I would rather spend 105 minutes in downward-facing dog with a sack of bricks on my back than watch this slog of a yoga documentary again. Its German director-narrator sounds a bit like Werner Herzog, who would have sniffed out a bizarre sociopath in the yoga world if he was behind the camera. Instead, Jan Schmidt-Garre travels to India to discover more about ‘the father of modern yoga’, Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, and practise his backbends.
Krishnamacharya is the man who sparked a resurgence of yoga in India in the 1930s and whose pupils took it to the West. No doubt there’s an enlightening film to be made about him (legend has it he could lower, even stop his heartbeat). But this rambling collection of interviews with family and followers is not it. I’ve had Bikram sessions less painful.