Of Remake Follies and successes – Arjun/ Sathya!
Normally, Hindi cinema copies when it does not want to be original. It does not inform the original maker about its intent. Of course, there has been some change on this front but far and between. But, there have been some notable instances when the remaker has taken rights and done the job. In 1989, Dayavan was released. It was remade after the rights were acquired from Mani Ratnam by Feroze Khan. The film was Nayagan.
Feroze Khan is no more. So, I shall not delve into the film like a critic. It will not be nice today. Most of us know how that film turned out to be. But I shall look at the enthusiasm and business understanding of a film maker trying to do a remake. Here I should mention that “A Wednesday” is being turned into a film in Tamil with Mohanlal and Kamalhasan headlining the project. So, it works both ways.
Let us take the enthusiasm bit first. The maker usually sees the movie or is shown the movie at an opportune time. He is briefed on the stupenduous business by people or gathers the information himself. He also takes note of the style and milieu in which the film is made. Then, he is excited and his mind works overtime as to what can be achieved if he takes up the project in another language.
Then his Business understanding comes to the fore. He makes some back of the envelope calculations about Production Budgets, Stars and Marketing. He also makes those few needed calls. Hey presto! He now has a general understanding of the business that the film shall be generating a year or two hence.
But then why do remake projects fail most of the while, never living upto the original’s flavour?
Tough question and equally tough answers!
How many film makers rewrite the script as a whole incorporating the cultural, milieu, situational, dialogue styling, props and sometimes even the transposing of locales for greater acceptance. They do not. There are many film examples from Jyoti bane Jwala to Ghajini, that I can think of. I don’t know how Pokkiri will turn out.
I will now provide a completely different comparison of a successful original and a successful remake – Arjun/ Sathya.
Arjun by Rahul Rawail was a landmark gangster film in Hindi cinema. Sunny Deol lived the role with commendable work by the whole crew, RDB with the music, the whole cast with even the short roles delighting us. We will not forget Annu Kapoor, Satyajeet, Paresh Rawal, Shafi Inamdar, Supriya Pathak, Sashikala or even A K Hangal from this film. The final chase culminating in the hospital scene was awesome. So, when Kamalhasan decided that he will be doing his own version of Arjun with a raw new director called Suresh Krishna, then I knew I was in for a treat!
I used to work for the Taj group then in Chennai. So, popping off to a nearby cinema in the afternoon was no big deal. So, go I did to understand how the remake would be.
I was blown. The suave hero Arjun had turned into a Choolaimedu thug completely. There was a physical transformation. The short buzz cut hair and the thick beard would not please any nice Adyar girl at all. The walk was edgy, just away from wanton violence. Then the look, oh man, we were actually looking at a ruffian of the most obscene sort. Yes, he still was middle class, educated somewhat and respectful towards elders and women but that was it. This was screen writing at its best. A complete change in the environment and culture had been adopted even while sticking to the original essence of the story. Most of you would have seen Sathya and rooted for Kamal and his lady love Amala (between Sathya and Shiva, I lost my heart a lot of times then!). So, I shall not take up the story. To others, please see this gem of a movie. I hear RGV also did portions of Shiva from this movie. I don’t know whether this is true.
Then I saw Ghajini late last year and was reminded of the excellence dished out in Sathya earlier and how Murugadass had missed out big time.
It is not always about a star cast in remakes. Yes, they are important otherwise the additional expenses in buying remake rights don’t justify at all. But, the treatment and adaptation is most necessary.
Watch Bhranti Bilas (The comedy of errors in Bengali) and Angoor (Hindi) to understand where originals and remakes can go.
Tags: arjun, Remakes, Sathya
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’neel da, u dint mention HR’s Karzzzzzzzz. CRIME! LOL. Great post!
@Magik – I had always meant to tell this..except the nostalgia factor, great music and Rishi Kapoor’s acting I did not like the original Karz too..so, I stayed far away from the 2nd edition!!
Satya is one of my favorite Kamal movies, and this was one of the few instances, where i liked both the original and remake. The Tam/Telugu remakes of Don sucked.
..
I guess reason for Satya working was the lower middle class ambience which was well recreated, and also being faithful to the original story. Suresh Krishna also made Indrudu-Chandrudu later with Kamal, which was a desi adaptation of Moon Over Parador, and pretty much an entertaining comic flick. Kamal’s performance as a crooked, corrupt womanizing Mayor is brilliant, especially that croaky voice.
