![\"Teen](\"http:\/\/landc.wpengine.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/05\/Teen-Kanya-729x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>Satyajit Ray’s Teen Kanya (Three Daughters) (1961)<\/p><\/div>\n
In discussing the aesthetics of film adaptation one must be clear about the difference between translating a literary piece of work from the print media of words to the audio-visual media of film.<\/p>\n
There can be several reasons for such adaptations ranging from the director\u2019s love for the story; reinterpreting the word text into a film text; the director\u2019s belief that a period in history can be beautifully recreated in the visual medium; he wishes to filmize because the story as literature reflects his own ideological stand on a particular subject\/issue and he uses the film medium is to convey this ideology to his audience.<\/p>\n
Whatever be the reason of the cinematic adaptation of the literary text (and sometimes multiple adaptations of the same text), the subject is intriguing and befits critical discussion. The filmisation of a literary piece of work depends on two aspects by the director, namely (a) his approach towards the literary source and (b) the reason why he wishes to place this on film.<\/p>\n
All problems linked to the two mediums of cinema and literature mainly spring from the common belief that cinema ought to be a celluloid translation of the literary source it is based on and that no permutations and combinations through the director\u2019s personal creative inputs should be used. There is a difference between translating<\/em> a literary piece of work from two-dimensional media of the printed word to the three-dimensional media of cinema and adapting<\/em> a literary work for cinema.<\/p>\n Literature also functions as an inspiration<\/em> for a film in which case, the filmmaker does not feel the need to remain rigid about the literary source. Chidananda Dasgupta insists that a film adapted from literature \u201cwould contain something of the chemistry of the mind of the filmmaker.\u201d He says that not only would some aspects of incidents and characters undergo a change, \u201cbut the very composition of the elements, the molecular structure if you like, would undergo a transmutation.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n Since Tagore\u2019s works are universal \u2014 in time, space, emotions and human relationships, they offer filmmakers a challenge to make the film as powerful, credible and appealing on celluloid as it is in print. A film based on, adapted from, interpreted from Tagore\u2019s oeuvre offers scope for argument, discussion, analysis, debate and questions among the audience, critics and scholars.<\/p>\n Soumitra Chatterjee in Tapan Sinha’s Khudito Pashan<\/a> A brief survey of films adapted from Tagore\u2019s works shows that six silent films beginning with Manbhanjan<\/em> (1923) to Noukadubi <\/em>(1932) and forty-three talkies in Bengali have been produced till date. This excludes documentaries and feature-films that are in production stage and are to be released soon.<\/p>\n Beginning with Notir Puja <\/em>(1932) directed by Tagore himself, the long list ends with a film released in July 2010 called Musalmanir Galpo<\/em> and Laboratory<\/em> released in November 2010. It is interesting to note that of the nine Hindi productions, six were made by Bengali directors.[2]<\/p>\n Interestingly, apart from the stalwarts of the New Theatre productions, almost all significant directors in Bengal, whatever may be their agenda, adapted Tagore\u2019s works as a kind of rite of passage. Though a comprehensive list of all adaptations till date does not fall in the purview of this paper, I would like to mention a few major directors and the different ways they adapted Tagore\u2019s stories for the screen.<\/p>\n Charulata: The Lonely Wife (Pic: Movie still from Internet)<\/p><\/div>\n Satyajit Ray made three films\u00a0 — Teen Kanya<\/em> (1961), Charulata <\/em><\/a>(1964), Ghare-Baire<\/em><\/a> (Home and the World, 1984) based on Tagore\u2019s work. For Satyajit Ray, there was no special problem in filming a Tagore classic. Certain elements in the story attracted him to it in the first place, but he would not hesitate to reconstruct some others to meet the requirements of cinema.<\/p>\n For instance, in justifying the changes he made at the end of Postmaster<\/em>, Ray wrote:<\/p>\n \u2026That was my interpretation as a twentieth century artist working in 1960. The purist objects to these changes. Well, I made them because I am also an artist with my own feelings. I was using Tagore\u2019s rendering of a story as a basis and this was my interpretation of it.