On Beauty

What does it mean to be in the presence of beauty? And how can one explore and understand this through the filmography of writer, director, editor, music composer, and choreographer Sanjay Leela Bhansali? In this sweeping text, Prathyush Parasuraman walks the reader through the auteur’s films — those hailed, those hauled — like Gangubai Kathiawadi, Padmaavat, Devdas, Ram-Leela, and Saawariya. With sensitivity and finesse, On Beauty examines beauty as an idea, and aesthetics as a philosophy, while simultaneously shedding light on the making of Bhansali’s painstaking frames through conversations with his cinematographers, composers, choreographers, and production and costume designers. In these pages, Bhansali’s cinema comes alive.