The Epidemic of Remakes: Part 1
Does a movie have a time and a place?
Anniyan is being remade in Hindi this year.
That’s it. That’s the introductory paragraph. It should be enough to make you panic or at least close your eyes in frustration.
Anniyan, a 2005 Tamil-language Indian movie, is an absolute classic. It follows Ramanujam Iyengar (or Ambi) who develops Multiple Personality Disorder. I know this is a tried and tired trope now, but it was way ahead of its time when it released.
One of Ambi’s personalities is Anniyan, a man who decides to punish wrong-doers and those who escape the eye of the law by meting out punishments from the Hindu book of Judgement: The Garuda Puranam. What propels Ambi — a good-hearted man with an obsession to do right by people — to become a version of himself that he didn’t know he could be?
This movie spoke about mental illness differently from what I was used to at the time. It recognized that Ambi was a suffering man before he was a ‘criminal.’ Yes, the movie has a lot of masala; it was supposed to be more entertaining than serious. But in 2005, the only other stories in India about mental illness were (mis)representations of schizophrenia where the character was inevitably a villain to be feared, a person who saw a brutal, nasty end.
Anniyan was unafraid to ask the tough questions: What is the morality of someone who is mentally ill but is also a murderer? Where do these people belong?
In an era where people in India never spoke about mental illness, this movie gave Tamil audiences a vocabulary to talk about the mind.
Manna valli, the doctor in the movie calls it. The pain in the mind.
A movie like this meant something to a 2005 audience that it could never mean to a 2022 audience. A remake will be pointless. Not just because every Hindi speaker has already watched this movie dubbed as Aparichit, but also because Anniyan had a time and a place.
An Epidemic of Remakes
I did a quick search on movies remade in Hindi from a South Indian film (and visa-versa) in the last ten years or so.
In the early 2010s, I remember thinking that the Hindi film industry was having a renaissance of a sort. I look back and realize that many of the Hindi blockbusters of that time were remakes of South Indian entertainers: Bhool Bhulaiya (2007) was a remake of 1993 Malayalam film, Manichitrathazhu; Ekk Deewana Tha (2012) was of the 2010 Tamil film, Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa; Rowdy Rathore (2012) was of the 2006 Telugu film, Vikramarkudu.
Much like today, many of the films adopted the same name as the originals: Bodyguard (Malayalam, 2010; Hindi 2011), Ghajini (Tamil, 2005; Hindi 2011), Drishyam (Malayalam, 2013; Hindi, 2015), and with a small change in spelling Singam — or Singham (Tamil, 2010; Hindi 2011).
The Heart of a Remake
I noticed during my search that the Hindi industry seems to remake only blockbusters — movies that are fun to watch but, story-wise, may or may not be anything groundbreaking. That’s what gave us remakes of Middle Class Abbayi (as Nikamma), Vettai (as Baaghi 3), Pokiri (as Wanted), and Paragu (as Heropanti). Having watched both versions, I found myself preferring the South Indian originals.
One look at the list of upcoming Hindi remakes tells you the same story: Master, Vikram Vedha, Duruvangal Pathinaaru, U-Turn, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (feeding off of Allu Arjun’s fame in Pushpa).
On the other hand, most movies that South Indian directors remake from Hindi feel a little more hand-picked. Granted, they choose hits too. But I have often found the South Indian remake just as powerful as the Hindi originals.
Thaana Serndha Kootam, a remake of Special Chabbis, gave Anupam Kher’s role to a woman — Ramya Krishnan. It was a change I found interesting. Pink was remade as Vakeel Saab, and Jolly LLB as Saptagiri LLB, in Telugu — powerful movies that I can’t stop talking about. Nil Battey Sannata was remade in Tamil as Amma Kanakku. Despite my bias towards originals, I found that Amma Kanakku warmed my heart more.
