Translating Word to Image: Retelling of A Passage to India

Abstract

In this research paper I investigate David Lean, an English film director’s, attempt of adapting E. M. Forster’s English novel A passage to India into the film. This adaptation seems to be compelling, trying to be ‘faithful’ to the original. If the words in the novel make the reader imagine various aspects of the encounter between the ‘native’ and the ‘coloniser’, the images in the film propel the audience not just to see but interpret these encounters. Adela’s bicycle ride, although, is not in the novel, its inclusion in the film conveys what was left to be interpreted or the act of ‘reading between the text’ for the reader of the novel. Each film adaptation is a separate event and does not have to follow a particular theory; neither in terms of film making and nor for description, interpretation, or analysis. However, in academia, where participants in the literary/cinematic discourses are expected to have read the original works of art (plays, novels, and short stories), adaptations intentionally or unintentionally face the fate of being compared to the original. A Passage to India appears to be an example of how concepts, ‘mimicry’ and ‘hybridisation’ from post-colonial theory help to see the adaptation in new light