‘3 idiots’ film has broken all box office records as regards collections and profits. Part of the reason, one might say, is the kind of negative (or positive?) publicity it got due to certain mis-understanding between Chetan Bhagat, the author of ‘Five Point Someone’ which, it is claimed, has been adapted for the ‘3 idiots’ script, and the film’s makers. There is no mention of Chetan Bhagat’s name at the beginning of the film. Only a small name tag appears during the credits at the end of the film.
Has it all been done for greater publicity, one cannot be sure. However, both the parties have a point to make. If the story has been taken from Mr Bhagat’s book, due credit with royalty has to be given to him, which the director, Rajkumar Hirani and the Producer, Vidhu Vinod Chopra say, has been given. But Mr Bhagat does not quite agree. According to him, the
film is 70 per cent faithful to his book and as much credit has not been given to him. In fact, he says he has been overlooked deliberately.
Amir Khan and the ‘3-idiots’makers have a different point to make. According to them, even though the film has been based on the story of Mr Bhagat’s book, the script writer Mr Abhijit Joshi spent over three years to adapt it to a film narrative and hence it is apt that Mr Joshi gets his due. Whether the fact that Abhijit spent three years to make a script justifies the gross neglect of Mr Bhgat, the author, is further debatable.
Amir Khan and his team at ‘3 idiots’ have a point to make. Film is indeed a different medium altogether. It is a visual medium and the style of a novel can never suit the film medium. What novel says in a page, the film may have to show in just about 20 seconds. That is indeed a challenge. Further, film does not give much of a scope for imaginati
on like the novel, as the audience sees everything unfolding in front of them. They may interpret the symbols, but even that may not give much scope for imagination. In such a situation, it is indeed a hard task for the script writer to adapt a story to a visual medium and make the audience involve into it so much that they relate their own life experiences with the film narrative. Indeed, ‘3 idots’ achieves this to a very great extent, simply because the script writer has been very imaginative in his treatment of the story.
All the same, can the original author be neglected? Is it not true that but for the idea, the script writer can do nothing? For every art, idea is the basic building block and in the case of 3 idiots, the idea has come from Mr Bhagat. By acknowledging the idea borrowed from someone can never take credit away from you, even as you have created a wonderful script. So one finds it very odd, why one must shy away from accepting the fact that one is only the creator of ‘methodology’ and not ‘idea’?
Both have a point; but the ‘3 idiots’ think tank would have not lost much (except of course a few more bucks they made due to the undue publicity) by adding that one extra name at the beginning of the film.