<\/em> [3]<\/p>\n Again, most debates on Charulata<\/em> are around Ray\u2019s fidelity to the Tagore original, since Tagore and his works still remain too sacrosanct to be subjected to a filmmaker\u2019s interpretations. Ray personally responded to attacks on his alleged distortion of the Tagore original \u201cNastaneer\u201d through his article \u201cCharulata Prasange\u201d in the collection of articles in Bishay Chalachitra<\/em> [4].<\/p>\n In another article he explains:<\/p>\n \u2026I know I have made a story by Tagore into a film. It is an interpretation, a transcreation, not a translation. Without Tagore there would be no Charulata. After all, he set me off, he was the reason for it. There is a lot of the original in the film A certain state of mind which the author describes beautifully with words\u2026you can\u2019t do that in films. You have to use a different method. Tagore is a great poet, a great writer. He uses wonderful language to describe loneliness and all the small things that go on in the mind. All the time, you have to find something for Charulata to do to establish her state of mind. That is the challenge of the cinema.<\/em>[5]<\/p>\n Ghare Baire Coming to the adaptation of Ghare Baire, <\/em>though it is a well-known fact now, Ray had been nurturing the idea of filming it way back in 1946, much before Pather Panchali<\/em> emerged and though the 1984 film production almost thirty-eight years later differed a great deal from the early Hollywoodian script, this film has the longest gestation period in Ray’s ouevre. <\/em>He confessed that he had been suffering the \u201cpin-pricks\u201d of his conscience for thirty-six years and so it can be well assumed that the story of Ghare Baire<\/em> had been transcreated in his mind long before he began the film.<\/p>\n Except for the ending, the film version of Ghare Baire<\/em> is very closely similar to Tagore’s text, but we are puzzled when we read Ray’s statement that he \u201cdid not use a single line of Tagore’s dialogue in the film as \u201cthe way people talk in the novel would not be acceptable to any audience\u201d (Chitrabhaas<\/em> 99, translation mine). So much for Ray.<\/p>\n Tapan Sinha, who made four very successful adaptations of Tagore\u2019s stories — Kabuliwala<\/em><\/a> (1957), Khudito Pashan<\/em><\/a> (The Hungry Stones, 1960), Atithi and <\/em>Kadambini<\/em>. In Khudito Pashan<\/em><\/a>, he used dreams and fantasy to heighten the intrigue of the romance not there in Tagore\u2019s story.<\/p>\n In other films, he used Tagore\u2019s songs generously and to good effect. In Daughters of the Century<\/em>, Sinha chose Tagore\u2019s Living or Dead<\/em> (1904).\u2013 stated:<\/p>\n \u201cMany people had told me that it is very difficult to transfer a Tagore story into film. But it is not true. If you understand Tagore well and internalize his statements, then the task becomes simpler. But before that one has to know Rabindranath well.\u201d<\/em> (translation mine).<\/p>\n Purnendu Patrea, who made Streer Patra<\/em> (1972) and Malancha<\/em> (1979) reminiscences:<\/p>\n \u201cA waft of fresh air still enters whenever I remember the difficult days of writing the film script of \u201cStreer Patra.\u201d It was the wind of creation or the pleasure of creation. I had to search for answers to thousands of questions, what would be the names of the other characters apart from Mrinal and Bindu; how I could depict the historical period of the story.\u201d<\/em> (translation mine)<\/p>\n Chokher Bali<\/a> Mrinal Sen, the diehard leftist director who had critiqued Tagore and his landed gentry background, made a film in 1970 called Icchapuran <\/em>produced by Children\u2019s Film Society. Based on a story written in 1895, the fantasy and pure humour in the story probably attracted Sen to direct it.<\/p>\n Rituparno Ghosh\u2019s tryst with Tagore began with Chokher Bali<\/em><\/a> (2003) and the soon to be released Noukadubi<\/em><\/a>. Apart from facing a lot of criticism for casting the glamorized Bollywood diva Aishwarya Rai in the role of the young widow Binodini, Ghosh justified his directorial liberty especially with the ending of the story. In his adaptation of Chokher Bali, <\/em>Rituparno Ghosh attempts a negotiation with the \u2018woman question\u2019 that occupies a central position in the discourses of nationalism.<\/p>\n At the end of the novel, we find a penitent and reformed Binodini sobered and educated by experience graciously forgiving Mahendra and asks forgiveness in turn before leaving for Kashi, the haven of Hind widows. That this ending is contrived becomes clear from Tagore\u2019s own dissatisfaction with the end of the story when he stated, \u201cEver since Chokher Bali<\/em> was published, I have always regretted the ending. I ought to be censured for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Two months before he died, he wrote again, \u201cI need to be seriously criticized for it, I deserve this criticism. I should be punished for it.