While Bollywood veers off from remaking Tamil films after underperformers such as Gabbar is Back , Shortcut Romeo , Pizza and Holiday: A Soldier is Never Off Duty , the trend of remakes shows no signs of slowing down in Kollywood. Recent releases 36 Vayadhinile and Papanasam have become hugely successful and have cleared the decks for future releases, which include the much-hyped remake of the Malayalam blockbuster Bangalore Days . So what, really, does it mean to make a remake?
Rosshan Andrrews, the director of How Old Are You and its Tamil remake 36 Vayadhinile , feels producers have begun to rely more on the creative team behind the original film. “Every film has a soul and people who’ve worked closely on the original version understand the importance of staying true to it. Good remakes aren’t mere frame-by-frame copies for a new audience. They need to be treated with the same sincerity as an original. My first film Udayananu Tharam , which was a superhit in Malayalam, failed as Velli Thirai in Tamil. At times, we assume we know what the audience wants. But nobody knows what will work and what won’t. All one can do is be faithful to the script.”
Producer G Dhananjayan goes even further. He believes remakes should retain their original directors. “Both Papanasam and 36 Vayadhinile were directed by those who made the Malayalam versions. Even when Krish was retained to remake Vedam to Vaanam , the film proved successful. When a person not associated with the original begins working on a remake, they bring in their own ideas and assumptions on how to adapt it. In this process, the film loses the essence that made the original a hit.”
Shaheed Khader thinks differently. He was entrusted with the adaptation of the Malayalam film Traffic into Tamil. He made Chennaiyil Oru Naal , starring Sarath Kumar. He says, “I told Rajesh Pillai (the director of Traffic ) even during the scripting that I would love to remake it in Tamil. I loved the script and as a director you have your own ideas on how to treat it visually. Instead of making a carbon copy of the original, a director could choose to add his own elements by using the screenplay as the source material and not the film itself.”
Adapt, not translate
While translating dialogues from one language to another might be critical for the success of a remake, directors feel sensible alterations need to be made to suit local culture. Rosshan Andrrews says, “ 36 Vayadhinile is about 20 minutes shorter than How Old Are You . I felt the Tamil audience prefers a more direct approach to storytelling, compared to the slower, heavy-on-detail narration style of Malayalam.”
Shaheed, on the other hand, made changes to both the acting style and the dialogues. “Our dialogue writer Ajayan Bala gave us three to four variations for every dialogue from the original, and we would choose one. Since the original lines were imagined by Malayali writers for Malayali characters, we needed to re-imagine them for Tamil characters. Apart from making certain scenes dialogue-heavy, actors too were asked to be a bit more dramatic for it to feel like a Tamil film.”
Apart from making changes to suit a new audience, Shaheed feels a remake presents an opportunity to fix mistakes spotted in the original. He says, “For instance, in Traffic , we mentioned rain as a reason a helicopter cannot be deployed in a crucial scene. But the film looked very sunny. We shot a few scenes in the rain to fix that error in Chennaiyil Oru Naal .”
Can all successful films be remade?
One needs to be careful about choosing a film for a remake. Success cannot be the only criterion. “ Subramaniapuram , for instance, despite being a great movie, cannot be successfully remade elsewhere,” feels Rosshan. “It’s a film so true to its south Tamil Nadu setting that one cannot replant that story in another land. In comparison, themes like love or horror are easier to adapt.”
Dhananjayan adds, “Even Naadodigal (remade to Hindi as Rangrezz and in Malayalam as Ithu Nammude Katha ) was not a story other audiences could relate to. It’s almost like conditioning. We’ve had so many films about friendship with the whole ‘nanbenda’ sentiment that a film like Naadodigal becomes instantly relatable in Tamil. Similarly, when we adapted Delhi Belly to Settai , we assumed that bringing the film’s comic elements alone would be enough for it to work here. But the audience were expecting the same explicitness as the original and they were disappointed with the sanitised version.”
RS Prasanna directed Kalyana Samayal Saadham , a film about an arranged Tamil Brahmin wedding. He is currently in the process of making the film’s Hindi version. Would a film with such a strong cultural setting translate to another language? “Beyond the setting, Kalyana Samayal Saadham is a film rich in emotion. Emotions are universal and will appeal to all as long as we don't lose what we're trying to convey in translation. In fact, one should look at a remake as an opportunity to make a better film. Kuruthipunal , for instance, is better than its original Drohkaal .”
But remakes come with their own challenges. Says Shaheed, “I had watched the original dozens of times and while I was working on Chennaiyil Oru Naal , I realised that all the shots and faces from the original film were playing in my mind. I feel I faithfully recreated the film in Tamil but it did not satiate my creative urges.”
(By special arrangement with The Hindu Cinema Plus)