Classic wine in new avatar

Saibal Chatterjee on producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s screen adaptation of Sarat Chandra’s literary masterpiece

THE year: 2002. The creator: that intrepid maverick, Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The inspiration: the timeless Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The result: a super-successful Devdas. The literary fountain from which Hindi cinema once used to draw most of its substance hasn’t dried up.

Exactly three years on, an equally talented Mumbai filmmaker, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, in the guise of elder-statesman producer and co-scenarist, is ready with another screen adaptation of a classic Sarat Chandra love story, Parineeta, first filmed by the legendary Bimal Roy in 1953, with Ashok Kumar and Meena Kumari in the lead roles.

So, is Parineeta, directed by first-timer Pradeep Sarkar, another success story in the making? "When I was growing up in Kashmir, I read Hindi translations of most of Sarat Chandra’s stories. They left a deep impression on my mind. I always wanted to adapt one of his stories for the screen."

Did Vidhu Vinod Chopra also have Bimal Roy’s version of Parineeta at the back of his mind when he embarked on his own adaptation of the story? "No, not at all. I do not much care for that film. My inspiration is Sarat Chandra," says Chopra.

Parineeta is a rare contemporary Bollywood film that has been shot from start to finish in Kolkata. The only time the unit left the eastern metropolis was for a schedule in the hills of Darjeeling, where one of the film’s lead actors, Saif Ali Khan, was captured aboard the very toy train on which his mother, Sharmila Tagore, rode in the late 1960s as Rajesh Khanna serenaded her with Meri sapnon ki rani kab aayegi tu in Shakti Samanta’s Aradhana.

Says Chopra: "I could have done the shoot in Mumbai, but that would have robbed Parineeta of its ambience. Kolkata is indeed an important ‘character’ in the narrative."

In the latest version of a story that Sarat Chandra wrote in 1914, the drama has been transported from turn-of-the-century Kolkata to a politically turbulent early 1960s metropolis in flux. "Pradeep Sarkar was an automatic choice for the director’s job. He was born in Kolkata. I couldn’t have directed Parineeta," says Chopra.

Sarkar, a maker of commercials and music videos, has been associated with Vinod Chopra Productions for six years as a director of song sequences, having contributed to both Mission Kashmir and Munnabhai M.B.B.S., one of last year’s biggest box office hits.

"Most of the technicians who have worked on Parineeta are from Bengal," reveals Chopra. Music director Shantanu Moitra, sound designer Bishwadeep Chatterjee and editor Hemanti Sarkar are on that list. Parineeta is scheduled for release in June.

Parineeta, avers Chopra, is the culmination of a long-nurtured dream. Sarat Chandra is, however, not the only Indian writer that Chopra admires. "I would also love to adapt Munshi Premchand’s Godaan for the screen some day," adds Chopra.

While Saif Ali Khan and Sanjay Dutt play the two principal male characters, Shekhar and Girish respectively, newcomer Vidya Balan essays the role the female protagonist of Parineeta, Lolita. Also in the cast are Raima Sen and Dia Mirza.

Parineeta, a classic love story about a strong-willed girl whose notions about love, marriage and commitment come into direct conflict with those of the man she has known and secretly admired since childhood, has the kind of look and feel that immediately sets it apart from run-of-the-mill Bollywood films.

That certainly isn’t unusual for a Vidhu Vinod Chopra film. The producer-writer-director’s oeuvre includes such acclaimed films as Khamosh, Parinda and Mission Kashmir, which was the last film that Chopra directed. That was way back in 2000. Isn’t he itching to wield the director’s megaphone again?

With Parineeta ready for release and a sequel to Munnabhai already off the blocks, Chopra has plunged into his next film, Yagna, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt. To be shot in arid Rajasthan, the ambitious Yagna will represent another significant change of location for the director.

He is understandably excited about Yagna. But he hasn’t abandoned his long-nurtured dream to helm an international, English-language production. Titled Move Five, it is slated to be psychological thriller designed for the global market.

As things stand, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s world straddles an astoundingly wide spectrum. From the street-smart Munnabhai to literary giant Sarat Chandra to an English-language psychological thriller featuring frontline Hollywood stars to a mega-budget desert drama toplined by Amitabh Bachchan, he has all of them on his crowded creative canvas.

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