Aamir khan aur remakes ki daastaan – part 2 of 2
iView Author: Crazyrals (Bangalore, India)
Email: crazyrals [at] gmail.com
Aamir khan aur remakes ki daastaan – part 2 of 2
Editor Note:
The first part of this fantastic series was published yesterday and can be found
I thought I would assimilate the entire thing into a single post, but
I was unable to do so. It has taken me 2 weeks to complete this
because I was not able to dedicate myself totally to it. Anyways,
here’s the next part, continuing with the number series.
6. Jab Jab Phool Khile – 1965 : One of the earlier movies of Shashi
Kapoor where he plays Raja, a houseboat owner-cum-guide. Rita, played
by Nanda, visits Kashmir and she falls in love with the valleys. Not
just the valleys, she falls in love with the charming boatman Raja
too. She promises Raja that she will convince her dad and get back to
marry him. But Raja is shattered when Rita does not return for a very
long time. Meanwhile Rita is being introduced to suitors as her dad
presses for marriage. Rita returns to Kashmir and explains the
situation to Raja, and they together hatch a plan to showcase Raja as
a wellbred citizen who is prim and proper in his habit and mannerism.
That is when Raja notices the difference in cultures and the
superficiality of the city dwellers. What happens next and how Raja
copes with this and finally gets Rita, forms the rest.
In 1996 Dharmesh Darshan along with Robin Bhat rehashed this movie and
titled it Raja Hindustani. Aamir Khan played Raja, the cab
driver-cum-guide and Karishma Kapoor played Arti Sehgal who visits the
small town of Palankhet. The only thing that they added was the
newborn child for whom Raja fights it out with Arti. The highlight of
the movie, apart from the wonderful songs, was the drunk-scene of
Aamir. Legend has it that Aamir being a method-actor actually got
drunk so that it would look natural. Aamir won the Filmfare for Best
Actor, but as usual he did not turn-up and quite justifiably so,
becasue it was a mediocre performance. Karishma looked amazingly
beautiful and she walked away with Filmfare Best Actress. The movie
also won the Fimlfare for Best Film, Best Music Director and Udit
Narayan won the Best Singer for the ‘Pardesi’ song. But this song was
not as good as the original ‘Pardesiyon Se Na Akhiyan Milana’ song.
7. On The Waterfront – 1954 : A story about corruption and total
control of a dockyard was made starring Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy.
Johnny Friendly rules the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey and Terry’s
brother Charley is his lawyer who does all the cover-up job. Terry
moves around as an aimless guy so johnny asks him to pry over the
gathering of the dissenting voices against him and report him the
events. Very innocently Terry reports Johnny about certain dock
workers who want to lodge a complaint to the crime commission against
him. Johnny is also involved in other illegal activities like betting
on boxing matches and in one such match he wants Terry to lose the
match since the odds against the opponent is high. Terry is
disappointed by this but what actually turns him against Johnny is the
incident where Johnny’s men throw over a dock worker into the railway
track of an incoming train. But Terry lives with the guilt that he has
been made use like a bait and the only way to find peace within
himself is to depose against Johnny. The deceased’s younger sister
Edie and Father Barry. When Terry becomes a threat to him, Johnny
decides to get him eliminated. Terry and Johnny have a final
confrontation where Terry testifies against Johnny and then fights him
in front of all dock workers and decimates him.
This movie has been a source of inspiration for quite a few Bollywood
movies. Let me start with Yash Chopra’s Deewar, which was supposedly
lifted from this. But the only thing common was the dockyard. In fact,
Mukul Anand’s Hum was more of this movie than Deewar. Hum had the
docks, the martinet Danny Dengzongpa as Bhaktavar, Gonsalves who dies
fighting for the cause and his sister Jumma played by Kimi Katkar who
wants Tiger aka Amitabh Bachchan to stand against the tyranny of
Bhaktavar. So, Mukul Anand almost had the entire plot covered but he
took it to a different logical conclusion with the reform of Tiger as
Shekhar and how Bhaktavar returns 20 years later to haunt him.
In 1988, a lesser known movie called ‘Kabzaa’ directed by Mahesh Bhat,
was released. The movie starred Sanjay Dutt as Ravi and Raj Babbar as
Ranjit. Ranjit is a lawyer who works for Veljibhai[Paresh Rawal] who
is a small time ‘dada’. Ravi is sent on small assignment to forcibly
vacate the house of an idealist gandhain Ali Mohammaed [Alok Nath].
