Dharm: The film

All he had to do was to say "I Could watch Dharm", for me to get out of the house, jump into a car, and get 2 tickets of the film, before he'd had a chance to change his mind. (yes, wicked)

Pankaj Kapoor is a treat, getting better with time. It looked like a movie with an IQ above 10 (To me, the average IQ of a movie today is about 8). And the visuals showed promise of being worthy of a big screen. In retrospect, all 3 expectations got met.

The movie is subtle. As we argued later, a little too subtle for some people. The central message, as we carried back, was that every religion has to, at some point of time, make a decision between rituals and essence.

Hinduism is used as the example in the film. The motif of a pundit, or clergy, or ulema, or whatever, is universal.

But perhaps, the subtlety is too subtle for some minds. I also enumerated for the Other, the less positive messages one could take back from the film, and he said, "Well, people have specialised in taking dung out of the cow, instead of the milk, so can't be certain this film will get the right message across. Yes, sadly, people might make biogas from this film too."

There was one other interesting thing. The trigger for this conflict, in the film, is, interestingly, Moh मोह , or attachment. And then I thought, if Moh can trigger a thought process of choice between rituals and essence, then, is Moh bad, in that one situation? If attachment forces you to rethink what Dharma means to you, or your values, is that attachment, in that one context, bad?

What do you think?