It is almost a month now that “3 Idiots” has released. So I am not writing a review on the movie now. Then you must be wondering why on earth I chose this title. The reason being is very simple. I got hold of this book by Chetan Bhagat called “Five Point Someone”, on which the movie “3 Idiots” is based on. Since I had read this 270 page book, and in my standards pretty fast (I have never completed a book of this number of pages within 3 weeks), I have formed some opinion on the controversy that surrounded the movie. I thought what better place to air it than my blogs.
You must be wondering, why “Three Idiots or We Idiots”? Yes, it could also have been “Five Point Someone or We are the foolish ones”. But I chose the title with “3 idiots” as this is the most recent one. The controversy in question was, who should get the credit for the story of the movie “3 idiots”. Chetan Bhagat felt hurt for not getting the due credit for the story. The makers of the movie were disappointed by Chetan’s comments. According to them the due credit was given to the author of the book as per what was mentioned in the contract. There were ugly face offs between the two parties for quite some time on various modes of the media. Finally, now, everything is quiet as a mouse.
Now I have no idea whatsoever on the technical definition of the word “story”, for which each party were fighting. I have seen the movie. I have read the book now (in record time, if I may say so, of course in my standards). In my opinion, the movie has less than 25 percent (everyone is quoting percentage, why not me) of similarity to the book in terms of the content and events. The main characters that form the part of the story are almost the same, both in the movie and the book, the only difference being the girlfriend part. In the book the narrator has the girlfriend but in the movie, it is the narrator’s friend who has a girlfriend. In my opinion, the content of the movie in no doubt is inspired by the content of the book. For this at least appropriate credit has been given to the author. Again it is very difficult for me to decide, who should get the credit of the story of the movie. It all depends on what does story refers to in a movie, particularly when it is inspired by some other’s work.
From my experience of the movie and the book, what I can conclude is, this controversy was merely a publicity stunt. You must be thinking, what is new in the revelations that I am making. Indeed, nothing original about the conclusion. Both the parties were heavily benefitted out of this controversy. Whoever had read the book and not seen the movie must have gone to see the movie and whoever had seen the movie and not read the book must have read the book to check what the controversy was about. I am one of the later group of people. The movie has already done some business of 300 plus crores. I also read somewhere that the sales of the book went up by more than 30 per cent. In the end, it is we people, who were spectators of the ugly war of words between the two parties, victim of the unwarranted curiosity, the eventual “Idiots”. When I say “Idiot”, I do not refer to the romanticized version that Aamir Khan has been describing in each of his interviews but I refer to the literal meaning which is “an utterly foolish or senseless person”.
