Parineeta does almost 300,000 GBP in the UK!

By Our Correspondent ©2005 Bollyvista.com






A Still from 'Parineeta'
The UTV-distributed 'Parineeta' is clearly on a dream run in the UK. Its commercial response refuses to fade out. Nearly a fortnight after its theatrical release, the magnum opus has notched up close to 300,000 GBP and is still going strong! In fact, the major cinema chains in the UK have given it holdovers despite 'Batman Begins' having released to a thunderous response last week and 'Paheli' releasing this week.

Even a fortnight after its No. 8 position on the UK Top 10 (in its opening weekend), The London Metro tabloid of Wednesday still put the film in the Top 10 (at No. 9). While the film has unarguably gone down well with the audience and critics, what has worked according to sources, is the unprecedented pre-release media exposure, in-theatre publicity, and overall marketing that the distributor gave the film in the UK.

Came across this article - a very nice read


http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/07/03/sto ... 410500.htm

A sensitive book; a hackneyed film

UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA

You've seen Pradeep Sarkar's "Parineeta". Now read Saratchandra's Parineeta and figure out where the film fails.



LOST IN TRANSLATION: The film ignores the social realities of that time.

PRADEEP SARKAR'S film "Parineeta", produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, has generated interest in Saratchandra's novel. But it is interesting to note the striking divergences between the novel and the film.Published in 1914, Saratchandra's Parineeta is set in the early 20th century. Lalita, at the time of innocently garlanding Shekhar, is 14 years old.

Striking differences

Shekhar is much older and driven by a passion in which, as Swagato Ganguly points out in his introduction to the Penguin India translation, "desire and disgust intermingle".Child marriages were customary at the time, and not prohibited by law. The orphan Lalita has grown up performing Shekhar's errands for him, but marriage between the two is out of the question because of the difference in their castes, class and status. Nevertheless, Lalita and Shekhar exchange a flower garland in a complex moment during the "wedding" of Lalita's cousin's doll. But it is only years later, after Nabin Roy dies, that Shekhar will formally acknowledge his relationship with Lalita.

Gurucharan, Lalita's uncle, is a clerk, impoverished by having had to marry off his daughters with heavy dowries. Tired of the demands of religion and custom, he eventually gives up being a Hindu and becomes a Brahmo: and this is the central moment in the novel. By this act, he earns the wrath of Nabin Roy, Shekhar's father, who immediately has a wall built between the two houses.

In the opening lines of the novel, we see the shrivelled-up clerk, Gurucharan, receiving with anguish the news of his fifth daughter's birth. Hookah in hand, lying on his bed, he recalls all his troubles, from the mortgage on his house to the lack of proper clothes to wear to work. All this, established in the opening paragraphs: typical of the range of Saratchandra's humane and complex realism.

The novelist's life, too, began in poverty, in a poor Brahmin family in a Bengal village. Saratchandra understands that poverty and care can shrivel people and wear them down, and that this is the stuff that life is made up of. This is what he writes about. A man who's been told that he can't wear unkempt clothes to work, but whose washerwoman has vanished with half his clothes. The most mundane thing, but it's also what poverty is all about.

And poverty and helplessness are what drive Gurucharan to an act of rebellion by becoming a Brahmo. The most heartfelt speech in the novel is his, when he tells Nabin Babu: "I did not know if my problems would lead me to putting a noose around my neck or whether I should surrender to the Almighty - I did not know which way to go. Ultimately, instead of committing suicide, I decided to submit to divinity... and so converted."

Ambivalent heroes

On the other hand, here is Shekhar's reaction within the novel: "Ma will not want to accept you...all of you are Brahmos and we are Hindus," he says to Lalita later. Later, he reflects: "It was a fact that he could not marry Lalita without his parents' consent. However, if the cause for her marriage to Girin not taking place were made public, how would he be able to handle all the gossip that would reverberate all around?"

Shekhar, then, is not just a sweet young man under his father's thumb; he's a person with his own weaknesses.