Ali reforms Ravi and Ravi turns against Veljibhai, and to avert a
face-off between the two, Ranjit requests Ravi to flee from the scene
as Veljibhai’s men are looking for him; he also hands Ravi a gun for
his protection. All this was taken from OTW, but the backdrop had been
changed from dockyard to Mumbai streets and from small time corruption
to big time ‘dadagiri’.
Finally, 10 years later in 1998, Ghulam was made. The writer Anjum
Rajabali, maintained the same setting of Mumbai and laid out the
entire screenplay of OTW. He avoided the twists and turns that Kabzaa
had taken, thereby remaining faithful to the original. Aamir Khan as
Sidharth Marathe struck a chord with the audience. They related to him
and sympathised with him in his pain and guilt of having been used as
a pawn to eliminate Alisha’s [Rani Mukerjee] elder brother. Sidhu’s
elder brother, played by Rajit Kapoor, advises Sidhu not to testify
against Raunak Singh[Sharat Saxena] and when he is not able to
convince Sidhu he gives him a gun for protection. The same scenes were
played out as in the original, and the audience cheered for Sidhu as
he beat up Raunak Singh in the end. Aamir playing tapori for the 2nd
time [1st being Rangeela] was amazing. He played it so differntly, his
mannerism and dialogue delivery and the ‘Khandala’ song, which became
the anthem of the nation, just added to the movie viewing experience.
The ‘10-10 ka daud’ was shot brilliantly in Nakpada junction. Aamir
gave it his all, the conviction in his performance was evident. He did
total justice to the character and was almost there when comparedd to
Marlon Brando’s performance.
8. Love Affair – 1939 : One of the most romantic movies to adorn the
silver screen was released. It was about a French painter Michael
Marnet, played by Charles Boyer, who meets Terry McKay[Irene Dunne]
while they are on a cruise across Atlantic Ocean. They both are
already engaged to other people but that does not prevent them from
falling in love. The ship has a minor stop-over in a beautiful island
where Michael’s grandmom stays; she finds Terry really charming and
wishes the newfound couple all the luck. At the end of the cruise,
Michael and Terry decide to meet on top of Empire State Building
exactly after 6 months. While both are gearing up for the big day,
Terry gets hit by a car and she is unable to make it. When she finds
out that she cannot walk anymore she does not want to spoil Michael’s
life and so she does not get in touch with him. But destiny brings
them together again during a stage-play, where she successfully hides
her handicap. After this meet, Michael wants to see her one last time
and visits her apartment where he gets to know the truth. But her
handicap cannot come in the way of true love and the two lovers unite.
So brilliant was the story-screenplay that this movie was remade in
1957 and titled ‘An Affair To Remember’ based on the same screenplay,
without any changes. Cary Grant played the painter Nickie Ferrante and
his love interest was played by Deborah Kerr who retained the same
name Terry McKay. This movie did much better than its original and
people remember this version and have almost forgotten the original
one. Cary Grant and Deborah were perfectly cast and they did a
wonderful job. The romance was so believable and so heart-warming that
the American Film Institute considered this this as one of the most
romantic movies of all time.
So timeless is the romance that Sleepless in Seattle, made in 1993,
revolved around this movie. The character Annie Reed [Meg Ryan] and
her friend make references to AFTR and there are clips and dialogues
from AFTR which appear all over the movie.
Anything as famous as AFTR had to come to Bollywood, sooner or later.
So, in 1965 Ramanand Sagar re-wrote this with a role reversal of the
two main leads in the movie titled ‘Arzoo’. Rajender Kumar as Gopal
plays a doctor who meets Usha[Sadhna] in Kashmir during one of those
yearly skiing events. They fall in love and decide to marry, but
tragedy strikes as Gopal meets with an accident and loses his legs. He
voluntarily walks out of Usha’s life so as to give her a better life.
Finally, in the end sequence Usha sees him again, with the clutches,
in a similar skiing contest, and accepts him despite his handicap. All
this happens after a whole lot of tear-jerking moments and sacrifices
from Feroz Khan who plays Gopal’s friend.