Vis a vis the SRK remake of Don, i felt that while Farhan Akhtar did a good job with the action scenes, the scenes involving Vijay were much better in the original Don. AB was perfect with that bhaiyya accent, SRK on the other hand did not really fit in there. Also the chemistry beween AB-Zeenat was much better than that of SRK-Priyanka.
@Ratnakar – Personally, I felt that the new Don had its own merits. It had a style and flow that was different from the earlier Don that was more earthier. Of course, there was style too, but this was a more contemporary take and the story had progressed here a wee bit more. It was more for first timers to the Don experience and not people like us who did experience Don earlier and could compare. My cousins who had never seen the earlier Don liked this very much. Precisely why it again turned into a hit! 60% India below 30 wala principle!!
What about Kaante then? I read somewhere even Tarantino had praised the movie, saying how the guys had done a good job by going into the background of various characters, something that had not been done in Reservoir Dogs.
As long as someone remakes a movie the right way, I feel its fine.What I mean is to first of all acquire the remake rights & give due credit to the original.When it comes to filming, if careful homework is done then subtle changes for enhancing the movie can be done like changing the milieu, change of characters, adding/deleting certain segments etc.This completes the circle & can help in the end product being good.Sathya/Arjun is a good example for this.
When Pokiri from Telugu was remade in Tamil there was not too much of change incorporated as the subject suited A.P & T.N equally.Lets see if Boney Kapoor & Prabhu Deva have made some changes for the Hindi version.
nice write up o Satya – The first thing that stuck me about the movie was the footboard scenes which were done really well.offcourse the characters of Kitty (voice of SPB) and Rajesh were neatly done. A treat to watch.
there were two good things about kaante, the rip off was thprough, even expressions, swaggers, oohs and ahs were imported, and secondly, the actors, sanjay dutt was brilliant, no need to say anything about AB, but the absolute master-class was mahesh manjrekar, who, inexplicably, has been accused of hamming by many for this role. I think for many people, if they dont like the character, they dislike the actor as well. the fact that there are innumerable pains you no where like ‘Baali’ in the world was captured amazingly by mm. And the fact is that many people are loud and crass, so if this is hamming then a big part of the world is hamming most of the time, so its ok
i totally loved kaante. in fact ,all of us ,me n my friends were real fans n it was like sholay of our generation as we were taken away by dialogues, style and music, it was totally different experience n sanjay dutt was great.
although it was mix of different films like intro scenes were from usual suspects n second half from reservoir dogs but the characters and story was not completely same n stupid bollywood backstory was not added.
another example of succesful remakes are bheja fry and ek ruka hua faisla.
ThilluMullu from Golmaal, would rank up there as well..very difficult to rate one against the other.
And what about Kuruthi Punal from Drohkaal???haven’t seen Drohkaal yet
I thought the Ghajini remake in Hindi was much improved from it’s Tamil version. The decision to change the climax and avoid the double role for the villain was a good commonsensical decision!
Satya was one helluva movie. It was one of those movies which made me a Kamal fanatic. The raw, bold portrayal of Kamal as Satya was brilliant, the songs were a big hit. The short cut and the beard was such a craze then. Kuruthipunal, Thillu Mullu were also movies which wer equally well made as the the orignal. Even the latest poi solla porom was a good remake of Khosla.
I think you missed Priyadarshan’s remade movies in Hindi. From Hera-pheri to Hungama, all were perfect in terms of the cultural angle it presented.
Audience is not always same for original and remake.
These are two different audience.
Even if u make a better remake, then too there is no guarantee that, that different audience will love it. (becoz they may not connect with it, or they have already seen some similar concepts in other movies, they are not surprised and curious).
One may compare a hindi remake to its hollywood original. But then that-One is no longer a normal audience. bcoz it proves that one watches many hollywood movies. He has a wider scope, and his understanding of cinema is more.
He can judge better, but he can’t think, as a normal audience does.
—
Even if a remake is not that good, it can work for a different audience, who didn’t watch original. and found it fresh, interesting and entertaining.
and even if a remake is better, that too it can fail, coz now a different audiene is watching it.
