'Awake: The Life of Yogananda', only lightly, works

Paramahansa Yogananda is one of the few people to have made a name in the West for taking Yoga to the shores of America in the 20th century.

‘Awake: The Life of Yogananda’ throws light on the man and the man’s principles. The documentary starts off as a narrative description of how a young Yogananda understood the world around him. Anupam Kher steps in to act as the soul of the film through his voice. Oftentimes, his narration puts a brake in the proceedings. Why have a voice-over when the visuals explain (almost) everything?

The times of Swami Vivekananda and Yogananda were what I’d like to call the pre-television era. Messages were passed on using telegrams, and newspapers were information givers. Communicating and traveling were not easy like how it is now. It used to take several days. Technology was being improvised every second. Sound films put a lid on silent films that were being made in the 20s. And the Americans thought that India was full of turbaned men practicing yoga.

The Westerners saw us as something radically different from them. That’s what has been reflected in movies such as ‘Octopussy’ and ‘Outsourced’. Is India a land of mystic powers? I’d say, “meh?" But the notion in the West still hasn’t changed much.

‘Awake’ presents the life of Yogananda in a series of immersive vignettes but whatever is shown in the documentary is already available in the pages of Wikipedia and Google. It focuses on what happened and how it happened alone. Interviews with various people are presented – Ravi Shankar, Dr. Anita Goel, Anand Mehrotra, Deepak Chopra, etc. The way these people revere the Yogi is clearly seen. The unquestionable amount of faith they have in their Guru is tangible. I’m not asking for songs to be added in the film. But does the documentary give any interesting additional information on the Yogi? Nada!

The best thing about ‘Awake’ would definitely be the music. No, the music is not confined to spiritual boundaries. It travels beyond that.

‘The Motorcycle Diaries’, a biopic about Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado’s journey, has a certain quality of mysticism in it. Walter Salles’s film told the story of two people and their journeys toward self-realization. On the other hand, Paola di Florio and Lisa Leeman’s ‘Awake’ centers around the efforts Yogananda put in to establish the spiritual organization, Self-Realization Fellowship. In other words, this hour-and-a-half film merely flies out as an introduction to the several pages of the life of the Yogi via bullet-points. Where are the mystic qualities? Where are the soul-stirring moments?