Anyways, Inder Kumar anad Ashok Thakeria took it up to themselves to
remake this movie again, retaining the original plot of a playboy
painter. In 1999 they came-up with Mann, starring Aamir Khan as the
painter Dev, and Manisha Koirala as his love quotient Priya. When the
first few sequences were being shot in a ship a rumour spread that
Titanic was being remade. But Mann was a blot in the name of AFTR. It
did not retain the spirit of the original and the screenplay was
tampered with the induction of unnecessary characters like Neeraj
Vora[Nattu, Dev's side-kick], Rani Mukherjee and Anil Kappor in guest
appearance. The comic sequences of Dev and Nattu marred the movie, and
the romance came undone due to some sleepwalk acting by Manisha. The
music by Sanjeev-Darshan was the only saving grace of the movie. The
grandmom sequence with Sharmila Tagore lacked sensitivity and warmth,
it seemed like a gimmick. All in all, it was crass.
9. Memento – 2000 : A movie about anterograde amnesia
[short-term-memory-loss] was made by Nolan brothers. The movie starred
Guy Pearce who played an insurance fraud investigator. During a
burglary his wife is killed and he is hit hard by severe psychological
trauma where-in he is incapable of making new memory and his memory
lapses every 15 minutes. He devices a method to recall things, he
walks around with a polaroid camera and shoots every image and makes
detailed notes about the person/place which can help him in
recognizing them later. He is on a search for the killer of his wife.
How he finds the killer with all the various clues forms the rest of
the movie.
AR Murugadoss picked up the idea and the original plot of this movie,
added the usual Indian tadka with songs, romance, violence, revenge
and came out with Ghajini in 2005, in Tamil. Surya essayed the role of
the STML patient who was out there looking for a man named Ghajini, to
avenge the death of his love Kalpana[Asin]. I dont think there is need
to write anything else.
Inspired by the success of this movie, Murugadoss wished to remake
this movie in Hindi. He roped in Aamir Khan, tweaked his screenplay to
remove some of the glitches like the double-role of Ghajini etc, asked
Aamir to work-out and develop 8 packs to make the action sequences
look believable. In 2008, the movie was released by the same name
Ghajini. The rest is history, the movie raked in 200 crores in 2
weeks. By the way, I thought Aamir was brilliant in the movie. He
brought out the angst of the character very well. The romance between
him and Asin was refreshing, and Rahman’s music gave a flair to the
movie.
Let me end this by saying that Aamir Khan has made quite a few movies
based on literary works. His famed debut with QSQT was straight out of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, 1947-Earth was the movie adaptation of
Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel ‘Ice-candy Man’. And his next movie ‘3 Idiots’ is
based on Chetan Bhagat’s ‘Five Point Someone’. I hope they expand the
horizon of that movie to include the educational system machinery and
expose the flaws.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I think you should have also mentioned Lagaan being inspired by Naya Daur.
Aamir was anything but “almost there” in Ghulam!
In fact he was horrible, he almost killed Marlon Brando.
@Ankit : i was writing abt movies that have entire plots/themes copied. lagaan was nothing like naya daur. ND was abt socialism, zamindari etc.
@S : marlon brando gave a fantastic performance in godfather, so automatically all his previous performances got elevated. i think he was just about good in OTW as well as in ’streetcar named desire’. i seriously did not find anything extraordinary in SCND, it was vivien leigh all the way…my opinion only
Mann was a pathetic movie, Indra Kumar should just stick to loud comedies, which are his forte.Manisha was good in Khamoshi, Bombay and Dil Se, but from then on in every movie, she gave that same performance, which got irritating.
Raja Hindustani itself was a yawn for me. Dharmesh Dharshan is quite an overrated director. Actually Nanda’s character in JJPK, is more greyish than Karishma’s in Raja Hindustani. I think in JJPK, she actually uses Shashi Kapoor for her own purpose and falls in love with him later.
Great post…really enjoyed it…
Let me tell you, i watched them in order of release and he was brilliant in portraying a seething young man in OTW (as you call it). SCND (as you call it) was a movie meant for Vivian Leigh, she cracked it and Marlon was brilliant, the scene in the kitchen is a reminder!