No wonder, then, that Swagato Ganguly, in his excellent introduction to the Penguin India translation, remarks on the ambivalence of Saratchandra's heroes: "Compared to the heroes of Tagore's fiction, who are mostly serious and reflective people, Saratchandra's heroes act on impulse and can appear vacillating, indecisive, even petulant... A common theme in his novels is sacrifice, which sublimates desire and acts as a redemptive force. Thus Lalita puts her entire life at stake, and gives up Girin who wants to marry her, because Shekhar had once enacted the Hindu rite of marriage with her even if he disowns her afterwards. But Saratchandra speaks equally eloquently of the discontents of that sacrifice, which is the source of the ambivalence in his heroes as well as his stories... The ambivalence of his characters is, at bottom, the ambivalence felt by tradition-bound individuals cast adrift, yet also paradoxically empowered, by a slowly but irrevocably modernising society."

Adapting the novel to an early 1960s setting for the film means that certain changes will follow: but my difficulty is that there is no apparent reason for the shift in time, while only taking away the essence of Saratchandra's social realism. It retains only the shell of the love interest, and that too rendered unproblematic.

There is far more tension between Lalita and Shekhar than the new film version shows us. At one point Lalita retorts to Shekhar that she will resort to "whatever women have to do", if necessary, in order to return the money. Even in the last lines of the novel, Lalita is speaking to Shekhar's mother Bhuvaneshwari (a far more interesting character in the novel than in the film) about Girin's qualities, and not those of Shekhar.

Saratchandra's novel is set in a city that is modernising painfully at the turn of the century, where social and religious rituals have become oppressively demanding, and where caste and class, gender and religion dictate the permutations of human relationships.

Here is a novel that documents this in a sensitive, complex story, and it is turned into a trite love story instead. Could it be because this is all we want to see when we look back at the past?

Dvdsoil, I know you strongly disliked "Parineeta" but you never commented on the performances of the film - Saif, Vidya, etc,. I like to know what you thought of their work.

Great article about the book. I'm still waiting for my copy of the book to arrive!

Looks like the story-line is very diluted/changed in the new movie ... much like the new version of Devdas was. I wonder if the conversion of the family to become Bramho Samaj would have worked in a new movie?

I still think however, that I prefer Parineeta as a modern representation of a classic novel than Devdas. The whole building of a wall between the two houses works much better due to the reasons in the book rather than the film.

Incidently - in the Bimal Roy version of the book most of everything is out in the open. Lalitha's uncle knows that Shekhar's father wants his house ... Shekhar's mother is a much stronger character ... a there is more of an age difference between Ashok Kumar and Meena Kumari.

Waiting to read the book before I watch the Bimal Roy version in full ... !

As i noted in this thread Vidya Balan is the only actress who has impressed me so far in 2005 and as far Saif he is one my fav main-stream actors in bollywood right now (along with Amir Khan) but still i think i liked him better in Dil Chata Hai, Ek Hasina Thi and to certain extent Darna Mana Hai. I think the disappointment in the film overshadows the impression actor(s) might have made. That said I am looking forward to Being Cyprus - its saif right ?

I doubt it will work - Bramho movement lost its "steam" after independence and the rise in communism.

The fact that a film has deviated from the original novel does not in itself make a film bad, does it? Well, atleast I don't think that it does. In fact in the case of Parineeta personally I think that some of the changes made are an absolute must for the story to work in today's time.

I don't think that it's a bad thing necessarily ... after all most books turned in to movies have elements removed from them. Look at Harry Potter!

I think, however, that it would be good to understand the main messages that Sarat Chandraji was trying to get across in his novel ... and then we will know if the new version of the movie told the same story as his book. As a movie stands it is a good movie ... all I want to know is if it is a good adaptation of his book.

'todays time' <-- Parineeta was set in 60's right ?

Also i am curious to see what changes you noted that that are an 'absolute must for the story to work' ?? .

Maybe its not worth my/anyones time beating this movie to death, but it seems the audience are clearly divided (and that aspect is intersting to me) - some seem to love it while other loath it and it makes we wonder what we missed that you guys caught on ??

