rcansaa This excellent work(1972) of an American director Conrad Rooks made me fall in love with India and its spirituality all over again.I am so glad I could borrow and watch this movie from a public library (Dow library in Midland Michigan). The cassette claims that it has been recovered in 2002. This movie is based on a Nobel prize winner novel by Hermann Hesse. The music composed and sung by Hemant Kumar who is well known for singing Tagore(Nobel winner). The song tracks are Tagore's compositions. Very melodious.The story is about a young Brahman of a priest family. The father is a sacred priest of a temple. Next to the temple flows river Ganges. Siddharth grows up with his close friend/follower. Their early childhood is shown to be bathing in the river and performing rituals in the temple. Being fed-up with his father's routine life, Siddharth decides to get out of the town and wishes to become a 'sadhu' and attain nirvana (eternal-peace). His father consents half-heartedly. The best friend Govinda follows him like a shadow. During their journey they both come under the influence of many accomplished sadhus and a Guru. Inspite of serving the Guru, Siddharth is not satisfied and does not feel even being close to attaining nirvana. In the meantime Govind influenced by Buddha himself, joins Buddhism leaving Siddharth alone with his path. The main aspiration of Siddharth is to achieve nirvana without a teacher. He claims why do we need teachers to attain nirvana, a seemingly conflicting belief to Hinduism, which preaches without a Guru its impossible to attain eternal peace. Hinduism is esoteric and abstract. The conflicting facts are not conflicting at all..As Hinduism goes far and teaches that one is the God himself(or herself)..Aham Brahmasmi. At one stage a soul out-stands or out performs the teacher.So he continues his wandering. In the meantime gets attracted to the pleasure gardens of a beautiful, soulful,courtesan by name Kamala. Siddharth wants to learn the art of love from her. She induces him into materialistic world. He learns all worldly business in order to gain the love of Kamala. Kamala, true to herself, teaches him all he wants. Eventually he gets tired of all of it and leaves that place to become a ferry man. During that time he learns a lot of philosophy from the river. Kamala who now has a son from Siddharth, gets bitten by a snake and dies in the arms of Siddharth. Siddharth tries to bring up his son but the son turns out to be defiant and so on and so forth...From the comment I learned that the ferryman who taught him about truth was none other than Budha himself.The passionate scene between Shashi Kapoor and Simmy Grewal heats up the screen..I never had imagined that in the best hands of director and photographer, Shashi Kapoor could be so sizzling sensuous. I always find him boring and cold in almost all his movies..The conversation between Kamala and Siddharth is very touching. After sharing a very passionate, artistic love making, both of them settle to think that they do not love each other. What a disappointment. Two people in true love, sometimes are unable to make passionate love due to situations and two people who after all share passionate physical love are not in love..what an irony of life..The consummation of love (passion + spiritual + commitment) happens only in imaginations ??? I hope not.For Siddharth, the journey of spirituality is reverse (seem to happen to many people)..Its from "vairagya" (renunciation) to "bhoga" (materialistic luxury) and back again..Some simple men and women who follow simple philosophy and travel from bhoga to yoga and to nirvana(eternal peace), seem to be doing it right...However, there is nothing right and nothing wrong in this journey...Like a meandering river, we all trace(carve) different paths, suitable to our mind and our body. Also, the "chakras" control our actions at different points of time and determine at one point of time what is predominant for us.The significance of ferryman is not an old concept. In Kannada literature(16th century ?), Purundara Dasa calls God as "ambiga" (ferryman)..God is the ferryman who helps cross this river called life and the ferry is our own body with nine holes. What an artist he must have been to help cross the river in such a perforated boat...:-) Coincidentally I remember this funny incident from Ramayana..Rama requesting a ferryman(kevat in Hindi) to help him cross river Ganga. Before Kevat lets him in his boat, runs and gets a pitcher of water to wash Rama's feet off..When asked why, he narrates the reason which seems so hilarious...He says, if I let you get in my boat with the dust of your feet, there is a fear that the boat may turn into a maid just like stone turning into Ahilya...thats why had to wash your feet..cause I have no other means of living ('main gareeb naiya meri naari naa hoya pade')...:-)

Sam Rupani (rupanisp) His Excellency Great Late Hemant Kumar had two bengali songs in this movie which are very very melodic.Her Excellency Simi Garewal did best start nudity on screen. His Excellency Shashi Kapoor played ok under very bad direction. It should be remade.Very Very Very Bad Movie. Please remake it again properly with better music and art form.

