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Remakes Makers

APK | September 19, 2007

Alfred Hitchcock liked to narrate this anecdote: A wannabe writer always complained that he got the best ideas in the dead of the night, when he woke up brainstorming. But he never had the opportunity to write them down. Someone suggested that he keep a lamplight and a paper and pen to jot down the idea the moment he got them. At an unearthly hour one night, he got up and wrote down the brilliant idea he got. Satisfied, he slept back, assured of a blockbuster script in the making the morning onwards. When he woke up in the morning and looked at what he wrote, it said "Boy meets girl."

Even Ilayaraja says that music is the permutations and combinations of the seven swaras. So inspiration, similarity and patterns in the works of art are inevitable.

But remaking is quite another thing. Ever since talkies were established, remaking a movie into another language has been a norm. That is understandable. What the Tamil audience saw, the Telugu audience has possibly not seen. So remaking a Tamil movie into Telugu, or a Telugu into a Hindi, with a different cast and set-up is a done thing. The work burden is obviously lessened, and it is an ethical process if the remaking rights have been bought legally from the original creators.

Now-a-days, we see a new and completely unique pattern. The formula: Take a successful movie from a bygone era in any language. Remake it in the same language, with flashier sets and bigger budgets. From Don in Hindi to Yamadonga, the comeback of the classic seems to go down well with the makers. It might seem a safe option. After all, it has worked once with the previous generation. How different can it be with this gen then?


Shah Rukh Khan in Don	Aishwarya Rai in Umrao Jaan	NTR in Yamadonga

Don starring Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman was perhaps the most successful and most prominent movie Chandra Barot ever made. Writer Javed Akthar's son Farhan Akthar surprised everyone by announcing the remake of Don. The old Don had all the elements of a good old Hindi movie-suspense, action, drama, double role, and the triumph of good over evil and hit music. The new Don is sleek, with a slower pace and has an 'evil' twist at the end. Bad is the new good. It's like a remix of the old Don, rather than a sincere remake. The Big B-SRK war that the media constantly speculates on peaked with this flick.

Devdas. The question is, which Devdas? There are so many, and one cannot really comprehend why makers like to remake this classic over and over and over again. Their own interpretation of one novel, filled with love and romance, alcohol and jilted lovers. Among the B&W ones, ANR starrer Telugu Devadasu is considered the better one. Dilip Kumar starrer, which came later, is perhaps more widely known. Krishna starrer failed at the BO. Bhansali's recent flamboyant version with grandiose sets and heavy melodrama is the latest addition to an array of Devdases.

Victoria No. 203, an Ashok Kumar and Pran classic diamond chase movie of the 1970s. The new one stars Jimmy Shergill, Preeti Jhangiani, Sonia Mehra along with Om Puri and Anupam Kher. The old one is categorized under a 'Musical Comic Thriller'. The new one, directed by Anant Mahadevan and produced by Kamal Sadanah (son of the original maker Brij Sadanah) is a damp squid.

Umrao Jaan was first of all an overrated movie, but got by because of the beautiful language (Urdu), beautiful and sultry actress (Rekha) and fabulous music (Khayyam). JP Dutta remade it because OP Dutta once wanted to produce it, but the project never took off. To remake it with Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan just added to the hype. The urban population who frequent the multiplexes could not identify with the concept, and add to it miserably boring pace and shabby direction. A real dud.


Shah Rukh Khan in Devdas	Amitabh Bachchan in Aag	Mohit Ahlawat in Shiva 2006

People are wasting time booking Hritik and Ash for obscenity in Dhoom 2 and other unnecessary matters that are completely harmless. If they really want to take film personalities to task for misleading the public or hurting sentiments, they should arrest (without bail) Ram Gopal Varma. For making movies like Shiva 2006. And Sholay. The former is a remake of his own superhit, Telugu-movies-coming-of-age, Nagarjuna starrer Shiva. With Mohit Ahlawat and Nisha Kothari, he for some reason insisted on spoiling his own creation to the maximum. The latter is the blockbuster of the century, Ramesh Sippy's magnum opus. Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag. The only reason why people didn't attack him after watching the movie was, who'll give us movies like Rangeela and Satya after that. Can't do without the maverick maker, eh?

Our own Telugu makers never lag behind, whatever the rest of the country may say. NTR the first's Yamagola inspired director Rajamouli enough to take NTR the second and make Yamagola. To their credit, only the idea and some sequences were photocopied, and the rest of the movie obviously was the result of the makers' toil.

There seems to be another trend catching on slowly. Take a Black and White classic, invest money in turning it to color, and re-release. Mughal-e-Azam has reaped the benefits of starting this trend and was much appreciated. Naya Daur starring Dilip Kumar and Vyjayantimala has followed in its footsteps. Coming up soon is Hum Dono, starring Dev Anand and Nanda.

A Gen-X twist in Don, borrowing only ideas/concept from the classic like in Yamadonga and adapting it to the present era seems like a hit formula. But we all know there are really no formulae. Some people are of the opinion that there is no need to fiddle with something already good, while some feel 'Why not?' Finally, it's a good movie or it's not. The audience doesn't really seem to care where they got their story or idea or situations from, as long as it entertains them the two odd hours they are inside the theatre.