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Connected Past

My friend S told me how much she and her mother enjoyed watching the movie Bramhastra I was curious about her perspective having read mixed and largely unenthusiastic reviews. As we chatted about it, I thought how mythology never gets old and every retelling if done artfully has a chance of re-creating the magic for a new type of audience. 

What S was talking about is not the quality of the movie but what it was derived from. A myth reinterpreted for the modern world can bring people of different stripes into a common fold. Those than liked the classic version and are mildly curious about the modern take on it but also relative strangers to the historical version who now grow curious to go back to source. That is a strong unifying force. What is true of Greek myths is true of myths from around the world:

Greek myths remain true for us because they excavate the very extremes of human experience: sudden, inexplicable catastrophe; radical reversals of fortune; seemingly arbitrary events that transform lives. They deal, in short, in the hard basic facts of the human condition

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