It’s perhaps ironical that as Shyam Benegal walks up to join the country’s highest cinematic order, what stands as the filmmaker’s last is a work strikingly departed from the definitive Shyam Benegal oeuvre.

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner’s well-mounted biopic on one of India’s most enduring heroes — Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2005) — was an exercise in detailing, that fell well short of being a never-before look on its protagonist. Further, Bose’s orchestrated excesses were a turnabout from the taut, dramatic takes on class oppression and exploitation, that defined Benegal’s work in the 70s and 80s.

Avid Benegal watchers, however, would contend that the shift had already started, as reflected in the tokenism of Hari-Bhari (2000) and the pop splendour of Zubeidaa (2001). A revisit to his work that followed the brilliant Suraj ka saatvan ghoda (1993) would make most of us Benegalphiles want to believe that the Phalke is not necessarily a topping to the entire body of his work but it’s to his best outings, all of them works of supreme craft.

Benegal’s smashing debut feature Ankur (1973), that dissects the rural feudal scape, complete with libidinous masters, loyal servants and women who are almost passive to their own submission, set a template for Benegal’s best work.

Shabana Azmi’s legendary debut, along with terrific turns from Sadhu Mehr and Anant Nag, got Ankur the raves, from both the critics and the stalls.

The seed of impending rebellion against the masters in Ankur — a boy stones the landlord’s house in the climax — in many ways shapes the content of Nishant (1975) and Manthan (1976) as well.

Benegal’s protagonists are not champion-designates who cockily take on the system and emerge unscathed. The hapless schoolmaster’s fight against the zamindar in Nishant is a lost cause. The spirited bunch of farmers who put together their own milk co-operative society in Manthan are not parts in a rousing underdog-topples-favourite drama either. A streak of passive fatalism, despite content that essentially traces engaging power and class struggles, binds the three movies.

Though Ankur, Nishant and Manthan remain a celebrated trilogy of sorts, Benegal also has some big winners outside of his comfort turf. Bhumika (1977) celebrates another overriding feature in Benegal’s best work: women, caught in the surprises from life.

A retelling of the turbulent life of Marathi stage and screen actress Hansa Wadkar, Bhumika has a rich narrative style that eludes Benegal in Mammo (1994), Sardari Begum (1996) and Zubeidaa, all three with interesting women as leads. The 1857 mutiny finds an interesting setting in Junoon (1979) and Trikal (1985) follows a Goan family caught in time. In the criminally underrated Kalyug (1981), Benegal weaves business warfare into a Mahabharata setting. Art-house was never more rivetting.

The demise of what Bombay’s movie moghuls rather patronisingly called Parallel Cinema had also spelt the rather quaint coming-together of bracketed art and commerce. Naseeruddin Shah broke away, while the Ketan Mehtas, Govind Nihalanis and Aziz Mirzas joined the mainstream.

The shift in Benegal’s cinema — contrast the corporate backing for Bose with the five lakh farmers who contributed Rs two each to fund Manthan — could be a necessity of the age. Even with the compromise, his cinema continues to strike a distinctly refined note amid the ruins of Bollywood.

Chamki Chameli, reportedly inspired by Carmen, is his next. What would probably underline his stature as one of the two arguably finest living filmmakers of the country, along with the redoubtable Adoor Gopalakrishnan, is a return to the roots.

Benegal’s relevance in the time of multiplex cross-overs and superstar guest editors is a point of debate. The bargain, however, will be for that stroke of intelligence and originality he could bring in to an industry drifting between superstar cliques and the fashionably arty. The Phalke, hopefully, gets him started. Again.