‘ Some remakes are better than original’
New- age directors feel remakes bring youngsters closer to classics, but only if dealt with care
They say a remake is nothing but old wine in a new bottle. Several filmmakers are eager to cash in on classics to give them a modern twist. With 90s cult Amitabh Bachchan starrer Agneepath remade by Karan Malhotra with Hrithik Roshan and Sanjay Dutt proving to be a hit at the box office, the other much anticipated remakes in the pipeline are G. P. Sippy’s Seeta Aur Geeta starring Katrina Kaif and probables Akshay Kumar and Abhay Deol, 80’ s blockbuster Sunny Deol’s Arjun, which has Nikhil Dwivedi playing the lead and the much awaited debut of Telugu star Ram Charan Teja as the angry young man in the remake of Zanjeer, being directed by Apoorva Lakhia.
So, even as scriptwriter Salim Khan is not keen about Zanjeer’s remake, son Salman Khan supports the decision of filmmkakers. He was recently quoted saying, “Of course there should be a remake of Zanjeer. Zanjeer was a superb and really good film.”
Interestingly, at a discussion recently, lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar said there was no need to remake 1975 blockbuster Sholay because it was the biggest and the most successful movie of its time. “I am not against remake of movies, but I would not suggest the new generation to remake Sholay. It is the most popular movie of its time and even now,” Akhtar said, asking, “Can anyone remake movies like Godfather and Gandhi?”
We asked filmmakers if they agree that old classics shouldn’t be touched.
K u n a l Deshmukh, director of much antici- pated sequel Jannat 2 starring Emraan Hashmi and Esha Gupta, says, “When a new age director takes up a remake subject, either he’s grown up with great memories of that film or wants to approach it in a new way. Agneepath and Don are cult movies, and they both did well because they were treated differently. Also, one can’t fool an audience. They can recognise a filmmaker’s sincere efforts versus an overnight job. Remaking Zanjeer won’t be easy, likewise, Sarkar is a remake of Godfather, and it did well. There’s no reason why makers can’t touch an original.” Kamlesh Pandey, writer of films such as Rang De Basanti, D e l h i - 6 , Yuvvraj, agrees with Akhtar’s views and questions, “Why do people want to remake classics? Don’t they have new stories? You just can’t rehash old classics. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas was an insult to Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. It’s like makers want to improvise on Ramayana and Mahabharata. A classic becomes an important part of racial memory. If you have to remake a film, it’s okay to remake from one language to another. A film is invested with emotion, it’s not a machine, it’s made by the audience too, it’s not merely a piece of entertainment. You can’t cheat the audience.”
Director Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan, of Lahore, who won the Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a director at the 57th National Film Awards in 2010, believes creativity has no boundary. He says, “If a director wants to remake a classic, he must know how the film would shape up. It’s not easy to remake a cult, but it’s important to think it through. Hollywood has been remaking their classics, and some of them are better than the original.”