SearchIndia.com Blog

Although we have never published posts by outsiders on this blog in the past, we are making an exception in this instance. The below post is a great response to a comment on our review of U Me Aur Hum. The author Araj, a reader of the SearchIndia.com blog, is responding belatedly to a comment from tsk_tsk  on July 7th, 2008 at 1:50 am to our review of U Me Aur Hum. The reason for publishing Araj’s comment as a separate post is to give it greater exposure as otherwise this fine piece would get buried as a comment on a movie released four months back (April 2008).

Here is Araj’s comment on tsk_tsk‘s comment to the U Me Aur Hum Review:

1) Your statements are contradictory. On one hand, you say Hollywood lacks originality ‘coz its movies are ‘copies of books’ and on the other you condone Indian plagiarism since it adds to the ‘beauty of the originals’ which, according to you, are highly unoriginal in the first place since they are mere copies of ‘original’ books. Therefore, do you mean to say ‘copy of a copy’ is better than ‘just a copy’?

2) My dear, a film that is based on a book is called an ‘adaptation’ for christ’s sake, not a ‘copy’( if you do not know what is an adaptation and the kinds of adaptations, read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_adaptation. You will get an idea.). An adaptation is an age-old tradition of art of movie-making as it helps a film-maker to explore the facets of life that otherwise lie outside his experiential jurisdiction hence inaccessible. Adaptation is a technique that enables the filmmaker to draw from the collective perspicacity of the authors whose works he can convert into screenplays. Because, from a deepest creative viewpoint, making movies is an impossibly unsustainable task i.e. one cannot keep on making great movies drawing from one’s own experiential pool alone however abundantly imaginative one’s mind is. Literature, therefore, frees the mind of a film-maker from Continue reading »