Seventh Horse of the Sun’s Chariot – Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (1993) 130 min
October 25th, 2007 by Maxim · 1 Comment · 2,310 Views
Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (The Seventh Horse of The Sun’s Chariot) is considered one of the Art Film masterpieces by Shyam Benegal, an acclaimed Indian director. I saw it about 10 years ago, and it popped in my mind again after I saw Zubeidaa (2001) recently, also directed by Shyam Benegal.
This is a yeat another love story, but told in a way you may not have seen it before: three love stories from a man, the protagonist, Manik Mulla (Rajit Kapoor – also was in Zubeidaa), at different stages of his life, when he was involved with three different women from different castes. The brilliance of the film is in layering series of several independent stories about same characters to create a deep multidimensional picture of people and relationships. The same stories and same dialogs are shot from different angles, each time focusing on a different character. I was hooked from the first scene when narrator was describing young people: “when you were a student you spent spare time talking about politics; when the politics tires there’s always room for love and romance”. I can relate to that. Most young people in their romantic and idealistic period dream of being revolutionaries. Although there wasn’t much drama or entertainment until the very end, I just indulged myself in the story, colors, and basic “people-watching” the way I’d do it sitting at the table on the terrace of a Parisian cafe.
Very though-provoking. It may not be a hit with foreign audience, but I thought the storytelling, the dialogs with light humor, directing and acting were very nice. Amrish Puri from Indiana Jones and Zubeidaa was also starring here. Great music score by Vanraj Bhatia.
The DVD is in Hindi, with English and French subtitles.
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art cinema | Bollywood | caste society | India | love story | Shyam Benegal
Tags: Cult Films · DVD · Foreign · India · Movies
1 response so far ↓
1 sahil // Dec 18, 2007 at 1:32 am
thou can’t buy u beer, but can certainly applaud fr the review…
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