\u201d<\/p>\n For Rituparno Ghosh, this became a good opportunity to invest Binodini with agency resulting in transforming her rather abruptly and unaccountably into a feminist whose quest for autonomy merges with her search for \u2018desh\u2019, or nation homeland. In an interview given to AsiaSource .org, Ghosh justifies his reason for deviating from the novel and states:<\/p>\n \u2026today when you read the novel, you can make out that this cannot be the ending. A lot of people wanted Binodini to get married to Behari. I think that would have been a solution 30 years ago when people were propagating widow remarriage\u2026But in today\u2019s time, I think a woman can live on her own completely. She does not require a male surname, or title, or an appendage of any kind to help her lead her life \u2026In the letter she writes when she leaves, Binodini mentions her own desh, which is not \u2018country\u2019, it should not be translated or read as country; it should be read as a space, a space or domain\u2026And that is what Binodini speaks of at the end.<\/em><\/p>\n Noukadubi (in Bengali and Hindi) is based on Rabindranath Tagore’s famed novel by the same name<\/p><\/div>\n Before talking about how Noukadubi<\/em> \u2013 a tale of four cross-wired lovers gets a contemporary makeover in Ghosh\u2019s production \u2013 it has to be mentioned that this story happens to be the most filmed adaptation of any Tagore work[6]. It is a rather progressive Bollywood style story from Galpaguccha<\/em> (1912) and maybe because it had raised eyebrows during the bard\u2019s lifetime for its \u201cfreewheeling slant,\u201d inspired Ghosh to adapt it.<\/p>\n Filmmaker Suman Mukhopadhyay was inspired to adapt the novel\u00a0Chaturanga<\/em> into a film in 2009 because he felt that \u201c<\/em>the socio-cultural context is that of a nation under colonial rule that is trying to find its own voice. That search is still on even in post-colonial India. Sachish is the epitome of that search\u201d[7].<\/p>\n When asked by the interviewer about how he resolved this issue when making the film and how much liberty he felt free to take, Mukhopadhyay replied:<\/p>\n Tagore is always a difficult phenomenon to explore in the Bengal milieu. People are oversensitive about him. Firstly, all Bengalis think that they understand Tagore. And they have their preset images of the characters. And that creates lots of trouble for a contemporary artist who wishes to re-explore Tagore.<\/em><\/p>\n If you notice how Shakespeare is reinvented in the West \u2014 It is a revolution.\u00a0But Tagore has just been out of the copyright a few years back. It is difficult for Bengalis to accept any new intervention regarding Tagore.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Consequently, Chaturanga, the film, is both hated and loved, about 50:50, I would say. It is Tagore\u2019s genius that he unified and integrated the social dilemmas that a nation was facing through the novel. I don\u2019t agree with those who say that Chaturanga is a novel of ideas. It is a very living text and the work of a genius and a visionary.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026I have taken liberties as much as I needed to take for the film. It is a film and film has its own language. One cannot go back to the literary text and blame the filmmaker for his detours and interventions.<\/em>[8]<\/p>\n Such examples may be multiplied but the moot point remains that each director finds his own individual reason for filming a Tagore story.<\/p>\n To conclude, it can therefore be unanimously accepted that as long as Tagore\u2019s works will be adapted to the screen, critics will go on harping that the sanctity of the literary text has been destroyed.<\/p>\n![\"Khudito](\"http:\/\/landc.wpengine.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/05\/khudito-pashan.jpg\")
(Pic: Youtube)<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Charulata:](\"http:\/\/landc.wpengine.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/03\/Charulata_Satyajit-Ray_1964-1024x736.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Ghare](\"http:\/\/landc.wpengine.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/05\/ghare-baire.jpeg\")
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Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Victor Banerjee, Swatilekha Chatterjee
Director: Satyajit Ray<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Chokher](\"http:\/\/landc.wpengine.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/05\/chokher-bali-6.jpg\")
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Cast: Aishwarya Rai, Prosenjit, Tota Roy Choudhury, Raima Sen
Director: Rituparno Ghosh<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Noukadubi\"](\"http:\/\/landc.wpengine.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/noukadubi.jpg\")
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