It is never easy to recreate a literary classic as a motion picture, let alone one written in another language, set in another culture, by one of the language’s literary masters. The likes of Vishal Bhardwaj - who has recreated three of William Shakespeare’s most popular plays as Hindi motion pictures - would know the wide range of skills required to adapt a classic to an entirely new linguistic, cultural, and of course, periodic setting.
First and most fundamentally comes the production team’s ability to translate the given text into its adoptive language; to be able to comprehend and reproduce its story and dialogue, and to develop a screenplay out of it. Second comes the need to transform the given story from its original culture to its adoptive culture (which is much harder than it looks). Third, is the filmmakers’ ability to adapt the story to contemporary times (possibly just about as hard as it looks). And last is the director’s ability to do justice to the text’s pictorial magnificence; to help the audience feel the plethora of sensations that the readers must have felt when they read the said book. This, of course, is too much to ask of most directors - even those who are adapting contemporary text to film form (Harry Potter fans would know what I’m talking about).
It is needless, then, to say that producing an adaptation of a foreign language classic as a motion picture set in modern times, in another geographical and cultural setting is a very, very ambitious task. While ambition is mostly a desirable quality in those striving for success - for how would one rise above the crowd without reaching for the skies - it can drag one back as easily as it can launch one into fame, if not developed with caution. With Siddharth and Abhishek Kapoor the case, unfortunately, is the latter.
Katrina Kaif with her new look for the film
Last month, the producer-director duo of Siddarth Kapur and Abhishek Kapoor saw the release of their joint effort, Fitoor, a remake of none other than Charles Dickens’ classic Great Expectations. For the uninitiated, Great Expectations is the story of Pip and Estella - essentially of Pip - and the love of the former towards the latter. Pip is a young orphaned boy who lives with his disagreeable elder sister and her pleasant husband. Since the family is poor, Pip is asked by a Miss Havisham - a wealthy spinster - to come and work at her home as a helper. Miss Havisham also has an adopted daughter called Estella. When Pip arrives at Miss Havisham’s place, he sees Estella and instantly falls in love with her. The rest of the story is about how Estella moves on with her life as she grows up and Pip never falls out of love with her.
As you can probably see, it’s a love-across-the-classes story that has been beaten to a pulp since Salim and Anarkali lived it.
it's a love-across-the-classes story that has been beaten to a pulp
To be fair to the motion picture, Fitoor was impressively true to its inspiration. England was replaced by Kashmir, Pip by Noor (played by Muhammad Abrar in childhood and Aditya Roy Kapur in adulthood), Estella by Firdaus (Tanisha Sharma and Katrina Kaif) and Miss Havisham by Begum Hazrat Jaan (Tabu). The story was identical almost scene-by-scene to Dickens’ masterpiece. But was that a good thing?
The first question mark to appear in my mind before watching the film was: how would the filmmakers be able to sell a story that is not only known to a lot of the audience, but has been experienced by them in various other forms, hundreds of times before? From Mughal-e-Azam to Muqaddar ka Sikandar to Heer Ranjha, the subcontinent’s audience has been watching the same old story unfold before their eyes for over half a century. So what were the possibilities of adding appeal to the film?
The only way, I believed, the filmmakers could have made Fitoor appealing for the audiences was either by making it a more appealing cinematic experience, adding catchy dialogue, or by, well, adding eye candy. Unfortunately, as is the case with most modern Hindi filmmakers, the production team of Fitoor apparently settled for the first and the last (which explains the casting of Katrina Kaif). The cinematography of the film was particularly appealing, especially in the song “Pashmina”, so were the sets and the actors’ styling. It was overall a good job in the visual department. Everything else was pretty much bland.
The acting performances were less than memorable by each of the lead actors - yes, even by Tabu. Aditya Roy Kapur showed an improvement from his previous acting ventures but Aashiqui 2 remains his best acting effort thus far. Katrina Kaif was, not surprisingly, outdone by the child actor Tanisha at portraying the regal Estella/Firdous. Don’t get me wrong, Kaif certainly had the looks for the part - she was gorgeous as always - but the inherent grace of Estella was nowhere to be seen; the part certainly required someone more arrogant than Ms. Kaif (she may take this as a compliment to her personality, but a definite thumbs-down to her acting skills). Tabu was the best of the trio, but still left a little something wanting in her performance. Perhaps it was the lack of utter eccentricity that characterised Miss Havisham or slightly coarse dialogue delivery that prevented Tabu’s act from being a memorable one (which certainly had the potential of being it - they don’t create characters as unique as Miss Havisham every day).
However, to end on a positive note, the filmmakers surprisingly added a personalised touch to the film that added value to the end product: the theme of Kashmir and the age-old competition between India and Pakistan over the piece of land. Could Firdous be the symbol of a free Kashmir that Kashmiris like Noor have such a deep, intense longing for? Let’s leave it to the audiences to decide.
