Ben-Hur, The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest, Schindler?s List, The Clockwork Orange, The Bourne Identity, Jaws, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Chronicles of Narnia? However eclectic this list is, it just reinforces that books have lent more than a helping hand to big budget blockbuster Hollywood. Just compare this to Bollywood?s produce and you have the same names turning up again and again. Devdas comes along every once in a generation and Parineeta threatens to follow the same path. Sahib, Biwi Aur Ghulam and Coolie round off the list. Directors like Gulzar or Basu Chatterjee have consistently sourced from a wider variety of literary sources, but their films were hardly ever seen by the producer-distributor nexus as being worth a pan India promotion.
However cinema in India?s regional languages has relied heavily on literature, with one director going to the extent of saying a lot of it is ?literary cinema.? The giants of these cinemas, from Satyajit Ray to Adoor Gopalakrishnan, have consistently translated stories to celluloid, and with rare felicity. In recent times, the Indian literary connection comes across in films like The Mistress of Spices based on the novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Mira Nair?s The Namesake based on Jhumpa Lahiri?s novel, and the forthcoming Hello based on Chetan Bhagat?s One Night @ Call Center. Bhagat?s earlier book, Five Point Someone, too is to be made into a film tentatively called Idiots. However the supreme fount of global inspiration is indisputably Shakespeare, often unacknowledged in the credits.
One wonders whether great film directors have a formula for zooming in on literature that meets their fancy, inspires them to turn it into film. Is it by accident that the meeting happens, as in the case of Aparna Sen encountering Kunal Basu over coffee at a Cambridge do, where the director heard about the writer?s ?wonderful short story? ? The Japanese Wife? Or did Ray go looking for a Premchand novel to be translated into celluloid? Whatever be the merits of either case, unlike in the West, the tango here has been rather sporadic, usually confined to the elite margins.
Is there a difference in the two arts? Not all agree that literature is merely about words. Basu points out that literature brings in the notion of space and light, unforgettable characters, noteworthy places, a whole range of human emotions. He also points to Jean-Luc Goddard?s famous line, ?writing is the same as filmmaking?, agreeing that while there is a difference in the crafts, the writer and the auteur both passionately engage in story telling, ?even the non-linear ones.?
Former director of FTII, Suresh Chhabria points out that words are but one element of cinema, that film is a younger medium, while the heights and achievements of cinema are in front of us. Literary theorist and filmmaker David Phillips is emphatic that film is literature and explains that the act of moving from one media to another is an act of translation. ?When watching a film, you read a film too ? it?s the same fundamental art, in a text there are voices, in a film also the heteroglossia remains.? For Jaishree Mishra, whose recent novel Rani is being filmed, ?literature often leads to cinema, and it should end there.?
But both sides also appreciate the difference between the two mediums. ?A film is a different medium, and different rules and techniques apply,? says US-based Divakaruni, in India to attend Osian?s Cinefan, which marked its tenth anniversary by choosing literature and cinema as a theme to mark the occasion.
She gives the example of Deepa Mehta, who had to drastically cut Bapsi Sidhwa?s Ice Candy Man to make it as Earth. Sidhwa actually did the opposite when she wrote a novel based on Mehta?s film Water, adding details to develop characters. Director Arun Khopkar points out that it has to be a symbiotic relationship where each medium produces something the other does not have.
Translating has been far from easy however. As Renuka Chatterjee, head of Osian?s literary agency puts it, ?when it?s an unhappy marriage, why does it happen that both wished they had never shared a roof.? For Sen, who is putting finishing touches to The Japanese Wife, ?it is much easier to make a film from a short story. In a novel lots of things are put far more in detail, and a faithful rendition is not always possible. She is also considering a film on Tagore?s short story, Goenar Baksho, where she wants to cast Govinda and Sharmila Tagore.
She cites the example of Ray?s adaptation of Tagore?s Nashtoneer as Charulata, where he kept the spirit of the story rather than sticking to the text. ?I don?t think it is important to interact with the author; an author has to realise it is a different medium,? she elaborates.
For writers like Bhagat, the cinematic version will bring him new audiences. For mainstream Bollywood, Hello will be a test. Projects like another version of Sahib, Biwi Aur Ghulam will follow while Gregory David Roberts? Shantaram, to be directed by Mira Nair, are in the offing. But it?s only when they match the audience of a Karan Johar blockbuster that more fiction, pulp or otherwise will be seriously considered by an industry desperately in search of the ?different? story.