Wuthering Heights, Bollywood style Options

[Rumali Roti]

First, Bride and Prejudice.

Now this

The classic British novel "Wuthering Heights" is moved from the windswept moors of Yorkshire to the searing heat of India in a Bollywood-style production hitting the London stage. . .

This post has been edited by Rumali Roti: May 11 2009, 03:52 AM

[xena]

a stage production may be new but yusufji has already done wuthering heights on celluoid

[Sue Darlow]

a stage production may be new but yusufji has already done wuthering heights on celluoid

Please name the film, ji.

[Rumali Roti]

I like the yester-year quality of the poster, even if the guy looks like Prince (or the guy who used to be called . . . ).

This post has been edited by Rumali Roti: May 11 2009, 07:29 PM

[notsogifted]

a stage production may be new but yusufji has already done wuthering heights on celluoid

Please name the film, ji.

dil diya (sob!) dard liya - pure bollywood, no style-shtyle!

We haven't just put 'Wuthering Heights' into an Indian setting, we've made it into a musical and therein lies a huge challenge," she told AFP..............There are so many things about it that just fitted in with aspects of Indian culture," he said.

gotta admire the chest-thumping.

from forty years ago, the bollywood heathcliff:



This post has been edited by notsogifted: May 12 2009, 07:12 AM

[frangipani]

This has made my day - whole new vistas of comprehension are opening up about Dil Diya Dard Liya, now that NSG and Xena have pointed to the Heathcliff connection! I must say Dilip Kumar nailed the sour-disposition look.

Has anyone read Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series? In one of them (Well of Lost Plots, I think) he has a hilarious sequence where Heathcliff is sent for an anger management class.

[xena]

where Heathcliff is sent for an anger management class.

see, he could've just learnt how to sing and soothed his savage breast.

[xena]

quick quiz : yusufji acted in ..err... remake (loosely) ... of another bronte classic

who knows?

[lekha]

sangdil, based on Jane Eyre, no? (your so apt description of our bollywood story-lifting "err.. (remake) loosely")

[xena]

sangdil, based on Jane Eyre, no? (your so apt description of our bollywood story-lifting "err.. (remake) loosely")

heh, yeah

hilarious review

Kamla and Shankar cross paths as adults and their bond is rekindled - Shankar essentially says to Kamla "I know you want me. You're beautiful. I will have you," even though she has not made any overtures and he has a fiancée. I was not moved by this. Shankar was mostly icky to me, with a few moments of utterly plummy dialogue and heated lean-in-close delivery. She's charming; he's smarming.

eta : post script to the review above had this which made me laugh

Is anyone else watching Wuthering Heights on PBS and unable to stop themselves from yelling at the screen about how Heathcliff is the most awful hero ever and that he should have just kept banging his head on that stone wall and done us all a favor?

This post has been edited by xena: May 12 2009, 12:11 PM

[Sue Darlow]

Now's the time to put my query to you guys -

Way back in about 1969, we girls at the Presentation Convent in Kodaikanal were taken to see a film in the Cowshed. I don't know if it was a Hindi or a Tamil film. Some scenes I still have memories of. It was, in restrospect, a fusion of Jane Eyre and The Sound of Music. There was a governess figure with lots of kids. They had a song and dance scene with hot air balloons, and towards the end a mad woman (from the attic?) dramatically set fire to the large heavy drapes in the house and had the house up in flames....

Which film did I see?

[Jai Malhar]

the hot air balloon could be shammi kapoor.

[arnab]

Now's the time to put my query to you guys -

Way back in about 1969, we girls at the Presentation Convent in Kodaikanal were taken to see a film in the Cowshed. I don't know if it was a Hindi or a Tamil film. Some scenes I still have memories of. It was, in restrospect, a fusion of Jane Eyre and The Sound of Music. There was a governess figure with lots of kids. They had a song and dance scene with hot air balloons, and towards the end a mad woman (from the attic?) dramatically set fire to the large heavy drapes in the house and had the house up in flames....

Which film did I see?

before we try to solve this mystery i must ask whether mushrooms were on the menu on a regular basis at the presentation convent. also, what did the cows do while you were watching the movie?

[ViShVa]

Now's the time to put my query to you guys -

... I don't know if it was a Hindi or a Tamil film. ... and towards the end a mad woman (from the attic?) dramatically set fire to the large heavy drapes in the house and had the house up in flames....

Which film did I see?

Hindi films do not indulge in such melodrama... must have been a Tamil film.

[shyama]

the hot air balloon could be shammi kapoor.

Hot air balloons, governesses and a tragic ending don't sound like a Tamil movie either. But then what would I know about a Tamil movie which seems to have been released when my mom was in college?!

[lekha]

vishVa and shyamey!

[Sue Darlow]

Fellow PCKites will know about the Cowshed. I imagine we school girls had use of it on nights when the cows were out on the town.

As for identifying the movie, will no one put me out of my misery?