Aamir on the other hand has 3 expressions in each of his movie, which he uses in Gulam also! He sucked in that movie, the only good thing about that movie was the race, which was again a stunt and not acting per se!
the 10-10 ki daud in ghulam was shot at the sanpada rly stn. . There is no nakpada rly stn in mumbai/navi mumbai
@abhay : thanks for the correction. by the way, i meant nagpada, it wud have been wrong either ways
@S : “Aamir on the other hand has 3 expressions in each of his movie” … this is totally uncalled for and ofcourse total hogwash coz u dont know wat u r talking. also, to praise marlon brando u dont have to pull down aamir khan; they have their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to acting. marlon brando encashed on his godfather look in so many crappy movies, but i dont want to talk abt tat. MB is a brilliant actor, so is aamir … lets leave it at that.
and regarding OTW and SCND i already mentioned tat its my opinion, u r entitled to urs…take a chill-pill
I also see lots of similarities between Naya Daur and Lagaan, especially in characters and their emotional relationship, the way story evolves and all twists and turns.
The 10-10 Ka daud was shot at Sanpada railway junction in Navi mumbai not nakpada
You started the comparison. I just carried it forward! My point is, It is a sin to place MB and Aamir together.
For aamir, method acting is drinking to act drunk! Says it all!
One night at the call center is a literary work??? C’mon now!!!
Nice Post.
I don’t think in the Tamil version of Ghajini, the villain is called so. In fact the villains are called Ram and Laxman. The name Ghajini does not come up anywhere in the movie. But why the movie was named so, iam not sure.
@Jitesh : anything tat gets published is literary work, technically.
its not a great book, i do know tat. in fact, its mediocre but the college going students who form a sizeable population liked it a lot, wat can i say
@Njudo-E-Dara & Ankit & Ratnakar : if u do see naya daur in lagaan, then deewar is definitely a copy of ganga-jamuna; tats all i can say.
i was only listing out movies which are outright copies, where there has not been much effort on story-screenplay-characterisation.
Thanks for the eye-opener! This increases my respect for the ‘original’ thinkers who choose to take risks and not play safe for the sake of commercial gains
Uh Oh, i dont think i have posted anything about Lagaan and Naya Daur.
Nothing is original in life. We are a byproduct of our experiences and how we interpret them. Every film that you see will have some influences of some another film or the plot could be entirely similar. The conscious mind is not aware that your subconscious is plagiarizing some thought and the conscious mind calls it original. “Original thought” is an illusion. I might sound philosophical but I hope I make my point here.
@Ratnakar : oops….sorry. tat was a copy-paste error. u did not mention it…
i usually dont write so many “&”
well researched post…ur memory is extremely sharp…incidently the romantic track in ghajini was lifted from an old movie called Saajan starring Manoj Kumar n Asha Parekh…in that movie the heroine is working in a theatre group n Manoj Kumar is a rich guy…i Havent seen the movie myself…was told about it by a friend…have asked him for an iview…it was also made in Tamil…dont know which version came first
Is Raja Hindustani an adaptation of Driving Miss Daisy ?
@Sudhir Nair : actually, quite a few movies have that plot. even the saajan of salman-madhuri-sanjay had the plot where madhuri has heard of sanjay as the poet ’sagar’ but never seen him; and she befriends him unknowingly…whereas sanjay was aware of her identity all through
@IS: no raja hindustani has nothing in common with driving miss daisy except for the driving bit. that movie was more abt racism and color prejudice etc and did not have much of a romantic angle to it.
Well we also had a Basu Chaterjee movie Pasand Apni Apni, where Mithun is a rich guy and Rati is a theater artiste, she does not know the fact. Same as Ghajini.
Also adapted in a Telugu flick called Muralikrishnudu starring Nagarjuna.
@16 crazyrals
Incidentally when salim-Javed narrated Diwar to Yash.Chopra.He felt similarities between the story and the Film “Mother India”. Not Seen Gunga Jumna.Plot looks Similar To Deewar. May Be It Was Hybrid of two. Anyway I agree that it is “lift off” and not inspiration mentioned here.
Yaar there is a hell lot of difference between being influenced and doing a copy paste job.
Lagaan is not a remake of Naya Daur or Escape to Victory, AG just picked up the common thread of a group of people accepting a bet, on which their survival depends thats it.
