I know that I had catched up with Michael Chrichton's "Disclosure" almost 17 years after its publishing, but it is fine that atleast I was able to read it. First I saw this as movie ofcourse of the titillation factor. Thanks to Vijayakrishnan, I read MC's "Prey" after which I discovered MC. To be frank I read 'Disclosure' only for the graphical sexual encounter, but once I passed that, after a lull, the novel picked up so fast that I found it irresistable to keep it down. 'Disclosure' says that 'Sex is all about power' in the workplace rather than a means of harassment. It gives a peek inside the corporate world, where you need to be competent player to move ahead in the corporate ladder.
Thanks to the "inspired" Hindi (Aitraaz) & Tamil (Indhira Vizha) versions, most of the movie goers know what the story is. Still let me keep it short. Tom Sanders, a competent technical guy, is in-charge of a new optical drive DigiCom is developing. He is expecting a VP post in that fiscal year. But the head Bob Garvin brings in Meredith Johnson, a non technical person, as the VP. Sanders & Meredith were romantically involved in the past Cupertino tenure and the breakup was a sort of acrimonous.
Tom Sanders moves to Seattle and starts afresh. On the day Meredith took charge, she calls Sanders for a meeting in the late evening and makes physical advances on him. Sanders goes with the flow initially and later regains the consciousness and withdraws from the sex act. Next day Sanders comes to office to find himself being charged with sexual harassment and there is no takers for his side of story. Eventually he wins that case only to find that the seduction episode was just a tip of iceberg. Finally he wins the confidence but still retained in the same job.
Disclosure novel is much more than what was in the movie. (Not) Surprisingly the movie version played the sexual harassment as the main plot of the movie but the novel was beyond that. There were some minor changes in the movie version that Sander's wife stands by him at the time of mediation whereas in the novel she was conveniently packed off to be away from the proceedings. The ending was also slightly tweaked to maintain the character graph. Another change was the name of attorney who appears for Sanders, Louis Fernandes changed to Catherine Alvarez.
In 1994, when the novel & movie were released, they had sparked some arguements from the feminists. Michael Douglas, who had made a career out of 'wrong woman' (Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, A Perfect Murder), had another feather in his cap through 'Disclosure'. Like the current generation guys envious of Emraan Hashmi, for his onscreen smooches, we were envious about Michael Douglas. I remember watching this movie along with Selvaraj in the near empty Velmurugan theatre that got still more deserted after the sex scene was over. Infact Selva kept 'translating' the dialogues for me through out.
Needless to say I found the novel version better because it gave more detail about background of the characters (why Bob Garvin is so supportive of Meredith), their mental state and logic for their actions (The conversation between Arthur and Meredith) whereas those aspects can't be explained in the movie. Along with the sexual harassment in the workplace, Michael Chrichton as usual had touched some elements of technology in this novel - Virtual reality.
The Hindi version was better and can't be claimed of blatant rip-off. The local adaptation was done fine. This movie also focussed only of the sex aspect. The Bob Garving - Meredith's "mentor" relationship was changed to a sexual relationship in the Bollywood version. The wife character who is lawyer in the original, is also retained the same profession, but made stronger and a fighter for her justice. Even though crtics and media hailed Priyanka Chopra for her negative role, I found Kareena better than her.
Tamil version has nothing to write about with Namitha donning the Meredith Johnson and Shruthi as 'Susan Sanders'. Poor Srikanth was the 'Tom Sanders' but was not even mentioned in the publicity posters. I tried watching the 'seduction scene' in Tamil but that was more comical. So I didn't bother to watch the Tamil version.
{oshits} readers for this novel review!!!