Chris Knipp This is much smoother but less interesting than Conrad Rooks' other earlier and more cultish film, his drug autobiography `Chappaqua' (1966), which has cameos by Allen Ginzburg, William Burroughs, and jazzman Ornette Coleman in it. The trouble is `Siddhartha,' beautiful as it is, is a simplification of a simplification, and a spiritual quest isn't something you necessarily understand better through lush visuals, though unquestionably some of Sven Nykvist's watery landscapes with trees are unforgettable, the color is deep and rich, the music is pleasing, and the principals are awfully good looking people. Not surprisingly the high point cinematically is the sequence showing erotic encounters between the handsome lapsed sadhu, Siddhartha (Shashi Kapoor), and the lovely courtesan, Kamala. Simi Garewal, who plays Kamala, is a gorgeous creature whose lovely eyes, long aristocratic nose, and pouty lips remind one of the all-time arch teaser and sexy sophisticate of English films, Joan Greenwood. But Ms. Greenwood never was got up in the kind of exquisite gilded see-through gear Simi wears in her scenes with Shashi Kapoor. She's something to look at.When his buddy Govinda decides earlier to follow the Buddha, Siddhartha leaves Govinda bereft by deciding to go off on his own lone search, without a guru. It seems that the point is you must pursue your quest on your own. But Siddhartha's splitting with Govinda seems somewhat meaningless since at the end of the movie, Siddhartha has joined up with the peaceful boatman he met years earlier toward the end of his sadhu period, and he winds up spouting the boatman's words of wisdom: live in the present, stop seeking, don't worry, be happy, and watch the river. The Buddha apparently hasn't helped Govinda all that much either, since he meets Siddhartha again and also needs to be taught the boatman's simple doctrines. One can't help thinking they'd both have done better staying with the Buddha, who did, after all, found one of the world's great religions.It's rather amusing that during the two men's youthful sadhu period, when they're on the road with a group of penniless holy men, `meditation' is represented as singing rhythmically and passing a bong. My picture of this activity was different, but `Chappaqua' shows how obsessed with and involved in drugs Conrad Rooks was.This is a lovely, but empty and ultimately not very cinematic film. Sven Nykvist's photography is at the service of a vision so generalized (Siddhartha is a universal type, not an individual), that too often the images look like something out of `National Geographic' with mise-en-scène by Bollywood. The scenes are not as exotic as those Pasolini created for his `Arabian Nights' (1974), nor are Rooks' depictions of Indian rural life ever remotely as real as Satyajit Ray's in the `Apu Trilogy.' For a trippier film version of Hermann Hesse, see Fred Haines' `Steppenwolf,' which came two years after `Siddhartha,' in 1974. For a more original film depiction of a spiritual quest, see the story of G.I. Gurdjieff as done by Peter Brooks in `Meetings with Remarkable men' (1979).

Spleen Siddhartha is a young man who leaves home and sets out on a long search for the meaning of life. He's like a many protagonists from folklore, who've sought immortality, perfect honesty or whatever - he's engaged on a quest for something that doesn't exist and isn't worth finding, which WE could have told him at the very beginning; but of course he must find out for himself. His character matches that of his counterparts in folklore. He's a nice chap, a bit obsessive, very clever - but on the one point that motivates him he's exceptionally dense. He does so much navel-gazing that when tragedy touches him we're surprised he even notices. Don't let this put you off. You'll like him all the same.(By the way, although Siddhartha's character is much the same at the end as it is at the beginning, there is a brief unconvincing montage that shows him corrupted by worldly values. We never see the transformation and it's hard to believe that it could possibly have taken place.)The India in which the story takes place is timeless (albeit convincingly solid), although we soon find out that Siddhartha is a contemporary of Buddha, who he meets but who doesn't appear in the film. (It's a kind of Buddhist `Ben-Hur'.) I thought this was a nice touch; but the intrusion of real world creeds is indeed an intrusion. One problem with this kind of story is that the audience is really just waiting for the hero to realise that he's chasing a rainbow's end, and speaking for myself I'd prefer to watch the hero's life, rather than listen to empty platitudes and claptrap, while I wait. But I must say the platitudes have been very prettily dressed up. Hesse or Rooks or whoever is responsible had a great gift for making nothing sound like something.Photography is gorgeous and the gentle editing lulls us into accepting the fairytale. There's a lovely smorgasbord of Indian music. (SOME of this music you're bound to like - it's much too varied for any one person to dislike it all.) It's not an arresting film, but it's a sweet and guileless one. Try to see it under circumstances that best allow you to absorb the sights and sounds.