—
And remake of another superhit movie, cannot always be a superhit, even if u try to make it best.
The reason: There are so many famous directors in bollywood, who are trying their best by using good scripts, actors, music, and trying to do their best and trying to make superhit movies. but they are never 100% successful in it. Some movies become superhit, becoz something clicks with audience. But those directors are not able to understand ‘that-click thing’ yet. Because audience is so different, everyone is unique with different taste about everything.
So making remake, and getting that click-thing, with different set of audience may not be possible.
Isn’t in amazing, that if we can have good director, good writer, good actors, good music, and theme of successful-original or totally fresh theme. then too, we can’t get a gaurantee of superhit movie.
—
Hey one more thing,
i think, one part of my brain is becoming hollywood audience, but my heart is still mostly bollywood.
I wonder, the people, who knows 3-4 languages, and watch movies in those languages, what happens with them ?
Indraneelda, good thing you mentioned Angoor, one of the best adaptations ever, not to mention one of the finest comedies with some of the best acting – Sanjeev Kumar, Deven Verma, Moushumi Chatterjee, Deepti Naval, Yunus Parvez…
Well, Drohkaal to Kurudhipunal and Golmaal to Thillu Mullu were almost perfect. KP spoilt it by removing the “Droh” element of Om Puri’s character completely – witness how Arjun blurts out that he is the officer in charge of Dhanush whereas in the original, Puri betrays Nasseer by revealing his identity to the naxal chief. I mean, the whole point of the movie was precisely that. Times of Betrayal. Unfortunately, the fans of Kamal the star ensured that Kamal the hero cannnot be a betrayer and this element had to go out of KP. But otherwise it was a pretty good remake.
Priyadarshan’s geography-challenged remakes should not at all be discussed in the context of good remakes! Virasat didnt catch the subtext of Devar Magan at all. And so on…
@ plum,
kamal was the one betraying his duty. It was Arjun who was shown as the honest cop.. Wasn’t it?
RB, Kamal fell prey to the emotional blackmail but he didnt explicitly betray Arjun to Nasser, did he? That is the point. In Drohkaal, Om Puri does exactly that. I mean, it is one thing to do generally vaguely betraying duty. But to betray a close friend to a terrorist, now isnt that a serching, relentless examination of the average human mind? This is what Kamal failed to do – because he was the hero, and the hero never betrays his best friend on screen. Also, the tamil movie was originally named Drohi but the fans’ association revolted so it was changed to Kurudhipunal. I presume the fans’ association also expressed strong reservations if Kamal is shown as betraying the close friend. So, yes, I blame Kamal fans for diluting Kurudhipunal
On Second thought,
the comparison of original and remake is not good.
I don’t think, that director wants u to see both version.
When he is remaking a movie, he knows that, the target audience didn’t watch the original, so they may come to watch my movie.
He doesn’t say in this way, ‘ok u have seen the hindi one, now u will show u the tamil one.”
I think, he says, “ok u ppl have liked the hindi one and u liked it, now i will go, and will show this to tamil people, by modifying it a little.”
And then director is not a director, as we define it. he is more like a DJ, who remixed an original song. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter whether the remake is better than the original or not. Remake is still a remake. Even though the original was flop or was worse in artistic sense. And Remake is superhit, and better in an artistic way. it is still a remix.
Once i told my tamil friend, that the hindi song was better than the tamil one (it was from the same dubbed movie). then he told me,’ may be hindi song has better lyrics, and instruments change is good too, and singers are different, u may say that lyrics are better, or it sounds better. but u can never say that hindi-one is better than the tamil-one, bcoz hindi one is based on tamil one.
It is just a derivative art. two hindi song based on this tamil song can be compared with each other.
And one more thought.
Even if it is by a same director. If we find a writer, who wrote a best-selling hindi book, and then translated it into five languages. will we say, that he wrote six best books ? (even though he changes some local idioms, customs, religion, clothes, food in it. )
And if it is abt two directors, isnt it like, as when second director is shooting any scene, then first director showed him, how to do it, and then second director did that way, or changed something ?
should we think that, first director was important in this second movie, and somehow his name should be there in the Titles, because he was helping second director all the time ?
plum,
thanks for tat.not seen Drohkaal yet,tats y cudn’t get the context.