Viewer’s Review
Film: A Suitable Boy
By OP Srivastava*
The celebrated director Mira Nair’s “ A Suitable Boy ”, an adaptation of celebrated novelist Vikram Seth’s 1300 page famous novel would have evoked the expectations of being a masterpiece of a kind. But have no misunderstanding it is not a film aimed at Indians staying in India, it is a series made for the International audience, although the story is set in India and the characters are Indians, yet they all lack Indian-ness be it in their uneven retro accent or their well crafted body language.
The characters seem to have been ‘filmed as written’ in an English novel and then planted on an intricately designed tapestry named India thereby failing to evoke the smell, texture and the chemistry of Indian soil. To my mind, this is so because of the loss in transmission.
Allow me to explain. It is a film based on a story of few Indians, living in the India of 1953, written by an Indian in English language. An Englishman then converts the story written in English about Indian characters into a screenplay in English looking at India through the prism of the written word in the English novel, which in all honesty was written for International audience rather than the Indians living in the real India or shall we say Bharat. So the world which the film has finally created on screen has been transmitted through the English- coated (for lack of a better word) eye lenses of the novelist, scriptwriter and director and hence the loss in transition of the ‘rootedness’ in the film.
I wish the film’s screenplay was written by a desi Indian, who would have translated the story according to purely Indian sensibilities. Let me remind you how popular was an earlier film by the same director. I am referring to Monsoon Wedding. There also all the crew was non- Indian but for the scriptwriter- Sabrina Dhawan, (born in Delhi working in New York) was an Indian having lived in India.
Technically, ‘A Suitable Boy’ is a very well made film with an intricately designed production canvas with authentic looking locations, architecture and a rich ensemble of handloom tapestry of the times. Even the music and the ghazals used seem to be well chosen to represent the mood of the period. The film has also been aptly casted with new faces like Tanya Maniktala, Danesh Razvi, Mikhail Sen well supported by Namit Das, Ram Kapoor, Vijay Varma, Rasika Duggal, Shubham Saraf, Vijay Pathak, Mahira Kakkar, Shahana Goswami and Ishaan Khatter. Yet the integrated effect called the film fails to evoke the soul and spirit of India of 1953. It was the time, when a young India was trying to find its voice in the melting pot of new choices which the new -found freedom had just presented before them.
In essence, the story of the novel/film also tries to capture this hesitation and indecisiveness through the searching eyes and the wavering mind of the protagonist Lata Mehra, who is looking for a suitable boy, a character very well portrayed by Tanya Maniktala. Enjoy the journey of six episodes, you may find a bit of India of 1953 in the searching eyes and charming smile of Lata Mehra.
OP Srivastava is a National Award winning filmmaker.
