Please leave a short story alone
iView Author:
HARSHA CHANDRASHEKAR
(Bangalore, India)
Email:
harshacshekar [at] gmail [dot] com
Please leave a short story alone
Let’s get a few things straight here. We do not make movies that are 90 minutes long nor can we live without sandwiching songs into it (Classic example: Guru). In such an event we got to be extra careful while selecting stories suitable for the celluloid.
Here are three movies that I cringe every time I see it on Television.
Film 1: Raincoat – 2004 (Cast… Aishwarya Rai, Ajay Devgan; Director… Rituparno Ghosh)
This movie is based on the short story The Gift of the Magi by O Henry. I have no problem about the story or premise, however the question is does this classic deserves two hours of screen time. The answer is a resounding No. The beauty of the original is the way the plot unfolds giving you no time to wander, now if you see the adaptation by Rituparno Ghosh due to its format of a feature length film you needs songs (thought great) really unnecessary and a annoying Mouli Ganguly as Manu’s friend’s wife calling every 10 minutes in the movie. At the end of the movie you are numb rather than empathetic, which for me is losing the soul of the story written by O Henry.
Film 2: Ahista Ahista – 2006 (Cast … Abhay Deol, Soha Ali Khan; Directer… Shivam Nair)
If you guys have seen the STAR Bestsellers telecasted by STAR PLUS (99/00) you would have seen Ahista Ahista, by that I mean the original short story in its deserving format. STAR Bestsellers was a selection of best short stories written by Indian authors/directors in a 1 hour tele series format. I cannot recall the title of this short story but it was excellent, right from the character choice, to location and simplicity of the plot. Credit for the story of Ahista Ahista (the film) has been given to Imtiaz Ali. I sincerely hope it’s not a Plagiarism effort on part of Imtiaz as that would really disappoint me to see a director who gave us Socha Na Tha and Jab We Met to stoop to these levels. So the question now arises, how do you spoil the movie Ahista Ahista? It’s not difficult ask Himesh Reshammiya to croon the songs for you and that should do the trick! Not just that the performances were also not par to the requirement and most importantly characters did not feel real as I did when I first watched the tele serial.
Film 3: Gayab – 2004 (Cast… Tusshar Kapoor, Antara Mali; Director… Prawal Raman)
Here it is best reserved for last. This is a spin-off of the Purab’s (Aftab Shivdasani) story from Darna Mana Hai (2003), dare I say from the same director (Prawal Raman). I absolutely loved Purab’s story as it was diametrically different from what I had seen. Though Saif and Boman plot was equally good, it was a downer as Sushant Singh and Boman Irani’s character was more or less same thus diluting its impact.
Only people who are nuts would try and remake a short story like the one in Darna Mana Hai into a full length movie. However, I am not entirely surprised as it from RGV’s stable. The Stop story though silly was novel, now however how do you adapt this to a movie … Antara Mali comes to rescue with her antics. To call this movie a disaster would be an understatement.
Directors if they cannot make the simple distinction as what’s best for silver screen, then god save them. Even though you come across a short story that is too tempting, please enjoy the process of reading it but do not let the idea seep in your brains to bring the work alive on the big screen. Though I can think of one brilliant movie adapted from the last few lines (can you believe it) of a book into a feaure length movie Beladingala Bale (Kannada Movie, 1996) directed by Sunil Kumar Desai, written by Yendamuri Veerendrnath and brilliantly performed by Ananth Nag one of the finest actors in world cinema. But not all directors are Sunil Kumar Desai who made a rip off Die Hard to Nishkarsha (1995) such a convincing effort.
Did I miss out Saawariya based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story, White Nights directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali in this list? Yes sure I did, Sanjay Leela Bhansali is a finely crafted director who has left me with nothing to write on his magnum opus.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Great!!
My thougts too along the same line. It requires directors of great calibre who can take a short story look only at the theme and subtext and create a cinematic offspring that works on many layers. Balu Mahendra’s moondram pirai(Sadma to the hindi audience) or Veedu – could have been just short stories if one went to write the stories first. Probably a short should have the label – Handle with Care and probably more copyright protection so that dumb ass film makers wont proceed to rape the story in celluloid.
Excellent thought!! i have seen many a times prominent directors remaking short films. Sometimes it works but mostly dumps.
Ajay performance was excellent though film didn’t do well in box office. No opinion about other 2 said movies nor cast.
Great article Harsha…i havent seen Raincoat, so cant comment…but the Gift of Magi was one of my favs growing up..and yes..it was build beautifully..never letting you feel what was to come….
Ahista Ahista…if i am right..the tele-serial was also made by imtiaz ali..yes Star Best Sellers was really awesome…remember the one directed by Anurag?..Ahista Ahista worked for me man…coz it was unpretentious and showed the grey side of a human being the way it ” really” is…it could have done a better in pacing though…
Gayab..was kinda funny to begin with, but later it got on my nerves..nevertheless, there is a pity feeling for Tushar…
Keep writing bud….
Gayab could have been really a decent flick if the frills weren’t as usual as you can get. It were pretty dire. The film did not offer anything new, which it should have, to keep the audience on the feet.
And like Om, I think, Aashita Aashita was a very decent flick. A very underrated film, imo
But are there any short stories which were adapted into films and did wonders at BO?
Imitiaz Ali directed the tele-serial of the witness story in star-plus best sellers..I just watched it today. I wonder what is the name of the main lead in the serial.
even the imtiaz ali story was based on the white nights if i am not mistaken …which also inspired saawariya. someone correct me if i am wrong.
It’s rare to find a film adaptation of a short story that does the original story justice. I think this is more the fault of the screenwriter than the director of a picture. Short Stories are compact and do not lend themselves so naturally to the screenplay structure and format, unlike novels, which are structurally very similar. A short story almost has to be “novelized” before it can even be translated onto the screen.
Nice post! Thanks.
Ahista Ahista…if i am right..the tele-serial was also made by imtiaz ali..yes Star Best Sellers was really awesome…remember the one directed by Anurag?..Ahista Ahista worked for me man…coz it was unpretentious and showed the grey side of a human being the way it ” really” is…it could have done a better in pacing though…
Great post, keep them coming.
Not many films of short stories are a success in given the book what it deserves.
Harsha,
Have you read Annie Proulx’s- BrokeBack Mountain and then seen the Ang Lee movie by the same name? (For the record, the story is 20 pages long, the film is 2.5 hours.) For anyone who wants to compare stories to films, this is the litmus test. How do you compare apples to oranges?
It is futile to talk about story to screen adaptation in the indian context. We all know how the Bollywood Mughals work. Why bother to even read literature when there’s dozens of Hollywood hits and obscure european/oriental films waiting to be put in the blender and then froth out into pelvic thrusts in front of equally well-read desi audiences?