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Before the pandemic temporarily shut down cinemas in Greater Male' Area, a friend of mine went to Olympus Theatre in Maldives' capital Male' to watch a local film. The next day he told me he had found out that the Dhivehi film he went to watch was actually a "copy" (remake) of a Hindi language film from India. He said therefore he has to watch the Indian version too to make a comparison/contrast.
I didn't say anything to that because I understood he was passionate about movies and therefore he would not feel it a waste of time dedicated to "analyse" his entertainment choices.
While I have noticed people in my circles spending less time on leisure, and instead becoming more pious as they grow older, perhaps because the fear of nearing death increases, I understood that younger generations who have no such fears do not mind "wasting" a lot of time in entertaining themselves.
Because there exist countless billions of creative people on our planet Earth, I have never understood why there are remakes, unless creating remakes is just another "original" form of creativity that I happen not to understand.
My dismissal of remakes, where movies are concerned, is based on my view that the original work can also be enjoyed dubbed or subtitled in other languages. Yet Bollywood is notorious for remaking in Hindi language India's films that are produced in other languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, etc. Why not release them dubbed or with subtitles of various languages?
Quite baffling to me is why such remakes have even gone on to become huge box office successes. I am left wondering why audiences do not appreciate originality, and instead prefer plagiarism. Some Dhivehi films are shot-to-shot remakes of Hindi films for Maldivian audiences who can neither understand Hindi nor English but the film producers and distributors involved in these ventures could have dubbed the movies in Dhivehi or put Dhivehi subtitles.
Last week I almost became a victim of a remake: there was the screening at the recently renovated Olympus of the Hindi film "Shehzada" and I almost bought a ticket for MVR 130 (USD 8, which is an extra MVR 10 compared to a ticket costing for a 3D movie at Schwack Cinema), until I decided to do some research from which I found out that it was a remake of the Telugu film "Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo". (Thank you Google and Wikipedia for leading me to this information).
While remakes can be considered as creative in a sort of way, "creative" in the traditional sense refers to "original" works by artists, which brings me to the subject of creative people creating paracosms complete with geography, history, language, culture, etc, that can entertain a passionate consumer for years perhaps. This should render remakes pointless as creatively imagined worlds such as "Saif Rasgefaanu" serial story have proven to be popular among older Maldivian generations while the "Star Wars" universe is a hit among younger generations.
And in light of the fact that I too am getting older, regrettably or not, I do forgo a lot of works of art, and select only a few in view of my wanting to devote time to other self-development projects and attending to spiritual matters such as reciting Islam's holy book The Quran.
I still engage in both non-fiction and fiction works which can contribute to help me learn about life more and improve my emotional intelligence. Mind-expanding movies and series based on true stories, and eye-opening documentaries help a lot in this regard while I also still enjoy fictitious productions such as novels that give important existential and philosophical insights into what it is like been human.
And instead of been overwhelmed by an information overload while spending so much time on social media, compulsively checking notifications every few minutes, I now try to divert more time to learn and know - from sources such as the Internet - about things which I am currently ignorant of. The cliché that we can acquire knowledge from the cradle to the grave is indeed true.
Maybe the people who make remakes want their own flavours to be in it like putting their own actors, environments, styles, culture and language in it to make it more appealing locally. When something is dubbed in another language it loses its appeal a little and sometimes creates a doubt whether it's the correct translation or not. When it's dubbed in another language, sometimes it's irritating to watch an actor perform while the voice doesn't match their mouth.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe people who make remakes are in the hope that they'll outdo the original one similar to the idea of a student becoming better than the teacher.
Original or not doesn’t matter. If you are to make serious art films on very original stories, it would be a hard sell.
ReplyDeleteThere was an attempt, I remember, from a film maker in Maldives a few years ago. They did a short film called ‘Ingili’ which won some award overseas in an art movies festival. But in terms of revenue I think they hardly recovered the costs. And hardly anyone knows a film called Ingili exists.
That’s why Hollywood, Bollywood & Turkish soap opera makers etc are doing big budget movies & with stories that hundreds of million of people can understand. Doesn’t matter if the story is original or not.
You could make, re-make & re-re make James Bond hundreds of times over & still get audiences flocking in to cinemas every single time, time after time. Everyone from Chinese villagers to the hunter-gatherers living on the plains of African Savanna would have no problem understanding Spiderman, Black Panther or Pathaan. There is a guaranteed audience of hundreds of millions of people. But if you, on the other hand made a movie on say, an Indian/Pakistani writer named Saadat Hasan Manto how many people would be interested in it? 🤔