To make it popular around the world, says filmmaker.
By Sreekanth A. Nair
The love story of Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida is well known. But the legend of Lord Ram and Sita remains confined to the Indian people. Bitish film-maker Antonia Filmer wants to change that: she is planning on making a film on the love story of Ram and Sita to make it popular around the world.
In an interview with The Times of India, Filmer said that people do not usually find a true love story behind the life of Ram and Sita, but obviously, there was a true love story between them.
“What I gathered was that people do not find it a perfect love story because Ram and Sita could live happily ever after like Shiva and Parvati. But there is surely a love story between them that needs to be told to the world outside,” Filmer told The Times of India.
With this idea in mind, Filmer has decided to do a documentary on the life of the legendary characters to tell the world about their love. She recently visited Ayodhya, the birthplace of Lord Ram to gather inputs for the documentary titled ‘The perfect man’. The work will be centered on Ayodhya and Faizabad.
According to Filmer, the love story of Ram and Sita is more mature than that of Romeo and Juliet.
“To me the Romeo and Juliet story is the opposite of a moral example — their love was a young passion. But Ram and Sita imply a more mature love story especially after all the delights and tribulations they experienced. And above all, it was not fiction,” Filmer was quoted as saying by The Times of India.
The former fashion editor of Vogue Magazine says that even final separation of the couple shows their mutual respect and love. Being a king, Ram wanted to take a moral path despite his love for Sita. Following his wish, Sita accepted his orders and made a personal sacrifice. According to Filmer, “both behaved with dignity possibly in spite of personal suffering which does not come easily and can only be done out of love.”
Currently working as the London correspondent of The Sunday Guardian, Filmer had made a documentary about Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma of Travancore province of pre-independent India. The documentary titled ‘The Last Maharaja,’ is a glimpse into a cultural and spiritual past that may be in jeopardy, certainly a record of spiritual obsession and a vanishing culture.
Her next project is about Padmanabha Temple in Thiruvananthapuram and ‘The perfect man’ will be her third work related to India.