DARSHAN, THE EMBRACE

No doubt, the Indian-born spiritual guide Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma) will inspire even the most misanthropic Western curmudgeon, and French director Jan Kounen gets up-close and more-or-less personal with this healing "Mahatma." But Darshan, The Embrace lacks both narrative edge and a complex world view.

Kounen follows Amma and her entourage on a journey through India's poorest areas. We witness her attending to the sick and needy, encouraging peace through group prayer, working on the problem of illiteracy, supporting the building and financing of homes and hospitals, and giving speeches to flocks of followers. Kounen herself becomes a follower of sorts-she dresses in traditional garb, pitches in on Amma's projects, and even finds herself meditating on her own.

Through grainy archival film clips and stills, Kounen documents Amma's early life and seemingly smooth transition into the role of Mahatma in the late 1970s. In the current-day scenes, Amma interacts with the young and old and even some animals (including an elephant), delivers tough-love messages, and finishes her prayers with her trademark darshan (tender embrace).

How can one not be inspired or moved by Darshan, The Embrace? The film is all about the goodness of the human heart. Of course, drama (and that includes the documentary genre) depends upon tension and conflict to be interesting, so the movie might have benefited from some kind of counterpoint-a symbolic or actual portrayal of the greed or evil in human nature that perpetuates poverty and misery around the world. Amma briefly refers to September 11 during one prayer (although she gets the date wrong and has to be corrected), but generally she seems oblivious to the bad socioeconomic and political influences that bring down society and culture. However, there is no question that Amma herself is a thoroughly good person.

Kounen is completely uncritical, which may be appropriate, though her approach is less cinéma-vérité and more a commercial for humanistic action. (You'll feel compelled to join the Peace Corps after the film is over.) What Kounen misses in her devotional depiction is the full story behind how a female Mahatma (apparently the first) in a patriarchal culture can become so influential. The filmmaker also suggests a purely utopian future where Amma's social programs are the solution to the world's many problems. Cynics watching the evening news these days and the interminable war flaring again in the Middle East may wonder how realistic either Kounen or Amma herself are being.
To the film's credit, Kounen and her cinematographer, Sébastien Pentecouteau, are given close access to their subject, which helps make a few of the sequences intimately moving. Pentecouteau also manages to execute flowing, beautifully controlled camerawork, despite the presence of crowds and the spontaneity of events. Thankfully, too, Kounen keeps her voice-over narration and extra-diegetic music to a minimum, as the images (some quite haunting) speak loudly enough by themselves.

-Eric Monder