There aren’t a ton of Bollywood movies inspired by books, but there are some well-made ones. Sifting through book to film adaptations that I wanted to list here was fun, because I am a voracious reader/listener (here’s my book blog) and love Bollywood films.
Here are 5 Book to Movie adaptations you should see:
This is based on Jane Austen’s Emma and was quite an entertaining film. It is not lost on me that the Victorian era “marriage-market” films can be so well Indianised and look so natural in modern day India. Still Aisha does well with the casting – Sonam and Abhay Deol make a charming pair. Amrita Puri plays the Harriet Smith character.
Aisha was a real entertainer, all young love, chic details and snazzy music.
Now I couldn’t quite finish this book by Jhumpa Lahiri – it felt so very Bengali with details and little touches I couldn’t identify with. But it was adapted beautifully for the screen by director Mira Nair – a film I sat through and really liked, in so small part because of the fabulous casting: Irrfan Khan, Tabu and Kal Penn.
The Namesake was moving and poignant.
Vishal Bharadwaj took the bard’s works and adapted three of them for Hindi cinema – Maqbool (Macbeth), Omkara (Othello) and Haider (Hamlet).
Maqbool has been adapted so well into a Mumbai mafia scene – Pankaj Kapoor plays Abbaji the aged leader of the group, Nimmi is his beautiful mistress and Irrfan Khan plays Abbaji’s right hand man. Dark and intense, Maqbool is a must-watch!
Junoon
Shyam Benegal’s masterpiece Junoon is a gorgeous film based on Ruskin Bond’s “A Flight of Pigeons”.
Based on events of the partition, this film focusses on Javed Khan (Shashi Kapoor) and his love for Ruth Labrador (Nafisa Ali), a young English girl who seeks shelter with a Hindu family along with her mother Miriam when her father is killed at a church massacre.
Miriam (Jennifer Kendall Kapoor) is against Javed’s overtures – he wants to marry Ruth and make her his second wife. His first wife Firdaus (Shaban Azmi) is bitter and angry at her husband’s infatuation, but powerless, and this push and pull of warring emotions, combined with the political turmoil of the time the film is set in, makes this beautifully crafted movie superbly engrossing.
1947 Earth
Earth is based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India which tells the story of India’s partition and the upheaval that took place because of the mass movement of people across the newly-created border.
We see events as recounted by Lenny, a 4 year old Parsi girl, now an adult (Shabana Azmi). The story of Lenny, her Hindu ayah Shanta (Nandita Das) and her two Muslim admirers (Aamir Khan, Rahul Khanna) is tragic and riveting.