I had some one tellimg me that Kuch na Kaho, was a copy of Jerry McGuire, i asked why. He said in both movies the hero romances a single mom, Aaargh, i just felt like putting a bullet then and there in his head.
Pata nahin log apna akal ko kyon use nahin karte.
Rang De Basanti as inspired from Jesus of Montreal , the keyword being inspired and not copied.There’s a difference in being inspired and a copy.
And as far as Ghulam is concerned , I think Aamir Khan gave a great performance. Not comparing him to Brando because I haven’t seen On The Waterfront. Brando is great actor , a tad bit overrated but a great actor nonetheless. And what makes makes Aamir’s performance good is that not for a second did he try to be Brando in Ghulam. He just did the way he should have done it and how he fit into that movie. So watch the movie like an Aamir Khan movie and don’t compare to Brando. A good performance is elated by co-actors , good direction and good editing. All of which were lacking in Ghulam.
Like it or not Aamir elevates a movie, director and his co-stars by being true to the movie and the character. There’s a reason why anyone who works with Aamir comes out looking a better actor and director than his previous movie.
@ Ratnakar Sadasyula
Completely agree with you. Unfortunately our directors have copied so much that we have lost the credibility. Not only have we copied movies frame to frame. we copy movie posters , music , trailers and more recently just scenes.
Farhan Akhtar very conveniently lifts scenes from movies like Swordfish , the Fast and The Furious and Con Air in his glamourised version of Don.
Also Jism , where they completely copied the lovemaking scene from 9 1/2 weeks.
Jism itself was a total copy of Body Heat.
Rang De Basanthi’s plot is a bit inspired from a 1948 movie All My Sons.
now this article is one piece to treasure…very well written and well informed article…good job done…crazyrals….u have put lots of effort in compiling all the movies….ur site says u r in IT….which company???
@Ratnakar: guess what ?? jism is copied totally from double indemnity
@crazyrals: I mentioned Naya Daur and Lagaan because you mentioned JJWS and Breaking Away. Both seems to be same level of inspiration to me. JJWS has the same bicycle plot but Naya Daur also have many characters similar to Lagaan.
You said “I was only listing out movies which are outright copies, where there has not been much effort on story-screenplay-characterisation”
Surely JJWS doesn’t fall in this category.
@Ankit:there are 4 major sub-plots that have been lifted and not just the bicycle race; the dating devika plot using a fake identity, the italian bicyclists kicking him into the ditch which actually made him lose respect for them[in jjws they harm his brother, thereby adding the emotional touch], the father showing his album on how he had won the race and the 4 friends who went around in the bicycle wiling away time…being aimless.
the only common thing between lagaan and naya daur is the underdog coming victorious in the face of all odds.
Rals, Nope Jism was a frame to frame copy of Body Heat, right down to the setting. Body Heat was based on Double Indemnity.
Body Heat set in Florida, Jism in Pondicherry.
In Body Heat, William Hurt is a loser lawyer, same with John Abraham in Jism.
In Body Heat, William Hurt’s pals Ted Danson and Oscar Grace are cops who investigate the murder, the same is done by Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey in Jism.
You see a cinematic work
You inspire to make good films
—-
You choose a premise as land tax or Industrialization and evil British or Bus service
You inspire to copy plot i.e the bet and the competition and the end result (freedom land tax and opportunity to earn living) are the same
—-
Your lead act the same way, it has same dilemma that to convince villagers. He has two girls in his life. Almost there is same chemistry among villagers.
—
Bus service owner Kundan and British officer Russell have been portrayed in same villainous fashion (observe the similarity in characters profiles)
—
They both bribe to win the bet. Both lakha and Krishna has jealousy issue with Bhuvan and Kundan. And both Lakha and Krishna both, realized the nobility of Kundan and Bhuvan and go great extent to help them and betray both villains.
—
Compare Game and Race, ie bus service and Tanga and Cricket Match regulars vs first timers, this “inconvincible” type of cinematic phenomenon. It folds the same way and ends the same way.
