Great literary expectations

Hindi cinema has always had a penchant for adapting English classics, with less than best-selling results

Some years, or even months from now, it will most likely be remembered as a curiosity piece. The usually inventive Abhishek Kapoor chose to twist Charles Dickens' classic novel Great Expectations, relocating the story to present-day Kashmir. An ill-conceived endeavour by the director, Fitoor has drawn extremely mixed reviews, besides facing a tepid response at the ticket windows.
The uneasy blend of a childhood romance - which morphs into a compulsive disorder in adulthood - with fleeting asides to the political unrest in Kashmir, has proved to be a vast disappointment. Truly, there's nothing to recommend about Fitoor except a bravura performance by Tabu as an eccentric aristocratic spinster - Miss Havi-sham renamed Hazrat Begum - besides the sumptuous cinematography. To bemoan the fact that the effort does scant justice to the Dickens novel would merely amount to stating the obvious.
Indeed, over the decades, the Bollywoodisation of English literature has yielded dissatisfactory results. Like it or not, great literary sources from ye olde England and Mumbai-style entertainment have worked at cross-purposes.
Consequently, transposing complex narratives from bygone centuries to India's contemporary milieus indicate that filmmakers are literally at a loose end for original ideas. Moreover, there's a treasure house of India's own literature that could be mined. Once, Munshi Premchand and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee - of Godaan and Devdas fame respectively - were the go-to favourites for film-makers. No longer.
 
Did someone say what about Chetan Bhagat's books being turned into films - Kai Po Che by director Abhishek Kapoor, and 3 Idiots by Rajkumar Hirani? The answer to that is: sorry Bhagat may be a hot-seller, but literary he isn't.
Admittedly, that's straying from the point, which is: why do Hindi language filmmakers time-travel to distant eras vivified in English literature? Perhaps, that stems from a fondness for works studied during our school and university days. Or perhaps, a filmmaker is convinced that old sherry can be served as new sherbet.
Going by the track record, the immortal playwright and bard Shakespeare has received far more fair treatment than the novelists. Despite some reservations about Vishal Bharadwaj's takes on Shakespeare's tragedies - Maqbool (based on Macbeth), Omkara (Othello) and Haider (Hamlet) - these have been notches above the run-of-the-mill adaptations.
Reservations have been on the lines of placing the plot lines in the deep and dark backdrops of the conveniently violent underworld in Maqbool and Omkara. Comp-aratively, the unrest in the Kashmir Valley was fairly authentic and persuasive in Haider.
Bharadwaj's Shakespeare triptych may not be faithful to the far more grandiloquent spirit of the playwright. Yet, the adaptations have been enga-ging, elevated by lacerating perform-ances from topnotch actors, besides an adroit use of the Bollywood format of song-and-dance interludes.
Bharadawaj's mentor Gulzar had earlier confected a likeable laugh-raiser with Angoor, a riff on Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, with Sanjeev Kumar and Deven Verma striking up terrific repartee on screen.
Unsurprisingly, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has inspired an entire gamut of Mumbai-manufactured films. Traces of the eponymous twosome can be detected in financially successful spin-offs, from Raj Kapoor's Bobby and Man-soor Khan's Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak in the past, to Habib Faisal's Ishaqzaade and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Goliyon ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela in recent years. With the timeless theme of star-cross'd lovers caught in the crossfire of conflict-ed families, filmmakers the world over can't go wrong, can they?
Purloined from the pages of The Judas Tree by the Scottish author A J Cronin, Gulzar's 1975 adaptation - Mausam - was quite contrived and implausible. On reviewing it today, Mausam doesn't stand up to the test of time, and is even faintly embarrassing. In comparison, Vijay Anand's Tere Mere Sapne, a retread of Cronin's The Citadel, on the subject of medical ethics can still be cherished, mainly for its evocative musical score by S D Burman.
Laxmikant-Pyarelal's music was also the ace in Yash Chopra's Daag, a fluffed-up version of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor Of Casterbridge, in which Rajesh Khanna indulges in murder and bigamy, and gets away with it. Far removed from Hardy-land, it capitalised essentially on Khanna's star value, flanked by Raakhee and Sharmila Tagore. Incidentally, Hardy's other work, Tess Of The D'Urber-villes, spawned a range of avatars from Nutan (flawless in the forgettable Dil Ne Phir Yaad Kiya) and Madhuri Dixit (unconvincing rustic belle in Prem Granth) to Freida Pinto (dreadful in the international production Trishna).
British-Indian director Gurinder Chadha bent Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice out of shape, with more than a little help from its leading lady, Aish-warya Rai, in an atrocity jokily titled Bride And Prejudice. Mira Nair, another famous Indo-Western filmmaker, went weirdly exotic with Vanity Fair, abetted by her leading lady, the Hollywood A-lister Reese Witherspoon no less. It would have surely made its author William Makepeace Thackeray whimper in his grave. Rajshree Ojha's Aisha, a tribute to Jane Austen's agreeable matchmaker, Emma, transmitted some lively moments with a youthful cast headed by Sonam Kapoor and Abhay Deol, but that's about it. Decades before Aisha and company, Dilip Kumar and Wah-eeda Rehman exuded high histrionics in Dil Diya Dard Liya, a rendition of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. The story of vindictive love was a commercial and critical disaster, driving its producer Abdur Rashid Kardar into virtual bankruptcy.
Moral of the story: don't mess around with the classics, please. Fitoor reiterated that loud and clear yet again in the present day.