Hare Krishna Movie: Review, Cast, Story, Director

Film: Hare Krishna!

Cast: Swami Srila Prabhupada, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles

Director: John Griersser

Rating: * * *

This engrossing documentary produced by ISKCON devotees pays homage to the founder who at the venerable age of 71 sailed on a Scindia ship from Calcutta to the West to proclaim Krishna Consciousness. All that Srila Prabhupada wanted, as ISKCON devotees recall, is for “everyone to be happy, to exercise self-control, minimise needs and love Krishna.”

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect: it was the sixties,during Viet Nam and the height of the anti-war movement.The film traces the history of the bhakti  movement in the 15th century culminating in a laudatory New York Times article and includes interviews with Shaunaka Rishi Das, director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and other academics.

Director Griesser, later initiated into ISKCON as Yadubara Dāsa, also intersperses footage of the devotees singing, dancing and chanting with clips of the peaceful agrarian lifestyle, of the Beatles (esp George Harrison) who warmed to them and rock concerts starring Boy George and Janis Joplin.

A notable chanter and admirer, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (who would travel across India looking for his soul) is shown telling William F. Buckley that the Swami sought out San Francisco’s “hippies, dropouts and seekers, unlike the elegant drawing rooms of the upper class addressed by J.Krishnamurthi.”

How could anyone NOT resist the joy of singing and dancing? The delicious vegetarian food (love feast, the swami called it) was also a big draw. I remember the Indian classical pianist convert to ISKCON who would make a beeline for me at Russi Karanjia’s Daily where I then worked, to teach me the 16-word mantra, ply me with literature and at the end, the yummiest of rassagollas. And I can vouch for a memorable (fully paid) meal I had at ISKCON’s Juhu restaurant with a Jewish couple. Sadly, the film ignores Prabhupada’s racism. (He said,the best form of human life,(are) the Aryans…He was also anti-Semitic and sided with Hitler against the Jews.

For your reviewer, the most attractive aspect of Prabupada is his acknowledgement of his Guru Bhaktisiddhanta who made him “aware nationalism and any other ism is temporary.”

Prabhupada loved to travel. In Communist Russia he saw armed guards in front of churches with no one going in or out. The film acknowledges that Iskcon has been equated with mind control cults cults; the USSR would ban ISKCON. Elsewhere ISKCON is flourishing: it has 829 temples and has published 520 million books in 87 languages.