Juggernaut: A Film of India

Year Published: 1968

Creator: Walford Hewiston

Complete Record: Shows the slow, 600 mile journey of an atomic reactor across India. It is a film of contrasts. The reactor is borne on a 75-ton tractor truck. As it progresses, the film shows arid countryside, poverty, customs, and working conditions. Some of the things illustrated are dry, cracked earth with little vegetation, oxen turning a water wheel, people tilling the soil with wooden rakes, women doing wash on rocks, ornate temples and native homes and dress. There are shots of a man walking ahead of a dozen or more camels, which opens up the film. A long tracking shot of a mass of Indian people near a bridge follows. There are shots of a young boy drumming as well as people in the village watching the arrival of the nuclear reactor/juggernaut pulled by a 75-ton tractor-trailer from Canada. There are numerous shots of the juggernaut being pulled through the desert landscape. There are shots of people paving the way for the juggernaut by raking rocks into baskets, lifting it onto their heads and shoveling the dirt and rocks elsewhere. There is a close-up shot of the juggernaut and the a quick zoom-back into a long shot of the juggernaut being dragged by the tractor-trailer down a straight, paved concrete road. There is also a side-view/wide-angle shot of the juggernaut followed by an Indian man controlling the train tracks as a train goes by. Canadian/Western foreigners are also shown in suits, deliberating over the juggernaut’s arrival in the rural environment. Scenes of goats play with each other and a kid playing with a goat by head-butting it follows the shots of these “civilized” foreigners. Several shots follow of Indian hands molding clay jars, Indian faces smiling, a picture of JFK John F Kennedy’s face and his name on a storefront called “Kennedy Cycle Store”. There are quick shots of people writing, working building/renovating buildings, babies shouting, and road signs written in English. There is one scene of the cracked, dry desert earth and then a mirage of men hauling camels in the distance, which dissolves into a tracking shot of a truck caravan with people riding through the desert landscape. This is followed by goats in the desert and shots of vultures and villagers in the desert with these animals. Then these shots are juxtaposed by the juggernaut suddenly rolling through this landscape. An irrigation system is also shown which becomes a match-on-form with a river in the next shot. There is a tracking shot of people in the city, sitting outside in an outdoor temple area washing clothes in the river with a close-up of their faces, clothes, jewelry, giant nose rings. There is one shot of a the juggernaut’s upside-down reflection in the river as it is being hauled over a bridge and the camera tracks back and you can see the juggernaut being hauled over the bridge. Shots follow of jugs atop the heads of villagers. More goats, cattle and livestock. There is a scene showing the inside of a white-washed stone temple, stone elephants, people outside. Then shots of men directing the giant juggernaut through an archway and bystanding villagers watching as the juggernaut slowly invades their landscape. There is one prolonged shot of villagers going up or down a concrete staircase in the middle of a rural landscape. People bow to a Vishnu statue, kids are on a wooden, crude merry-go-round with balloons. More tracking shots of the desert landscape through ornate, round cut-out archways in a temple. Monkeys in trees, trees being torn down in the crossfire of the juggernaut being pulled through the landscape. Statue of Ghandi, close-up of young girl looking angry or concerned, village boys running alongside the juggernaut. Long shot of juggernaut against the backdrop of villagers and town buildings and homes. Crowd of Indian men in western clothing and hardhats dancing and singing and playing instruments in what seems like a welcoming ceremony for the juggernaut. Tracking shot of the juggernaut juxtaposed by cuts to shots of villagers with baskets full of wool and a huge collection of wool and a man sewing. Villagers pass around a flaming metal plate and then the final shot of the words “Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant” on the side of the nuclear reactor. This documentary follows a convoy carrying a calandria, the 70-ton heart of a Canadian nuclear reactor, to Rajasthan, in India, in 1968. Even the biggest traditional juggernauts could not match this one, passing over roads specially strengthened and through city walls torn down to make way.