Jahanara Begum in Anur: Eyes on The Sunshine

Art is derived from other art; stories are born of other stories.
Hutcheon

To enter into the zone of cinematic adaptation of literature for a filmmaker is to be in a difficult terrain. It is so, not only for the pre-existing story, which one works with but also for the challenges it imposes on the filmmaker to tell the story in an audio-visual medium in its specific grammar and semiotics. At the same time, often a film is judged by the book it is based on or vice versa when an adapted book is reviewed compared with the film it represents. In academic writings or journalistic reviews popular adaptations are mostly seen as secondary and culturally inferior to the literary text by using words like betrayal, tampering, interference, violation or infidelity to mention a few adjectives noted by McFarlane in his book Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation (McFarlane 9-12). The questions of cinema’s fidelity to the word and the element of suspicion for the image remain with the literary critics because of their love of literature, the word i.e. logophilia. As the older art form, Robert Stam argues that literature will always have anxiety and suspicion over any adaptation. Earlier, Virginia Woolf during the silent era of cinema denounced cinema as a parasite and literature as its prey. However, she recognised the cinematic idiom: “If a shadow at a certain moment can suggest so much more than the actual gestures and words of men and women in a state of fear, it seems plain that the cinema has within its grasp innumerable symbols for emotions that have so far failed to find expression” (Woolf). A similar insight is provided by Christian Metz in his book, Film Language, where he elaborates on the role of cinematic grammar, structure and semiotics of cinema, and paves the way for films—by extension intertextual engagement as art forms—to be studied, engaged and researched, as they tell stories through visual medium and movement.

Today the fidelity debate in adaptation studies has lost its ground as we dwell on the plurality of a text conditioned by the reader’s or filmmaker’s intent. The 2006 Linda Hutcheon’s book, A Theory of Adaptation argues adaptation as a process of storytelling by showing (performing them) or interacting (immersing in VR or videogames or theme parks) with stories following Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality, Derrida’s deconstruction and Foucauldian multiplicity. In addition, with the booming social media, VR and vibrant visual culture, cinema and adaptation are understood in a new light i.e., as an art that tells stories using the same narrative techniques of structure, symbol, characterisation and POVs. In re-telling stories, adaptation in cinema has become “palimpsestuous” (Hutcheon 6). These adapted films that overtly announce their indebtedness to another text are placed at the second-degree level but without hierarchical associations. An adaptation then is “derivation and not derivative of a work that is second without being secondary” (Hutcheon 9).
 

Assamese Film and Adaptation
 

Poster of Kothanodi		Zerifa Wahid & Kasvi Sharma in Kothanadi

Linda Hutcheon’s approach to adaptation as derivation and a process has been maintained by many Assamese filmmakers over the years: from the very first film Joymoti (1935) by Jyoti Prasad Agarwala which is an adaptation of Laxminath Bezbaruah’s play Joymoti Konwar to the recent Bhaskar Baruah’s Kothanadi (The River of Fables) based on Laxminath Bezbaruah’s Buri Air Sadhu or Monjul Baruah’s Anur: Eyes on the Sunshine based on Anuradha Sharma Pujaree’s short story “Bhalpuar Xomoi” (“Time for love”). Several adapted films from the 1970s to the 90s by Dr Bhabendranath Saikia on his novels can be seen as the golden era of adaptation as these films converge in the two roles of the writer / literary and the scriptwriter-director / cinematic. In the last decade, among others, there is for instance Ko: Yad (2012) by Manju Borah based on Anil Panging’s novel by the same name.

