Ethics of remakes

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Trust me, one of the most laudable touches of Agneepath was the fact that it fulsomely acknowledged its source. Before the film unspooled, it included a widescreen portrait of Mukul S. Anand who had helmed the original revenge saga (albeit with shades of Brian De Palma’s Scarface).

Perhaps only producer Karan Johar would have cared to remember the techno-savvy director employed by his father more than two decades ago. Also there’s something palpably warm about Karan preceding every Dharma production with a portrait of dad Yash Johar with handwritten calligraphy, “Miss you every day.”
No one has actually cared to remember Mukul S. Anand, who died prematurely at the age of 45. None of the actors, significant or insignificant, has ever mentioned him even in passing about his inventive technique, terrific shot takings and the recurrent use of natural light effects. He did become excessively formulaic and banked far too much on marketable stars — but that he was way ahead of his time as a craftsman has never been sufficiently acknowledged.
Indeed, it’s a lesson for those punch drunk on their star status today. Once out of sight, out of heart and mind. Then it’s the turn of those “inspired” by the groundbreakers to take over. For instance, David Dhawan and Rohit Shetty admit in print that they are “influenced” by Manmohan Desai and Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Really? Influence is one thing, cadging plot premises another.
Now take the case of Sai Paranjpye. Over two decades ago, she tickled the funny bone of the nation with Chashme Buddoor. It is being remade by Dhawan without so-much-of-a-by-your-leave. Ask the creator of the sparkling entertainer and she states that the rights to the film belong to its producer. What about the ethics involved in retelling a story? To that, the writer-director snaps, “Forget it. I’m not going to lose sleep over this.”
Curiously all the retreading is being done at a juncture when copyright laws are tilting in favour of the creators. Intellectual Property Rights are being seriously debated and discussed. In the event, today, Bollywood has reduced its output of frame-to-frame copies of international DVDs or have sought to purchase remake rights. Ummm, is that why Sanjay Gupta — the master of copies — is lying low nowadays? Check out his films like Zinda, Musafir and Acid Factory. You don’t have to be an Amartya Sen to deduce that they’re American and Korean DVDs-warmed-over.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali saw no need to allude even faintly to The Miracle Worker (1962), his source for Black (2005). Or to the Spanish film The Sea Inside (2004) for Guzaarish (2010).
Vis-a-vis the re-remakes of Bollymovies, it has always been quite a mind-quaking scenario. When Salim-Javed changed the genders of Ram aur Shyam (1967) to Seeta aur Geeta (1972), there were protests and threats of a lawsuit from the Chennai-based producers of the Dilip Kumar blockbuster. Next thing you know the remake rights of Seeta aur Geeta, in Tamil, were handed over in exchange.
At times, an external source can be a catalyst like the Robin Williams comedy Patch Adams (1998) was for Lage Raho Munnabhai — but since it was so cleverly and even innovatively rewritten, the retread was almost unrecongisable.
This was true also of Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti (2006). Although its central idea echoed like the Canadian film Jesus of Montreal (1989), it articulated its theme of youth angst on its own terms.
“No one is original. Even Shakespeare wasn’t,” Javed Akhtar once told me in an interview. Fair enough. Be that as it may, it’s not only graceful but also a sign of maturity to disclose the source of any film when it is second-third-or-hundredth-hand.
Going by the strenghthening laws, such acknowledgements are more than likely to become mandatory. Fingers, toes and eyes crossed.