I think dvdsoil, as I said it is not greatest of the great! i wont call it pathbreaking or classic..it has its sheer flaws of direction, editing, and bad back ground score! Week charcterization, esp of Sanjay Dutt!!
Exegurated melo dramatic and instillation of commercial elements etc! So thats what it does not go to above 8 imho! stays around it!

It did get more than few things right too!! It falls short of even 1942 that was made lot earlier!

When I say these things re Black, Lakshya etc! people try to chew the heads away! and say that in abysmal affair of hindi cinema where you can declare a super hit like waqt as average film by your criteria, Parineeta will fall in that ABOVE AVERAGE category!

But as I said before..I dont think ABOVE AVERAGE film is a GREAT FILM either!

I should have clarified that what I mean't by 'today's time' was in context of the audience and not what time the movie was set in. Although there are things that would not work with the time the movie is set in too, for eg. the reason for Nabin Roy building the wall, the 'brahmo' thing.


The Indian audience in general, just as some here on this forum, have an aversion to period films and therefore a movie set in 1914 would have been hard to sell and be accepted. Setting the movie in the 1960's I thought was quite clever, since it does not really fall into the 'period' category while still being able to have the old world charm around it. Setting the film in today's time would have also not worked, since the basic plot and characters of the film would be too unbelievable set in 2005. Identifying with 'child marriage' would have also been difficult for today's audience. As for the reason for Nabin Roy's anger,
Gurucharan becoming a Brahmo, is something that no one other than a very small part of the audience would have understood or identified with. In fact given that the film was set in the 1960's, this could really not be used as a reason, because by then the 'Brahmo' movement was pretty much dead and buried. The greed factor used in the film is far more believable and convincing.


I can understand that some of you did not like the film and/or did not think it was anything special or great, but what I cannot understand for the life of me is, why and how someone could actually find the film loathesome. I can't believe you think the film is that bad, because if you really do, I wonder what your opinion is about the other 99% of films made by Bollywood. It is the '1 out of 10' rating that I simply fail to understand, because that classifies the film as being the absolute pits, with absolutely nothing to redeem it. It's funny that even those that have supposedly 'loathed' the film, have also had something positive to say about either someone's acting, or the photography or the music. Given this fact, a '1 out of 10' rating just cannot be justified.

good point!!!

Calling it 'clever' is a stretch imho - adapting a book/play to modern times is tough but if you put on your thinking cap i am pretty sure it can be achieved - e.g.) Vishal Bharadwaj's Maqbool <-- in my opinion a fitting adaptation of macbeth to modern times (Witches replaced by the two cops and one of them predicts the future ) . Alas Sarkar just let us hanging with a very very mediocre adaptation.




Just to clarify I am not the person who gave it 1 out of 10, in case you are wondering I gave it 4 out of 10 and that to for art direction, music and casting . Its a zero in my books for execution a.k.a direction and story telling. I agree with DVDcollector to a certain extent i.e "rating" a movie is "childish", except that i dont rate masterpieces but rate only "ordinary" movies for i dont want them to be mixed up along with “true cinema”. It might not be a stretch to say that i think 99% of bollywood films remind me of Ed-Wood films except its devoid of the passion with which he made them ( ours seem to be a overly commercial venture).

My 'clever' comment was just for choosing the 1960's as the setting for the film. In my opinion it was a good compromise keeping in mind the commercial interests of the film.

I did not mean to direct the ratings comment at you in particular, since I already know that you were not the one that rated the film a '1 out of 10'. By the way based on your comments regarding the film I think your rating of '4 out of 10' is quite appropriate from your point of view.

My god was I disappointed by this movie after watching it a few months after everyone else. After spending hours digesting this thread I have to agree with most of what dvdisoil has said about Parineeta.

I think the ultimate comfort that I have with Parineeta is that it’s not directed by VVC – I can only wait on what he delivers on Eklavya (aka Yagna).

Ali