Film Screening: The Guide

A movie screening of The Guide was organized on 29, September, 2018, for the Semester V students of English Honours and Pass Course from 11.15 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.. The 1965 film directed by Vijay Anand and produced by Dev Anand, who is also the protagonist in it, was discussed as an adaptation of the novel with the same title written by R.K Narayan in 1958. The purpose of the screening was to further the understanding of the novel and to discuss briefly the nuances of adaptation of a written work into a motion picture. To facilitate the latter, the theory of Film Adaptation by Linda Hutcheon was introduced to the students. The differences between the plot line of the novel and the movie were noted and taken well into consideration.  A simultaneous discussion on the themes like the plight of an Indian woman in a patriarchal society, the power and influence of superstition on the Indian mindset, identity crisis, etc., enriched the purpose of the screening. The students got a chance to think about how the use of various narratological devices like analepsis, prolepsis, fabula, sjuzhet, first person and second person narration etc. influence the effect of the text or the movie on the readers or the audience respectively. The students were also introduced to a linguistic study of the text.