———-
@ 26. Ratnakar this is much more than inspiration, of course AG doesn’t used just the bet thing. He modeled the plot, chemistry among characters; he divided one character in two, combined two into one and added few more. And He calculated emotional response audience given to Naya Daur and would give to Laggan and then modified his plot.Dude it is very intelligent copy. We say inspiration because he smarter not to make DVD copy. After screenplay he might have thought original, but screenplay remains “heavily inspired” or “Intelligent copy”
———–
I see good “Inspiration” as Inspiration to “copy” the various and remarkable elements of film as form of art. Like the way maya daren mixes music and cinematography together, the way felini blends music into narrative, the way kurosawa folds the story and keep the interest, the way Hitchcock uses McGuffin , non linear structure in the narrative of tarantino, dreamy touch of Kubrick, use songs in pyasa and Asali Naqali, composition in Yojimbo , rhythm and pace in Indiana Jones editing
———-
To copy plot, characters is not that good inspiration if not a “intelligent copy”
@Ratnakar : agreed…i wanted to bring ‘double idemnity’ into the picture. thanx for pointing it out.
@Njudo-E-Dara : great work, thanks for elaborating. i was only talking about remakes and not about deriving an inspiration and coming out with something that looks nowhere close to the original.
what u have tried to cover is the bigger picture where we find some elements/plots/characters being taken as inspiration. as i mentioned in one of the earlier comments, is deewar a copy of ganga-jamuna? someone suggested mother india + ganga jamuna = deewar. so, we cannot just go about equating two movies only because they share some similarity. if u see 12 angry men and ek ruka huwa faisla, u know straight-away that its copied.
as far as inspiration is concerned…we shud have another post on that where we will discuss only inspirations and no copy-paste jobs
@37 crazyrals
u quoted me gunga jaumna and i quoted yash chopra ,that he felt screenplay was inspired from mother india.As i haven’t seen gunga jaumna , i said it might be inspiration of both
“mother india + ganga jamuna = deewar”
was not what i intendant, what was intendant was POV of director Yash Chopra Vs your POV.
When u say “12 angry men and ek ruka huwa faisla” it is DVD copy,@36 i was talking about “highly intelligent copy” or “bad inspiration” of Naya Daur.Anyway I already agreed that this post is about remake(or DVD copy),i was only commenting on those who questioned What is “inspiration” and What is “intelligent copy”.Watch Naya daur (don’t just read IMDB synopsis)and then watch lagan, you will realize that it is just little better than is Seven Samurai to Sholay copy.(If you think it is copy)
@Njudo-E-Dara : i have seen naya daur so dont assume stuff, plz keep ur advice to urself. i own the original dvd of almost all the movies tat i have mentioned above. in fact, except for ‘love affair’ made in 1939, i have seen every movie tat i have mentioned in this post.
finally, u have ur opinion… i have mine. i have already conceeded tat in a vague way it cud be an inspiration so lets move ahead.
@39
i wrote
——-
“i was only commenting on THOSE who questioned What is “inspiration” and What is “intelligent copy”
—-
dude it was generalized statement for all “those” mentioned above statement.And Is it not a public bloging site? Why so defensive man! U already wrote great stuff … so chill … i just made my point … never questioned your intelligence, dvd collection and judgment.
@39
i wrote
——-
“i was only commenting on THOSE who questioned What is “inspiration” and What is “intelligent copy”
—-
dude it was generalized statement for all “those” mentioned above statement.And anyway Is it not a public bloging site? Why so defensive man! U already wrote great stuff … so chill … i just made my point … never questioned your intelligence, dvd collection and judgment.
I think ISSI KA NAAM ZINDAGI was copy of some Bengali film. Not very sure, though.
MELA was a rehash of a little known B Subhash film AANDHI AUR TOOFAN starring Mithun, Hema and Shatru.
Great article. Man, I have started respecting you!
thanks all u guys for taking such keen interest in this series and thanks for all the wonderful feedback.
His film “jawani zindabad” was a remake of a Kannada film “Avale nanna hendathi”.
Superbly well-researched article crazyrals…actually, it never occured to me that most of his films are remakes or based on literary works. Many of his romantic remakes have been quite bad actually…Mann, Akele Hum Akele Tum and Raja Hindustani (which I thought was even worse than the universally panned Mela and Aamir’s performance was the worst of the already-worse lot..it beats me how it went on to become a blockbuster). When I first watched Ghulam, I had no idea that it was a remake of OTW. I still haven’t watched OTW but on learning that it was one of Brando’s finest movies….I was embarassed to admit to people that I liked Ghulam. I still like that movie…certainly among Aamir’s better performances.