When I watched Pachaikili muthucharam, i decided i shall read the original version : derailed -novel. The main reason was certain things were hanging out as unwanted appendage in movie. I was wondering why it was so? Is it because of story he took? Before speaking much on that I have to make some points clear.
Its really difficult to capture a novel into movie and it always disappoints the person who read the novel . There were certain things that makes the reader to love that novel and they might be simply cut in movie or the visualization of that never matches reader imagination. Even the best movies (critically acclaimed and commercially successful)were just close to the novels, they were never better than the novel, at least for me. Saying this, I never rated a movie based on what it tries to replicate. I have liked the movies which claims to be based on real life incident or based on novel and deviated much from them but still enjoyable one. I see them essentially as another creative output and as an independent entity.
Derailed is not a great novel. Its not a worse novel, but the problem is it was too ambitious. An novel is not just a collation of incidents. In our childhood , when someone tells us stories, we like to hear the story from the person who adds lot of color to the story than from the person who just states (may be narrates) the incident. Well James Siegel is not just narrating, he has included lot of sub-plots, some moments to stand still and cherish, but the problem is he has introduced lot of complications in the story, and takes the story back and forth just to surprise reader. Beyond a point things look like forced into the novel which makes the reader to yawn.
About Pachaikili muthucharam, the film fails simply because it tried to make too many compromises.The problem is not that movie deviates from the novel largely (Absolutely I have no issues on it. A good painting and good replication are different things).The problem is even after deviating from novel the director wants to use some elements from the novel which he liked. But they were not fitting well in to the new picture he had created . It goes like this. I decided to replicate a drawing which depicts a countryside with few men standing. People started to say something and I change it but I love the way the people dressed and want to keep it. so at last I come out with a different background and people costume just looks inappropriate.
They decide not to show the hero as a character having a weakness for opposite sex. They want to show as it was the lady who was desperate, that makes us doubt was he not suspicious of something?
All of a sudden he sees her again (after the blackmail is fully settled up)and just like follows her and know about her. Why he started to smell something fishy. An ordinary man probably will either try to move away or go and speak but why will he spy unless otherwise he smelled something wrong. The novel had it but for some reason movie skips it.
In novel, the protagonist knows that the main person is alive and wants to confront him and finish the story for ever. But in movie he thinks the story is over and so final duel does not look like a finishing touch but hangs like unwanted addition.
The novel brings the police into picture (though it does not use them exhaustively). But the movie never brings them, which looks odd in a movie which looks like near to life because of the dialogues, camera, lighting etc..
The crux is: The novel is essentially about a person who knows nothing about the dark world , but gets involved and learn their game through his experience (after mistakes and with lots of pain) and finally out play them. The movie has everything except those inside parenthesis. That make the viewer not to believe it.Its not we don't have the movies that lack that logic (all our super hero movies). The point is those movies don't disguise themselves as near to real life . They don't have the color, texture that our realistic movies have.
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