Kahani ghar ghar ki not Ganga of Mahabharat.Some one said that think differently, why, Mahabharat means Mahabharat not (Kahani hamare Mahabharat ki) Ok lets see what she show on next episodes I think only one word HOPELESS same actors nothing else.My son like this Mahabharat and said cartoon not Mahabharat. I could not stop laughing as Ganesha came on.
At one level one laughs -for reasons that I will explain- at another level one must feel angry.I haven’t seen a worse caricature of Ganesha. Now, Ganesha is a very lovable kind of a god – playful, strangely ‘constructed’, forever seen as one who heralds good omen. With his tubular trunk (not a tapering one as it should have been) and the golden covering up of where the tube joins the nose is so funny and tell-tale. In these days of great special effects and computer graphics, it should have been possible to do a much better, seamless job on this aspect rather than allow a tackiness that belongs to the films of Babubhai Mistry! Then the mouse on which he rode!
Mouse as Ganesha’s vehicle is only a symbol, but here the mouse is of elephantine proportions since Ganesha is riding it. It is clear that the mouse, the background and Ganesha were all shot separately and put together on the computer. Again, tackiness writ large all over.I can’t claim to be much of a tv serial watcher, but I know that at his juncture in our technical competence, we should have been able to do a much better job.‘Horrible’ is the only adjective I can use if I feign to be a serious critic, and ‘laughable’ is the other one I would use if I went back to my compassionate avatar of an amused telly-watcher.
This is not a movie review but the review of a television serial on the epic Mahabharat by Ekta Kapoor.
I was eagerly looking foward to Ekta Kapoor’s version of Mahabharath titled Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki, so much so that I even paid for an add-on package from Tata Sky just to catch Mahabharat every night from Monday to Thursday. Was expecting something not just bigger than the previous Mahabharat by B.R. Chopra, but a better product overall. Very high expectations, i know!
I became a fan of Mahabharat mainly due to the spectacular and historic Mahabharat of those good old days directed by B.R. Chopra and Ravi Chopra. The epic was aired every sunday morning, for 2 years between 1988 – 1990. The great thing about it was every character seemed to be born to play their role. Mukesh Khanna was brilliant as Bheeshma, when you think of Lord Krishna the picture of Nitish Bhardwaj in those costumes still comes to mind. Every other character right from Duryodhan (Puneet Issar), Arjun (Arjun), Shakuni (Gufi Paintal), Bhim (Praveen Kumar), Dhritrashtra (Girja Shankar), Draupadi (Rupa Ganguly), Karna (Pankaj Dheer), Yudhistir, Nakul, Sahadev and even Drona were just perfect for their roles. Its like you cant imagine anyone else in those legendary roles.
So it was an uphill task for Ekta Kapoor right from the day she decided to remake the epic. After the first episode that was telecasted last night on 9X at 9 PM, i was sorely disappointed.
It looked like a normal Ekta Kapoor’s Saas Bahu serial! To start off it wasnt realistic, atleast Ekta Kapoor should have had a look at Jodhaa Akbar, a costume drama which was presented in a very realistic way by Ashutosh Gowariker.
The camera was rolling all over the faces from every angle possible, a lot of thundering, lightening and noise. The characters from whatever little we got to see of them, just didnt look the character, they looked like models with a perfectly toned body in a costume drama for a historical. Maybe its too early to judge them, time will tell. The costumes except for Duryodhan’s was pretty good.
Coming to the performances, Anita Hansandani as draupadi, one of the most important characters in Mahabharat, was horrible. Dialogue delivery was the biggest flaw. She shrieked at the top of her voice, cried like she does in all those saas bahu series and in comparison to Rupa Ganguly, failed miserably. The intensity in her performance was just lacking. She made the strong character of Draupadi look weak! Shakuni is bald, he was pretty good although his laughter was sometimes annoying. Dushassan looked evil, performed well. Duryodhan looked like a evil superman in those costumes. Dont want to comment on Aryan Vaid’s performance just yet, more on him in the coming days!
Overall, after one episode it has been a major disappointment. Hopefully Ekta Kapoor can make it more realistic and Anita can improve her performance! Will keep updating this post, who knows the characters might grow on me and my opinion might change.
Ekta Kapoor’s Kahani Hamaray Mahabharat Ki is aired every Monday to Thursday from 9 to 9:30 PM Indian Standard Time on 9X.
Do drop in your comments and views on Kahani Hamaray Mahabharat Ki!
Updates
Episode 2 (8th July 2008) – Ved Vyas starts narrating the epic tale of Mahabharat to Lord Ganesh. Shantanu is smitten by Ganga’s beauty, accepts all her conditions and marries her. Ganga kills his sons one after another, till their 8th son, Bheeshma is born. The pace is fantastic, doesnt drag like most historicals. Performances were top notch today. Saakshi Tanwar, Parvathi of Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, looks ethereal as Ganga. Kiran Karmarkar, Om of Kahani, is perfect for the role of Shantanu. The locales of Ladakh are breath taking. I still hate the excessive background music, thundering and camera zooming in on the faces of actors. How i wish, Ekta makes it slightly more realistic and different from her daily soaps. More tomorrow.. Today’s episode rating – 8 / 10.
Episode 3 (9th July 2008) – Shantanu breaks his promise, questions Ganga. Ganga reveals her identity and goes into detail about the curse that they got from Brahma, also the curse of the 7 kids that she eventually killed by drowning them into the pure water of River Ganga. She takes Devavrat (Bheeshma) their 8th son with her, promising Shantanu that she would return him back to the place he belongs to, when the king of Hastinapur needs him. Devavrat is trained and educated by Parashuram. Devavrat, now 16, returns to Hastinapur and blocks the waterflow of Ganga with his arrows… That ends the 3rd episode of the epic Mahabharat.
The 3rd episode was much slower in pace compared to the 2nd, filled with excessive dialogues and unnecessary special effects. Performances were once again good. The actor portraying the role of young Devavrat, suits the character. 3rd episode rating – 5 / 10
Episode 4 (10th July 2008) – Devavrat and his father battle, Ganga intervenes and reveals their identity to each other. Devavrat is now committed to his father and Hastinapur. 16 more years pass by and Devavrat has now matured..
The 4th episode was like Kanav said in the comments below, a complete disaster. The background music is deafening, trademark Ekta Kapoor slo-mo effects and camera work continue to irritate. A realistic feel, so very important for a historical is completely missing. 4th episode rating – 3 / 10
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