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unholy triangle, with Jackie Shroff playing based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s book The New
Chunni Babu. Finally, 2009 saw Anurag Yorker. The film was a runaway hit with
Kashyap’s modern day Devdas – titled powerhouse performances by Irrfan Khan,
Dev.D. Abhay Deol, Kalki Koechlin, Mahie Tabu, and Kal Penn.
Gill and Dibyendu Bhattacharya were the Vishal Bharadwaj has proven himself
cast of this contemporary version, which master of his craft, and is singularly
earned its own fans amongst dissenting the best director where adaptations are
naysayers and purists. concerned. Who else would dare to stare
Sarat Babu’s 1941 Bengali novella Porinita the Bard’s work down, and create such
spawned films in both, Bengali and Hindi. immense works of art with the stories in
Director Pradeep Sarkar artistically crafted the Indian context. Not one or two, his was
Parineeta in 2005, gifting the industry a hat-trick of hits.
debutante Vidya Balan, along with other His first was Macbeth to Maqbool
co-stars namely Saif Ali Khan Sanjay Dutt in 2004. From untold tragedy to
and Dia Mirza. The other film adapted Mumbai’s underbelly and crime world.
from Porinita is the 1976 drama Sankoch, Outstanding performances by Irrfan
directed by Anil Ganguly. This version had Khan, Tabu, Piyush Mishra, Pankaj Kapur
Jeetendra and Sulakshana Pandit as lead and Naseeruddin Shah. Then Vishal
actors. Basu Chatterjee’s family drama of adapted Othello in 2006 and gave us
1980, Apne Paraye was also based on Sarat Omkara, brilliantly directed, masterful
Chandra’s Bengali Novel Nishkriti. The performances and gritty plot. Bringing
joint family story featured Amol Palekar, to life his vision were Saif Ali Khan, Ajay
Girish Karnad, Utpal Dutt and Shabana Devgn, Kareena Kapoor and Konkana Sen
Aazmi Sharma. Haider, adapted from Hamlet was
Another classic adaptation was the final one in the trilogy, probably the
Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s Pinjar, a weak link, but still impactful. It changed
partition drama, in 2003, based on Amrita the way people regarded Shahid Kapoor,
Pritam’s novel Pinjar. The film had some who gave it his all. The film had Tabu
heartbreakingly good performances from (Vishal’s mascot for the trilogy), Kay Kay
Manoj Bajpayee and the unconventional Menon and Shraddha Kapoor as well.
casting of glamour girl Urmila Matondkar. William Shakespeare’s work has inspired
The Namesake by Mira Nair in 2006, was directors even in the earlier decades in
Indian cinema. His Comedy Of Errors has
had two adaptations. One, the hilarious
case of mistaken identities and confusing
twins- Angoor, directed by Gulzar in 1982,
starring Deven Varma, Sanjeev Kumar,
Moushami Chatterjee and Aruna Irani.
The other not so well known one is Do
Dooni Char (not the recent one, but the
one made in 1968, directed by Debu Sen
and starring Kishore Kumar, Asit Sen and
Vishal Bharadwaj is singularly the best director where adapta-
tions are concerned Tanuja.
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #57 | MARCH 2024 43