[RonPrice]

As a retired English teacher who taught the novel Wuthering Heights and Emily Bronte's writings in the 1840s, let me offer this prose-poem in her honour.-Ron Price, Tasmania
----------------------------------------------------------
A VISION OF ONENESS

Emily Bronte seemed to be obsessed with what she called her Gondal Poems which she began collecting together in February 1844. This obsession continued right through the publication of Wuthering Heights in 1847 until May 1848. Her poems were about imaginary heroes and heroines and contained a vision of oneness. It was this vision that she sought to communicate in her poetry. These poems and their themes provided a retreat for Emily’s imagination, for her fantasy. They became a necessity for her life. They were a “benignant power” a “solacer of human cares” and a “brighter hope when hope despairs.” -Ron Price with thanks to Juliet Barker, The Brontes, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1994, pp.435-6.

You started collecting your poems
the same month Samandar was born,
the great Apostle of Baha’u’llah,
one of the many heros and heroines
of the Cause. You finished just before
the Conference of Badasht with the Bab
in the fortress of Chihriq. And now my
imagination has a home among these
saints and martyrs that is a “benignant
poer”, a “sure solacer of human cares”
and a “brighter hope when hope despairs.”1

You died when the siege of the Shrine of
Shaykh Tabarsi began: aged thirty, as tough
as boot leather, an unbending spirit, proud
endurance, gifted soul, genius of liberated
mind and tranquil spirit: perhaps your spirit
was at Tabarsi!2

1 ibid., p. 436.
2 Emily Bronte had “a vision of the essential oneness of life which she gradually and haltingly communicated in her poetry.”(Winifred Gerin, Emily Bronte, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, p.149. She died on 19 December 1848 the same day as the siege on Tabarsi began.

Ron Price
26 October 1999

[RonPrice]

As a retired English teacher who taught the novel Wuthering Heights and Emily Bronte's writings in the 1840s, let me offer this prose-poem in her honour.-Ron Price, Tasmania
----------------------------------------------------------
A VISION OF ONENESS

Emily Bronte seemed to be obsessed with what she called her Gondal Poems which she began collecting together in February 1844. This obsession continued right through the publication of Wuthering Heights in 1847 until May 1848. Her poems were about imaginary heroes and heroines and contained a vision of oneness. It was this vision that she sought to communicate in her poetry. These poems and their themes provided a retreat for Emily’s imagination, for her fantasy. They became a necessity for her life. They were a “benignant power” a “solacer of human cares” and a “brighter hope when hope despairs.” -Ron Price with thanks to Juliet Barker, The Brontes, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1994, pp.435-6.

You started collecting your poems
the same month Samandar was born,
the great Apostle of Baha’u’llah,
one of the many heros and heroines
of the Cause. You finished just before
the Conference of Badasht with the Bab
in the fortress of Chihriq. And now my
imagination has a home among these
saints and martyrs that is a “benignant
poer”, a “sure solacer of human cares”
and a “brighter hope when hope despairs.”1

You died when the siege of the Shrine of
Shaykh Tabarsi began: aged thirty, as tough
as boot leather, an unbending spirit, proud
endurance, gifted soul, genius of liberated
mind and tranquil spirit: perhaps your spirit
was at Tabarsi!2

1 ibid., p. 436.
2 Emily Bronte had “a vision of the essential oneness of life which she gradually and haltingly communicated in her poetry.”(Winifred Gerin, Emily Bronte, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, p.149. She died on 19 December 1848 the same day as the siege on Tabarsi began.

Ron Price
26 October 1999

[RonPrice]

It helps to get an overview of Bronte when examining her famous novel.-Ron
-----------------------------------------------------
GRADUALLY AND HALTINGLY

From 1837 to 1848 Emily Bronte, the author of the famous novel Wuthering Heights, wrote a collection of poetry known as 'the Gondal Poems.' These poems were peopled with heroes and heroines. They tell of the life of the imagination, the place of her retreat. These poems were a hymn to the imagination, to her private world. It was a world where she expressed a vision of the essential oneness of life. It was a vision, too, that came to find its apotheosis in Wuthering Heights. It was a vision gradually and haltingly articulated of a radiant world "marred by her growing awareness of humanity's misery." These years were a decade, for Bronte, in which the unity of the individual with the universe formed the basis for her intuitive sense of humankind's oneness.-Ron Price with thanks to Winifred Gerin, Emily Bronte, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, pp.144-154.

Your vision, too, was one of death
to which we all advanced
with those wild-eyed charioteers,
our day-to-day hours,
drawing us to be with those we love,
undivided, all and only one--beyond the veil,
where finally the sleep our lifted in eternity.

Your vision, too, brooding as it was
on the nature of things,
had a converse with angels,
holy, heavenly, surely a leaven
that leavened your world of being
and furnished the power
through which your art manifested.1

1 due in part, at least, to the new forces emerging in the world in the 1840s. Perhaps Bronte experienced what the Bab had prayed for during these years; namely, for that which will bring comfort to their minds, will rejoice their inner beings, will impart assurance to their hearts.(The Bab, Selections, 1976 p.179.)
1 there is no question, too, of the great power released into the world in the 1840s: all the world's which the Almighty hath created benefited through the power released by the Babi martyrs of the 1840s.(Gleanings, p.161)

Ron Price
6 July 2001