The major Hindu poem, The Mahabharata, lends a different weight to the word “epic”—at nearly 2 million words, it’s three times the length of the ‘Bible’, and over 16 times longer than Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’.
It features war, betrayal, loyalty, familial infighting, and celestial intervention, as in those other ancient texts, but it’s also a major thematic dialogue about the defining principles of Hinduism.
So this six-hour adaptation is a huge achievement on any level. But the culmination of the lengthy and delicate process that writer and director Peter Brook undertook to bring it to stage then screen in 1989 is extraordinary.
The epic is divided into three films in this restored selection, as the divine sage Vyassa (Robert Langdon Lloyd) recounts the complete poem in his mind to the elephant-headed god Ganesha (Bruce Myers) as transcriber, and a boy (Antonin Stahly-Vishwanadan), as a descendant of the conflict that led to our current age of darkness and discord (albeit with the slight light of hope).
That conflict is the Kurukshetra War, the fight between two sets of cousins representing good and evil who vie for the throne of Hastinapura. In the first film, The Game of Dice, we see the origins of the cousins, and how the dark Kauravas seize everything from their light cousins, the Pandavas, in a pivotal game of dice. The second film, Exile in the Forest, traces the Pandavas during 13 years in exile, while the third, simply titled War, recounts the inevitable, devastating conflict as the clans are depleted; where the difference between victory and defeat is revealed as illusion.
Epic in every way, then. But there’s no need to pick apart the location shooting or CGI-supplemented physical effects here. Brook adapted his stage play, bringing a precise theatrical staging to his completely studio-bound production. A huge part of its success is the adaptation. Brook, his long-term collaborator, Jean-Claude Carrière and Marie-Hélène Estienne took eight years to write the script. Pruning his original nine-hour stageplay to six leaves a lean script that meticulously translates the key words of the Sanskrit epic compiled around 3,000 years ago.
Using many of the company from his English-speaking stage production, the result is a cast with a strong international flavour—with actors from 16 countries bringing a fascinating set of accents, from Polish to Malian, to the text. The limited use of actors from the Indian subcontinent won’t appeal to everyone, but the blending of East and West supports the text’s universal themes. Often, the actors double-up, an effective theatrical trick, used beautifully to represent the gods. One standout is Myers, who brings his mellifluous voice to both the comic relief of playful Ganesha and the solemn, calm intervention of Krishna.
The epic’s most pivotal part comes at the outbreak of war, in the Bhagavad Gita—a dialogue between the great Pandava warrior Arjuna (Vittorio Mezzogiorno), who suffers a severe moment of doubt before igniting the devastating war, and his charioteer, Krishna. Blending religious thought, covering dharma (duty), yoga (spiritual balance), jñana (knowledge) and bhakti (devotion), it’s beautifully handled, as is every other set-piece. Krishna’s counsel is a fantastic jumping-off point to explore the complexities and challenges of the source, but also an invitation to curl up and let the masterful storytelling carry you.
Brook’s stagey, beautiful direction captures the poetry. When it rises to war in the third film, the impressive stage design meets the challenge. An attack by Ghatotkacha, a demon fighting for the Pandavas, is the visual-effects peak, but the real emotion is packed into the performances and choreography in the aftermath. The same happens when Ajuna’s son Abhimanyu (a necessarily abrupt addition in the shortened narrative) breaches the Chakravyuha Iron Disc on the 13th day of the war—a death like the “wind dying down,” captured balletically.
Despite the compression of a text that inherently bends and blends time, the narrative is always clear, letting the consequences and inner dialogue breathe. On one side, the intrusive author Vyass influences events, saying “no crime should corrupt this poem,” yet is powerless to stop the war (“There are some acts a word can check, others nothing can stop”). On the other side, the tenets carried through Krishna’s wisdom and dubious intervention set questions for the characters and the audience. At the end of the second film, a young prince asks the leader of the Pandavas, Yudhishthira (Andrzej Seweryn): “If everything will be destroyed, what’s the use of fighting?” He gives no reply.
This six-hour feast has been lovingly restored by Simon Brook, the director’s son, and is presented well in this BFI set, which includes special features that delve into the feat and legacy of Brook senior’s films. Some blinking in the frames just feels authentic, but the print otherwise looks superb, in depth and colour.
In terms of storytelling and filmmaking, The Mahabharata is an excellent antidote in the year of The Odyssey’s IMAX success. “If you listen carefully,” says Vyass, “by the end you’ll be someone else.” As with many things in Brook’s epic adaptation, that works on multiple levels.
Blu-ray Special Features
- Newly restored in 4K and presented in High Definition
- Interview with Simon Brook (2026)
- Brook by Brook (2002, 75 mins)
- Pageant of the Sun-god (1934, 9 mins): a travelogue
- Trailers
- Includes optional English descriptive subtitles
- Other extras tbc
- Illustrated booklet including a new essay by Miriam Fernandes of the Why Not Theatre (first pressing only)
The Mahabharata is available on Blu-ray now.
