Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Ganges Blu-ray Movie Review

BBC does it again with a rich depiction of Ganga Ma in the television series 'Ganges.'

Reviewed by Lindsay Mayer August 14, 2008

She is a truly fascinating spectacle of geologic trends and environmental extremes. Hers is the lifeblood of an area of land so vast, it is a subcontinent all its own. The Ganga, or Ganges, river is not the longest river in the world, nor is it the most well-known. But the lay of the land in which the river formed helped to mark her significance to what is now over 500 million people. To claim the Ganga is merely one river is highly misleading. She is the longest, and certainly the main artery. But Ganga Ma - Mother Ganges - obtains her strength through the confluence of thousands of tributaries along her 1,560 mile journey to the Indian Ocean, and along the way nourishes a huge diversity of life, not the least of which are human beings.

Ganges is a comprehensive documentary produced by the natural history heavyweights, the British Broadcasting Company. It is not strictly a wildlife feature, nor is it an obnoxious travelogue. It is merely a view into the world of the great river, and the habitats and human cultures that she has helped to form.

Planting rice paddies under the intense morning sun.

In Hinduism, the river is personified as the goddess Ganga, a maiden schooled by the god Brahma in the heavens. When humankind prayed to Brahma to allow Ganga to come to Earth in order to cleanse the souls of thousands of cursed dead, the god allowed it to be so. Ganga's descent, however, would have destroyed the world with the sheer impact. So the god Shiva intercepted the goddess' path, catching her in hair and letting her flow off of his strands in smaller streams and rivulets. Hence, the vast net of Ganga's tributaries were created, along with the river herself.

Hinduism also dictates not just one, but four sacred sources of the Ganga river - Kedarnath, Yamunotri, Badrinath, and Gangotri. These pilgrimage locations stem mostly from large tributaries of Ganga's main channel. In geological terms, the river's origins are more straightforward. When the Indian subcontinent collided with the Asian landmass millions of years ago, it formed a long spine of mountains - the Himalayas, the highest and most forbidding on the planet. These high mountain ranges formed huge quantities of ice and snow, with many a glacier forming after some millennia. The meltwater of one such glacier - the Gangotri - began to feed a stream flowing down from the mountains. Over time this stream gained strength and volume, and stretched lazily across the flat expanse of land south of the Himalayan foothills. Other watershed rivers joined together with it, picking up sediment and debris along the way. Eventually, these mighty rivers formed of long frozen glacial water emptied into the ocean via the Bay of Bengal, home to the Sundarbans mangrove forests and an incredibly rich delta plain - like the Himalayas, the delta is the largest of its kind in the world, stretching for hundreds of miles.

Originally televised in 2007, Ganges is divided into three episodes at 50 minutes each. "Daughter of the Mountains" consists of many gorgeous mountainous shots as the scientific and cultural origins of the river are divulged. Seasonal life in the Himalayas is shown at length, with short summers bursting into colorful and abundant life, waking up sleeping valleys and invigorating age-old villages and temples, closed up and abandoned for the winter. "River of Life" follows the Ganga as she winds her way across hundreds of miles of flat, open plains, bringing with her valuable sediments that fertilize and nourish wildlife and agricultural fields alike. Marshy grassland known as the Terai greets the river upon her arrival from the foothills. The Terai is a glaring example of human encroachment; the tall grasses used to span out many miles, but are cut back ever more for settlement and cultivation of crops. Much of India's most remarkable wildlife is featured in this episode. The Indian rhinoceros, the rare river dolphin, and the critically endangered crocodilian, the gharial. Named after ghara a Hindi term for pot, the thin-snouted reptile features a bulbous growth on the tip of its nose used for vocalization and mating displays. "Waterland," the third and final episode, puts the river's final destination in the spotlight - the heavily-populated, and very wet, delta plains adjacent to the sea. In particular, the wildlife of the Sundarbans - a substantial mangrove forest and salty wetland - are featured. This includes the densest population of Bengal tigers in the wild. Wildlife conservation issues are also explored as members of Project Tiger track and examine specimens while educating local residents about safety measures to prevent tigers from hunting hapless humans.

Ganges does a superb job of interweaving the river's natural and cultural significance. The written material is excellent - many fascinating facts are imparted with real flair and elegance. Sensational tactics are never relied on, even when discussing the river's tenuous future due to human actions. From Ganga's origins high in the Himalayas, to the diversity of habitats and wildlife that she sustains, to all the ways in which she has shaped the Indian people's religion and daily habits, as well as their past, present, and future - Ganges is a through look at the life of one very remarkable river. And, of course, all of her supportive tributaries besides!

Ganges Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Encoded in VC-1 and averaging around 25 Mbps, Ganges is a truly gorgeous series. Although the picture is 1080i and 60Hz, it is very impressive in its own right. Ganges rivals its fellow BBC Blu-ray documentaries Planet Earth and Galápagos in stunning picture quality - much is to be commended of the British production company for their extraordinary work and unusual attention to detail.

