"Kumaré" is a bit like a Hindu version of "Marjoe." And like that movie, we end up wondering if the audience, too, is being taken on a ride. Deceptive charisma can cut both ways. Most documentaries rely on a certain amount of editorial manipulation to create a coherent narrative. Sometimes the business of creating narrative crosses the line between events that happen and events that are constructed. Many instances during the film raised doubts about documentary fidelity:
1. The participants seem unaware of the camera, even when it is right in front of them. Were they coached so successfully that they never glanced at it?
2. How did Gandhi get signed legal release forms from all these people? Were they compensated for their participation?
3. Was ALL the footage real-time recording or were some of the scenes reenacted? Was any of it scripted or rehearsed?
Gandhi probably could have withheld the final reveal from us until the end of the movie. He decides instead to clue us in on the deception from the beginning (and that's where Gandhi's role as a reliable narrator comes into question). Doing so allows the use of circular form -- starting the movie near "the end" and backtracking to the setup and then proceeding forward again until we catch up with the opening scene. The problem with that, however, is that waiting well over an hour to see how an "unveiling" to which we are already privy will play out begins to wear on the viewer's patience. This would have been a stronger film at half its unnecessarily drawn-out length.
The film's strongest aspect is the implied examination of the strife between rational and emotional epistemology. Rationalists want to know whether or not the Emperor is actually wearing new clothes as a point of objective and external reality. Emotionalists want to see beauty in the new clothes that the Emperor may or may not be wearing and are willing to create an internal reality that feeds their expectations. Winnowing out what is real and what is not may not be at the epicenter of belief acquisition for everyone.
In the end, we see that spiritualism is a kind of stone soup. The characterization may be a deception because the stone has no taste, but the soup is still flavorful because of the bits of meat and carrot and potato that the believers bring to the broth. People yearn to be in fellowship with others. Almost any stone that can make that happen is going to attract people. But it shouldn't take 84 minutes to underscore that point.
