Spaces for Rent: Of lost hopes; regained - Part II
After the failure of Nenapina Pockettu, the morale of our team was in the abyss. I could not imagine facing the wrath of people who would laugh at us for our unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. That is when I decided that we make a film of our own; ‘our own’, in every possible way. So what if we don’t have a producer, we will manage to pool in small investments from the people who still had some amount of faith and belief in our capacities. We set the budget of the whole film to about two lakh rupees. Every body ‘aye-ayed’ the opinion.
There was a sudden surge of happiness on the faces.
I will never forget it!
The idea was not at all vague, but as clear as it could be. I would like to call such film making ‘Community Film making’. Where; a community of people helps in all verticals to come up with a finished film. The story that came to my mind instantly in the present situation was Maxim Gorky’s play “The Lower Depths ”. It was decided.
‘The Lower Depths’ is a masterpiece. It was first staged in Moscow theatre in the year 1902 and was directed by the legendary director-actor Konstantin Stanislavsky who had also played the role of ‘Satin’ in the play. It also had, Anton Chekov’s wife Olga Knipper playing the role of Vassilisa. This play has always fascinated me (though I have never seen a production of the play) since I read it for the first time while I was pursuing my bachelor’s degree in business management. I always wanted to direct it as a play but it never materialized.
The play has already been made into film thrice. First by Jean Renoir in the year 1936 called Les bas- fonds and then by Chetan Anand in the year 1956 called ‘Neecha Nagar’ which also managed to earn the best film award at Cannes Film Festival that year. And then by one of the greatest film maker Akira Kurasawa in the year 1958 with Toshiro Mifune playing the role of the thief in the film. All the three are considered to be master pieces, but I have managed to see only Kurasawa’s version.
The challenge that faced us was; that it had already been made into a film three times earlier and how would people react to way of our film making. The fact that the story resembled to our very own lives in a particular way made me very stubborn about converting it into a screenplay. Besides, I wanted to contemporarise the story and link it to present day panic, ‘recession’. Could we do it?
By N S Islahuddin