My favourite example of a good remake is Papanasam, the 2015 Tamil rehash of the Malayalam movie Drishyam. Papanasam has a distinctly Tamil feel to it, with the lead character taking on an accent local to the town. The story remains the same, but Kamal Haasan’s performance as a father wrecks your heart just as much as Mohanlal’s does in the original.
The Hindi Drishyam in comparison feels lifeless. Ajay Devgn and Shriya Saran were too young to play parents to the older girl. The movie did not adopt much from Goan culture. In the hurry to make the movie quickly, they forgot that the crux of the story was not the twists. It was the father. He needed to be played by a brilliant actor who could deliver, in equal parts, the desperation and the smartness of the character.
Just like with Anniyan, a hurried remake without taking into consideration space and time can lead to a paper-thin story that doesn’t touch your heart.
Frame by Frame Remakes
Remakes, by themselves, are not a problem, of course. An opinion piece on Mashable, in fact, highlights the positives of film remakes:
We get the basic concept. There’s a movie in the past that has a story you think deserves to be revisited. The reasons could be many: maybe the story is so relevant or popular that it should be retold to reach a wider audience. Maybe, you think you can do it better. Or maybe, it’s a timeless classic that you finally have the perfect cast to remake with.
However, every Hindi remake these days feels like a cut-paste-google translate version of South Indian films. Everything, right to the camera angles, the clothes, the blocking, are identical.
Recently, I watched the trailer of the upcoming Hindi movie, Vikram Vedha. The original Tamil version has the same name. The clothes Saif Ali Khan wears are strikingly similar to Madhavan’s neutrals. The Tamil trailer starts with the same line that the Hindi trailer ends with — Shall I tell you a story? The interrogation scene where Vikram uses two paper cups to explain morality to Vedha is also there in the Hindi trailer, with near identical cups and the same camera angle.
Yup, She Went There
We can’t talk about remakes without talking about the Telugu film, Arjun Reddy and its Hindi remake, Kabir Singh. Fraught with controversy around its problematic representation of masculinity, Kabir Singh was boycotted by many.
I am here to suggest that what failed Kabir Singh was not the fat-shaming or the misogyny or the submission to heteronormative and patriarchal views. These exist in other movies that escaped scot-free.
Dabangg, Rowdy Rathore, Sanju, Pyaar Ka Punchnama, all three in the Masti series, Wanted, and even well-meaning movies like Stree give us a fixed idea of what women and men should be like, encouraging sexism and inflexible gender norms. (I’d like to point out that these are all blockbusters or, at least, have a cult following.)
What failed Kabir Singh was the filmmaker’s insistence on remaking it scene for scene. There was a refusal on his part to be critical, to adjust storylines to his audience, to try to elevate the story instead of simply retelling it. In addition, a frame for frame remake meant that the nuance that was there in the original Arjun Reddy too was lost on Kabir Singh.
The same opinion piece asks this question:
But what purpose is this remake serving if you tell the same story the exact same way, with the exact same flaws, failing utterly at every opportunity to embed your remake with a better message for the times and the people you’re making it for? The hero gets a cooler name and a six-pack; the heroine gets a cool job and a modern makeover: the villain (if any) gets an anti-hero upgrade. But their shortcomings, their value systems, and even their character arc endings remain the same as the original.
I want to delve deeper into this epidemic. Why is it that this trend seems to have hit the Hindi film industry more than the South Indian film industries? Why are the Hindi films failing relative to their original counterparts? I want to look into the frustration that this might be causing to viewers, who are now armed with OTT platforms, subtitling and dubbing.
But that is for another article (which comes out soon, so stay tuned). This time, I just want to leave you (and myself) with this food for thought: Does a movie have a time and a place? How can we capture that in film, especially when we have taken on the burden of a remake?
Leave your comments!
I do not own any of the images used in this essay. Images have been picked from filmaffinity and YouTube solely for commentary on and review of movies.
If you enjoy my writing, do consider supporting my work via my Buy Me A Coffee page. You can click on the Give a Tip button below. Thank you so much. Happy reading!