Posters of Antareen and Kaneen
 

With this long history of adapted films in the Assamese film industry, it is not surprising to find the trilogy of cinematic adaptations of Monjul Baruah from 2015 to 2023. According to the filmmaker, he has experimented with the three types of adaptation mentioned by Michael Klein and Gillian Parker in their edited book, The English Novel and the Movies. His films are acknowledged transportations of ideas, characters, their stories, emotions, lives and issues from existing storytelling to a cinematic medium. His debut feature film Antareen is a literal adaptation of the Sahitya Akademi-winning author, Dr. Rita Chowdhury’s short story who writes on the character, Tarali in “Tai Tetia Xare Ase” (“She was Awake Then”) published in the anthology of short stories, Nayana, Tarali Sujata. It is a feminist take on social injustice, patriarchal exploits and betrayals. Monjul as the scriptwriter and the director draws on a strong character visually to show the indomitable will of Tarali to fight against all odds even during her confinement in an asylum, where she chose to tell her story by writing it down. The film remains true to Chowdhury’s purpose and theme of the story by underscoring the shared pains and fight against patriarchal domination and showing ‘sisterhood’ as agency. The dialogues were written by both Rita Chowdhury and Monjul Baruah to display the strength and determination of the character till her last straw. The involvement of the writer in filmmaking leaves a mark on the cinematic text and its fidelity to the literary text. It is more the similarities with the short story than digressions. The film remains faithful to the story's main plot and is a translation of the world of the literary text into cinematic frames. It is more of a correlation of the two sign systems. However, in the second film, Kaneen displays an intelligent treatment of the source text as he retains the core of the structure of the narrative but plays around with representation. It is interesting to note that the filmmaker has experimented with various ways of film adaptation by following all three paradigms discussed by Klein in his book on adaptation.
 

Anur: Eyes on The Sunshine

During my conversation with Monjul Baruah, he had acknowledged in due course of the discussion on his third film Anur: Eyes on The Sunshine which won a regional award as the Best Feature Film that he takes liberty in representing the story “Bhalpuar Xomoi” (Time for Love) by Anuradha Sharma Pujaree. It follows, what Klein would call a loose adaptation where the literary text is the raw material but the final product is different from it, and where the filmmaker as the auteur re-creates the story. Bhaskar Hazarika in Kothanadi (The River of Fables) similarly treats his literary texts by highlighting the uncanny in all three adapted stories.

Jahanara Begum and Rajat Kapoor in Anur: Eyes on The Sunshine
 

In “Bhalpuar Xomoi”, the writer Anuradha Sharma Pujaree connects love, age (time) and gender. It is focused on the central plot that shows an old retired teacher of mathematics living alone in an Assam-type house. The story begins when the woman suddenly finds an old gentleman in her backyard and their exchange of words leads to new beginnings in an otherwise routine boring life of the old woman. She gradually gets fascinated by his visits, attention and concern. Subsequent visits of the old gentleman make her more comfortable in revealing her fears, ailments and her past life with her deceased husband. Although she remembers her beloved husband fondly, she begins to feel close to this gentleman, who is also alone. He appears in the story as the love and companionship she was perhaps waiting for in her lonely life. The author Anuradha Sharma Pujaree depicts this longing and desire for the companionship of the old woman to convey the message that age cannot restrict human emotions like love and happiness. The character of the old woman challenges patriarchal cultures of restricting and controlling women’s desires and individuality. She is presented in the story as any human being who enjoys companionship, cooking and love. It ends with the proposal of the woman to go on a vacation with the gentleman to Jaipur where they can plan to stay together. The breeze of change blows in and as the curtain moves, they keep holding hands inside the house—this is the radical end of a text by a feminist writer who envisions a future where old age does not restrict freedom of choice.

This short story and the theme have been re-interpreted and re-written by the auteur-director Monjul Baruah for his film. Instead of a feminist perspective, he brings in a universal theme of loneliness, vulnerability and fear of the elderly community of all societies of the contemporary world when older children stay away in distant places for employment opportunities and the parents are left on their own to take care of themselves or are left in charge of a caretaker. From a feminist take, the film concerns with social issues and family structures. Monjul shared his thoughts on the theme to EastMojo:

The subject of the movie is very relevant to present times and with grown-up children leaving their old parents behind for employment opportunities in distant lands, the theme, too, becomes widely universal. I could relate to the story on a personal level when my father, now deceased, was ill and bedridden and worried about how my mother would spend the rest of her life alone. (Monjul Baruah as quoted in EastMojo)

To build up the primary theme, the filmmaker introduces new characters, settings, episodes, dialogues and actions. The mundane problems faced by the senior citizens living alone are highlighted by developing the character of Om, the fellow who runs errands and also fixes the electrical glitches for the woman Anupama Baruah (Jahanara Begum who plays the role of Anupama Baruah, the old woman in the film is an award-winning actor and her performance does justice to initiate apprehensions and vulnerability to the fore). He, along with the maid, serves as the guardian of the old woman while she is their employer. Anupama has no option but to rely on them to go to the market or visit people, so she tries to keep them in good humour by treating them to delicacies like ‘sitol’ fish for lunch. She summons Om in every little emergency and treats him like a son. Om represents the missing patriarch of the house who tries to force opinions on the old woman, takes the liberty to tease the maid and sometimes invents and tells lies to her.

