Saw the Satyajit Ray movie adaptation of this at the Stanford
theatre yesterday. Besides Pather Panchali this is my most favourite
Ray film.
Besides the plot itself, the movie is a visual and auditory treat. One
can enjoy it at some level without understanding the plot or just
playing the soundtrack. Amitabh Bachchan’s initial and final voiceover,
the pukka Urdu exchanges between the chess players themselves and
more interestingly the formal negotiations of state between the British
resident (translated by his ADC) and the Nawab and his mother, the
decadent yet seductive atmosphere in the court of Wajid Ali Shah - the
movie appeals at many levels. Sanjeev Kumar is marvellous as Mirza as is
Richard Attenborough as the British resident at the Oudh court. Saeed
Jaffery plays Meer, the other chess fanatic and Shabana Azmi has a small
role as Mirza’s neglected and resentful wife. Amjad Ali Khan is
Jaan-e-Alam Nawab Wajid Ali Shah.
There is a beautifully evocative shot of the little boy watching the
British marching into Oudh. The king is admiring the dancers, the barons are
fighting over chess, even the Indian troops show no expression as they
march (mostly on foot) behind the British cavalry. Only the boy shows
repressed emotion as the soldiers go by. Lovely.
The screenplay has taken many liberties with the story - at least what I
can remember of it from my school textbook. (Would love it if someone could
suggest where one can get one’s hands on it again for confirmation)
The original story had no mention of the court, or of any British
resident.
It centered - I think - around the chess players alone. In the story, the
two players kill or wound each other mortally in a duel at the end but not
in the movie. Some of its throwaway allusions - for instance Meer’s wife’s
philandering or Mirza’s marital squabbles - have been fleshed out in the
movie into full-fledged scenes.
The injection of scenes involving Wajid Ali Shah and his troubles with the
British have brought - in my opinion - an element of emotional drama which is not
there in the original, which is sparse and cynically humorous, a style
someone pointed out earlier is common in Urdu/Hindi literature. It may have been
brought in to enhance the drama but perhaps also to ’’explain’’ the film to
those who lack a context. It dilutes - again IMO - the emotional pitch of the
story.
Still, it’s a lovely film. I highly recommend it.
Andrew Robinson’s Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye has amazingly comprehensive
interviews with Ray on his adaptation of the story, the changes he made,
his translators and script/dialogue writers and much that went into it. Marie
Seton’s bio has stuff too, but Robinson’s is definitely worth a read if
you liked the movie as much as I did.