Films on books

I have never been this lucky. Within a few days of having finished reading The English Patient, I promptly found the film’s VCD. It was perhaps after a very long time that I saw a film as moving and wonderful as this and I cannot decide whether I loved the film more or the book. It is so rare to find films so true to the books they are based on. Be it the patient’s room, the kitchen, the cave…and even the appearances of the nurse, Hana, and Kip, the Indian sapper, were just the way I had imagined them to be while reading the book. While Kip’s role wasn’t as big in the film as it was in the book and the film and the original text did not really end the same way, yet, the film was certainly true to the spirit of the remarkable story.
While reading the book there were a few lines that stood out (call me a die hard romantic for picking up these as favourites from a book full of gems) like “When you leave me, forget me" and “I just want you to know, I don’t miss you yet” (to which Katharine says “you will”) and these were so movingly said in the movie as well.
However, its not always that you fall in love with a film based on a book that you adored. Most films are disappointments and one that comes to my mind is the film Tim based on the book by the same name by Colleen McCullough.I read Tim over a decade ago when I was still in school but, to date, itremains one of my favourite books. For, it was a fine love story realistically told. The love story of a mentally challenged 22-year-old Tim with a woman in her forties, who is described as one with harsh features and not really the kind of a woman men Tim's age would fancy was not only unusual but it also had the most unusual ending, a non-mush, bitter truth end to an otherwise perfect love story.Tim's helpless attraction to Mary when she takes him out on long drives and his first child-like attempt to kiss her end with Mary and Tim getting married. At this point, I remember wondering why there were so many pages still left in the book as I thought the story ended with the two getting married and living happily ever after.However, in a freak kitchen accident Tim lands up in the hospital and Mary like alovelorn teenager runs around looking after him. Reality bites, when adoctor attending to Tim asks a visibly ageing Mary to take rest and not getovertly anxious about her `son'.
Well, I would have perhaps liked the film had I not read the book. For me, the book’s charm was in the way it ended and the film simply glossed over it. I would have loved to see the best part of the book performed to perfection but was so disappointed to see it end abruptly (at least I thought so).
Another film which was strikingly true to the original text was Maqbool, based on Macbeth. Before the film released I wondered how the director would adapt the Shakespearean play to contemporary Indian context. The opening scene of the film dispelled all doubts in my mind. The film started with the thunder and lightning that characterized the opening scene of Macbeth with prophecies being made by two evil cops playing the three witches in the play who drive Macbeth to destruction. While some friends called Maqbool a rather dark film, I simply felt that the director was true to the book and did not take the so-called “creative freedom”.
I gave full marks to the director for having brought out my favourite part in the play so well: Lady Macbeth scrubbing her hands clean of imaginary blood (“even the perfumes of Arabia will not clean this little hand” in stark contrast to what she had told Macbeth earlier in the play after he kills Duncan “A little water clears us of this deed”). Tabu, as Lady Macbeth, was mind blowing.