Best-selling novels make for successful adaptations. In fact, especially in Hollywood, it’s almost a given that a critically-acclaimed offering will be bought for a big or small-screen adaptation.
“Shantaram” is one such offering.
This 12-episode series is based on Gregory David Roberts’s 2003 novel of the same name. In it, he documents his struggles after his prison breakout from Pentridge Prison and fleeing to Bombay (now known as Mumbai), India.
When you think of the well-worn cliché “Life happens”, that is Dale Conti/Lindsay “Linbaba” Ford’s story.
Played magnificently by Charlie Hunnam, who lives and breathes this down-on-his-luck character.
An aspiring Australian paramedic, life took an ugly turn when he was arrested and imprisoned for the death of an officer while fleeing the scene of a robbery.
Directed by Justin Kurzel and Bharat Nalluri, the series opens with Lin arriving in Bombay and, unwittingly, befriending Prabaker "Prabhu" Kharre (Shubham Saraf), a friendly tour guide who lives in the Sagar Wada slum.
It isn’t long after his arrival that Lin learns the local lingo and starts speaking Hindi. His chameleon-like abilities to blend into any setting see him befriending several opportunistic individuals.
When he is robbed of all his cash and his fake passport, he finds himself at a crossroads. Leave or stay with Prabhu in the slums, where he has inadvertently become a hero by using his medical training to help the indigent people who are largely ignored by the government.
A tragedy in the slums influences his decision.
But, in trying to do good and help, he is viewed as a pawn in a bigger political war between the corrupt politicians and the criminal heads in the city.
I don’t think any screen offering will be entirely faithful to the book it is born from, but “Shantaram” is a truly compelling watch with its engaging characters and juxtapositioning of the haves and have-nots.
There is profound poeticism in the wide pan shots of the slums against the city backdrop.
If you found “Slumdog Millionaire” compelling, this offering ups the ante as it plunges into the struggles of the main character who makes the best of the bad hand he is dealt with.
“Shantaram” is streaming on Apple TV.