The gestures and arthritis-induced limp in the old woman adds to her vulnerability and this is further enhanced by the sequence of the market visit in the film. Amidst her shopping and limps, she notices for the first time the old gentleman who keeps looking at her. An added aspect of the fragile space that the auteur creates for Anupama is the references to crime against senior citizens in the film by the police inspector and in the news creating an aura of uncertainty and stress for the viewers.

The sound and the slow movement as she staggers around in the film in the dark at night, as electricity goes off, with a knife in one hand and a mobile torch in the other implies the sheer hopelessness of the situation as she pretends to feel confident and secured by carrying the small knife, which she may have never used to confront anyone in her entire life. The little details in the film projects repeatedly how empathy grows in the viewers and make them think of the alarming problems of our family structures, globalisation and a late capitalist culture. For instance, the director draws our attention to the dim lights and silence of the night when she, in her anxiety and feeling of insecurity hears sounds and movements in and around her house; and she goes searching for imagined predators or thieves holding the knife as she limps her way through. Her being in constant fear is poignant with the use of low light and close mid-angle shots as the camera moves slowly along with her as she inspects her surroundings. This effect is created by the colour palette, sound and music, and projection of empty spaces with the shot through empty doorways and rooms devoid of movement and people reverberating her loneliness and apprehensions. More than the dialogue it is the camera that stealthily initiates the theme of vulnerability. The slow pace of the camera movements compliments the staggering walk of Anupama keeping the audience on their toes. It contributes to the reception of the character’s fear, and anxiety and justifies her need for a companion. In such a situation, the audience gets a sigh of relief as the bond grows between the stranger, an old IAS officer and Anupama. The relief comes from the mutual support they show each other but this is kept in abeyance and the ending is not as radical as Pujaree’s story. Monjul Baruah as the auteur-director ends the film with suggestions of the demise of the old woman due to the inverter that catches fire. She panics and, in her inability to act, she collapses. Similarly, we’re also made to believe that the gentleman in her life was a dream and not real. The film, despite having a woman protagonist, concentrates on the primary issues of the elderly who are vulnerable irrespective of gender. But Pujaree’s ideology and intent are that of a radical who debunks common notions of love, old age and its associated cultural codes. The film hesitates to linger on the bold attempt of Pujaree in her story. Here, the old gentleman proposes the vacation and the woman begins to question it. This immediately reflects the fundamental difference in ideology and intent of the filmmaker in telling the story. The film underscores the very question that Pujaree wants to denounce: what will people say if they know that they are travelling together and by implication living together? Her son from a distant land would have disapproved of it.

The literary text has found its wings in Monjul Baruah’s Anur as he re-writes it to address vital topics of contemporary society that need attention in government policies and from the audience. The film subtly depicts a shout-out for not only security for the elderly community but also asks us to be more sensitive towards the community. The cinematic adaptation in this case extends the literary text and its trajectory to layered subtexts of crucial existential and social issues of the globalised world, justifying what Barthes meant in his The Death of the Author and the multiplicity of a text. So, to adapt is to reinterpret, to adjust, to bring a different point of view in the telling of an existing story.

As Walter Benjamin in 1936 says storytelling is always the art of repeating stories (as quoted in Hutcheon) and adaptation is the art of interpreting stories, repeating or re-creating and trans-creating the stories by the human imagination in numerous ways possible. Conceptually, adaptation can expand, contract or alter the literary text by arranging a cultural, temporal or ideological re-creation. In the case of Assamese cinema and Anur, adaptations have allowed the readers and viewers to think of a literary text in a new light. What is common in literature and film then is its immense potential and inclination towards narratives and discourses.
 

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of an Author”. Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath 142-148. Fontana 1977. ebook.

Bhuyan, Kalpa Jyoti. “Monjul Baruah’s Anur: A timeless tale of old age, love and loneliness”. EastMojo 31 October 2022. pp.

Hutcheon, Linda. The Theory of Adaptation. Routledge 2006. ebook.

McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1996. Ebook.

Stam, Robert. Literature and Film: A guide to the theory and practice of film adaptation. Blackwell 2005.

Woolf, Virginia. “Cinema” https://www.e-flux.com/notes/628115/the-cinema