To begin with, it is a foregone conclusion that any movie in which Aishwarya Rai has the pivotal role is bound to bomb at the box office. In addition, the intricate detail which makes the book so enthralling is totally absent from the movie, making it seem incomplete to those who have been fortunate enough to read the book, and thoroughly confusing to those who haven’t.
At the very beginning of her novel, Chitra Divakaruni describes India as a "land of ardent poetry and aquamarine feathers." That brief phrase sums up the dichotomy of fantasy and reality that makes up the book, that is lost in the translation into the cinematic medium.
The plot of the movie completely deviates from the original storyline of the book, beginning from the intrinsic fact that the lead character Tilottama is a young woman forced by the rules of her profession into masquerading as an old and bent creature, which Aishwarya is most definitely not, and makes no pretense of being. The very essence of the tale is lost by this omission, because it is from this basic premise that the story of the illegitimate love between the wild foreigner Raven, with a haunting past that he is unable to escape from, and Tilottama, the mistress of spices, trapped in a guise that ill suffices to curb her youthful desires, but confined by the burden of her duties and her allegiance to the spices to the depths of her store, arises.
Shampati’s fire, the mystical fire that transports the mistresses to their destinies, and recalls them when they ‘upset the delicate axis of giving and receiving on which [the mistresses’] lives are held precarious’, brought into existence by the fury of the red chillies, which bring destruction upon themselves and all around them when crossed, is integral to the story because it is symbolic both of the strong undercurrent of retribution that runs through the entire story, and, inspired by the mythical bird of Shampati from the Ramayana which rises phoenix like from the ashes, of the impending rebirth of Tilo. Though present in the movie in the form of the warnings of the crackling red chillies, this concept is hardly explained, and so thoroughly baffles the uninitiated.
Overall, this is the worst book to movie translation I have ever seen. Gurinder Chadda and her husband really ought to stay away from screenplay writing because they’re truly incompetent at it. To give them some credit, the movie is very appealing to the eye, but in the attempt to maintain this appearance, they have simply made it a regular hotch potch of scenes that would be most colourful when potrayed. And its high time Aishwarya Rai either quits acting, or comes up with something other than this wide eyed, simpering, shrinking violet pose which is the only type of acting she seems capable of.
My recommendation – DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE!
thus spake Pollyanna @ 5:54 pm
Footprints: 12
