[yasr_overall_rating]
In vivid and sensuous detail, GURUKULAM follows a group of students and their teacher as they confront fundamental questions about the nature of reality and self identity at a remote forest ashram in southern India.
“Gurukulam,” the debut directorial feature of husband-and-wife team Neil Dalal and Jillian Elizabeth, comes close to being the cinematic equivalent of watching grass grow. While its intention – to reiterate the importance of finding peace within yourself – is commendable, the documentary struggles to attain an existential mood, or provide any revelatory testimonies. As it stands, “Gurukulam” is a pretty, almost 2-hour-long screensaver.
The “film” (I hesitate to describe this… um, footage as such, for it lacks any sort of narrative) follows a group of nameless, unmemorable students, who study Advaita Vedanta in South India for three months. In the beginning, the titles solemnly announce that “some will stay for three years” (which, coincidentally, was the amount of time it took me to get through this doc). For the first 12 minutes or so, literally nothing happens. The small, woody commune is shown. A teacher gives students grammar lessons. Coconuts are being chopped up. A woman cooks. Another woman in a shawl attends a class. All of this culminates in a nearly 30-second shot of… a door slowly closing. As we hear the students speak about their reasons for escaping to this paradise – from atheists to the deeply religious – a remnant of traction is gained, but the pace remains somnambulant for the rest of the doc’s excessive running time.
A few mildly interesting philosophical tidbits pop up periodically, such as Swami Dayananda (the village’s guru) proclaiming, “I am reality…The whole thing is me. The subject and object should be included.” Those kind of statements are potentially powerful, but here come off as disjointed and borderline-silly, taken out of the lesson’s context. In fact, a lot of it sounds like finger-wagging mumbo-jumbo from a bad Dr. Phil episode. A student with a British accent trumpets his satisfaction with finding this commune, after years of traveling through India in search of spiritual salvation: “Personally, I wouldn’t settle for anything less than the universe.” (Good for you, man – I’ll settle with “galaxy”). He later talks about understanding “the truth of everything.”
The whole “you are the universe”/”infinite power” rhetoric is repeated numerous times throughout the film, which liberally throws around grandiose statements, but never backs them up with anything approaching spiritual enlightenment on-screen. At one point, a woman reveals that she’s been reading Buddhist texts for a long time, but it wasn’t until she arrived here that she fully understood the meaning of it all; “Because it was just reading. I wasn’t able to assimilate and understand.” The same issue seems to apply to “Gurukulam:” we are just watching blankly, with no assimilation or understanding.
There are a few pretty shots, but then again, the location is so magnificent, a 1998 flip-phone would have a difficult time snapping a bad picture. There’s no structure, no real protagonist to follow, no story arc or compelling hook…The all-too-brief highlight comes at about the halfway point, when an elephant wonders into the commune…with no consequences. Perhaps it was just a relief to see something actually happen.
“Gurukulam” was clearly aiming for “meditative and quietly observant,” but ended up “pointless and disjointed,” like sauntering through a large empty field, where you may spot something of passing interest, but ultimately it’s a slog to get to the shade. Any film, no matter how artistic/independent or ostentatious/big-budget it is, needs to primarily entertain, whether with its images, sound, performances, action – whatever. Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” did so marvelously in 1982, spanning the entire world, achieving a transcendent rhythm, akin to a beating heart, its series of stunning images powered by an unforgettable Philip Glass score. Ron Fricke’s “Samsara” is a more recent example of a film that relies on sensory overload of music and imagery, as opposed to a clearly defined narrative structure, to portray the fragility, beauty, ugliness and briskness of life.
What will “Gurukulam”‘s already-niche audience take away from this project? That it’s important to “be one with everything?” Is the goal to attract Westerners to remote and holy parts of the world? It doesn’t even entirely convince of its guru’s practices’ efficiency, especially after a character voices a concern, late in the film, that his parents don’t “get” his journey. If he truly achieved an “inner peace,” would his mom’s disapproval even matter?
I’m all about escaping societal expectations and embracing life to the fullest, and I love Indian culture and what Buddhist teachings represent, but this doc made me want to embrace reality by watching a verbally-dextrous episode of “Veep”…and then, maybe, doing a little yoga.
For more information about the movie and the filmmakers visit www.gurukulamfilm.com
