'Devdas' isn't a real film. It isn't in the same genre as Mira

In the words of Sanjay Leela Bhansali—“‘Devdas’ isn’t a real film. It isn’t in the same genre as Mira Nair’s ‘Monsoon Wedding,’ where the camera’s presence is so understated it almost disappears.”—we hear a meditation on art itself, on how the gaze of the camera can either vanish into invisibility or blaze forth as a spectacle. For ‘Devdas’, in Bhansali’s vision, is no quiet mirror of life, but a heightened dream, a tapestry woven with color, music, and sorrow so great that reality itself gives way to myth.

The ancients knew this distinction between the real and the exalted. Consider the works of Euripides or Sophocles, whose tragedies did not aim to reflect life as it was, but to elevate it, turning the anguish of mortals into the song of gods. The stage was not invisible—it was thunderous, it was deliberate. In contrast, Mira Nair’s ‘Monsoon Wedding’ echoes the works of storytellers like Herodotus, who recorded life in its rawness, letting events speak for themselves. Thus Bhansali honors two paths: one of immersion, one of transcendence.

To say that ‘Devdas’ “isn’t a real film” is to declare it a vision beyond the ordinary. Like the frescoes of Michelangelo upon the Sistine Chapel, it is not meant to vanish, but to overwhelm, to make the viewer aware of the artist’s hand guiding every gesture. Bhansali’s world is not life as lived, but life magnified into legend—love, sorrow, and ruin shaped into mythic grandeur.

And yet, in ‘Monsoon Wedding’, the opposite path is walked. The camera, understated, disappears, letting the lives of ordinary people carry the story without adornment. This is the wisdom of humility, of capturing truth without interference, as though the storyteller were merely a witness, not a god. It is akin to the philosophy of Lao Tzu, who taught that the greatest ruler is the one whose presence is hardly felt, because the people believe they have acted of themselves.

Thus, Bhansali’s words remind us of two eternal ways of art: to vanish into the real, or to exalt into the mythical. Neither is lesser, but each serves a different hunger of the human soul. Sometimes we long for the quiet truth of life unshaped; sometimes we crave the grandeur of life transformed into legend. And in knowing this, we learn that art, like existence, holds many mirrors—some that show us ourselves plainly, and others that dazzle us with visions of who we might be.