Saturday, December 29, 2018

Souryatoran - Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen Film.

Remake of Fountainhead, which - the author doesn't say so on the book at least, if at all she admits it elsewhere - is in fact very closely based on art and philosophy of architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, as he himself expresses in his autobiography, apart from his own life and work. This, the author mashed with a part of the famous work of Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - involving the architect who designs a house, far away from the town on a hill with much of surrounding land belonging to the estate, for a client whose wife he's completely in love with. Result was the most famous and popular book by this author, Ayn Rand.

Even within the first half an hour it becomes apparent how seamlessly the adaptation of the book into Bengal ethos has been worked, in that for example the servant of the senior maverick architect agonising over his starving, and the hero effortlessly and successfully telling his new eccentric boss to eat, with the servant in tears one can feel, is all very Bengal.

So is the slum exploration of the heroine brought up wealthy but working as a journalist, and the encounter of the couple changed considerably into a far more natural circumstance. Only, subsequent attempt to incorporate a version of the original is out of sync with the spirit.

Sudden view of the quintessential photo on the wall 33:04, The Murphy Baby, favourite of society in India during that era for decades, makes one oh, so nostalgic!

Again, the original bribe turned obsession motif of meeting of the rich guy with the heroine is here turned into a casual glance at the slum turned obsession and a blackmail via taking over all her wealth, with the whole temple interlude cut out and a whole character too, that of Ellsworth Toomey, who was after all Ayn Rand's caricature of Gandhi.

But in the process, it's not just the main couple that's more human, it's the rich guy too somehow more vulnerable, worthy of compassion here.

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This, part two, begins with the hero reinstated as architect, honourably. The poor housing project is here turned into the heroine's dream project and the condition she has agreed to marry the rich guy. The house seems designed by the elder architect that the hero aspired to learn from, and the twists and turns in the couple seem later copied in at least one or two, if not more, Hindi films, where she is upstanding until he reminds her she is at every male's mercy, and she wilts.

Charming detail, sound of wind and rain during the song 16:00. Here on the relationships of the three, too, take a turn quite different from both the originals - Fountainhead as well as The Forsyte Saga - and get closer to films or literature of West, what with the prospective husband being in doubt and seeking to discover their togetherness by pretend absense, but stays yet subtler than the routine drama.

With all those changes, various whole parts dropped and more, arriving at the destruction of the dream housing for poor project and courtroom thereafter is not as organic here as in Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. It's turned instead into a naive leftist utopia where provision of a good housing for poor is all it's needed for them to achieve quality of life.





https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aVOBtkNvfD4

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_WciJPiFlz4

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