For a series so focused on water, this Blu-ray Disc is relievedly free of artifacts like macroblocking, which tend to crop up easily on subjects featuring fast or fluid motion like rapidly flowing water. Colors are so vibrant they almost seem surreal. Indians live a life in Technicolor; their architecture, formal dress, and even their cuisine is saturated in a blaze of brilliance. This is captured wonderfully well on Ganges, and the Blu-ray is almost hypnotizing in its spectacle. On a related note, blacks are nice and deep with no crush, and whites never get bloomy and out-of-range.

The only detriment to the video is, of course, the interlaced picture, which lends a slight softness to the series. It is not so much a flaw as it is the very nature of the image, and overall, it does not make a marked difference to the beautiful presentation of this documentary.

Ganges Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

BBC continues a hopeful trend of improving the technical specifications for their Blu-ray releases. Often the only audio options available on documentary BDs are lossy Dolby tracks in stereo or 5.1. BBC has pressed a precious few titles with something a smidgen closer to true lossless sound, and Ganges is one of those. Featuring an English track in DTS-HD HR 5.1, the series does not boast a truly uncompressed source, such as Master Audio or TrueHD, but it sounds (and feels) a load better than its "lossier" counterparts. The title's two additional audio tracks - one with Hindi narration and one with Bengali - are included in Dolby 2.0. Simultaneously a curious and highly appropriate decision for inclusion, the tracks are hypnotizing with the respective languages' mellifluous flow of words - their fluid manner of speech seemingly influenced by the Ganges herself. The downside to their lossy stereo encodes, of course, is the lack of a fully immersive aural experience, as described below.

The narration by Sudha Bhuchar is clear and rich - her deep voice, with its slight lilt of an Indian accent, adds to an immersive experience for the viewer, drawn in to the world of the vast subcontinent and its complex watersheds. The roar of the river and the crumbling of mountains is captured nicely in a surprisingly well-used LFE channel. The rear channels are used sparingly for a convincing "envelope" effect in shots surrounded by rushing water. In addition, ambient noise - be it the native flora and fauna or the vast urban landscapes - is represented quite well. Ganges has created a soundscape worthy of such rich visuals on high definition.

Ganges Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

It is becoming habit for most documentaries on Blu-ray to feature nothing more than the film or the series itself, with no extra features included. BBC, however, tends to buck this trend with at least a modicum of supplements on the side - sometimes. As with its exceptional audio, Ganges is one such title - packaged with a handful of deleted scenes and a somewhat disjointed "Making Of" featurette.

The former consists of six sequences with no narration, or even sound. The ever-present score is laid over each brief segment. A title card comes between each, giving a short summary of the scenes ahead. Some of them are rather interesting, but it's understandable why they would be cut for pacing reasons. First to be shown is a pilgrimage of religious devotees carrying well-crafted effigies of various Hindu gods up the mountain trails to the isolated villages of the Ganges' sacred sources. Garhwali shepherds are then shown tending to their herds in the brief Himalayan summers. Around August, the residents of Bishnupur celebrate the Festival of Jhapan, in honor of the snake goddess Manasha. Much of the festival's activity centers around the charming and handling of the indigenous cobras, resulting in a fascinating display. Then the attention shifts to focus on the practice of drying and using cow dung as an alternative fuel for burning in regions where firewood is scarce. A brief segment then shows the hand-picked harvest of mangoes, with mischievous langurs leaping amongst the trees making harvests of their own. The final segment depicts a pata painter at work - the artists are renown for their elaborate artwork featuring natural and spiritual themes.

The disc's "Behind the Scenes" featurette is, as mentioned, a bit disjointed in its presentation. What it really is is several segments of crew at various locations undergoing the daily pains of filming. These segments are squished together in a consecutive play mode, and don't allow the viewer to choose between them from the menu. Three projects are followed here, beginning with the chilly job of filming time lapse sequences in the Himalayas - specifically a sunrise. Then a project requiring a hefty amount of patience - trying to capture elusive Asiatic black bears on film in the remote village of Tolma, using motion detectors and infared cameras. The third follows the Sundarbans Tiger Project into the wet wilderness on the track of a local problem tiger, which they trrack down and tranquilize. After examining and collaring the cat, she's determined to be an elder tigress with missing or worn teeth, and as a result is quite emaciated. The crew educate the local villages on safety measures to take when venturing into the mangrove forests, in order to reduce the chance of tiger attacks.

Ganges Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The BBC continues their record of fine work documenting the world at large. Their work is an excellent means of introducing oneself to the wonder of our planet. Having loved an annotated VHS copy of David Attenborough's Life on Earth as a kid, I can fully attest to that! Featuring gorgeous visuals, lush sound, and intelligent narration, Ganges is another high definition winner from the BBC. I highly recommend this series on Blu-ray Disc to anyone for both its educational value and the pure spectacle of India's color, vastness, and inherent beauty. Namasté.