So it seems that 2011 will be the Hollywood year of remakes and sequels. Sequels can be good, Godfather II, Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2, Aliens 2. But more often than not they can be “oh my, just not like the first one”… especially when you get to 2, 2, 4, 5 6…… Thinking more of the shlock, horror and gore films which indeed do suck the life blood out of a franchise. And the sequels to the fantastic roller coaster of imagination The Matrix bored the life out of me with the spiritual and cod-philosophy. Another sequel set for 2014 is a third instalment of Kill Bill: Vol. 3. I look forward to that though I hope by then that Quentin Tarantino has a strict script editor who can take a scythe through the stodgy long winded dialogue (bring back Roger Avary!).
There are many films that are utterly sacrosanct “hands off this sparkly gem of celluloid ingenuity”… But that doesn’t stop Hollywood who see a milch cow for exploiting, and where sometimes it backfires as audiences can see through it. The quality so lacking. As Mark Kermode said about the remake of the magnificent Let The Right One In, “Why would I want to ‘Let Me In’ when I have ‘Let The Right One In”….Indeed! I saw a trailer for Let Me In and it depressed the living daylights out of me as I wanted to shout, “Why do this”? And while we are on the subject why remake the scary iconic A Nightmare on Elm Street?
A couple of years ago when I saw a gem of a film, 13 Tzameti (French/Georgian), absolutely stunning, dramatic, and powerful. Simply made in monochrome but the story tells of desperation and anguish. I remember thinking that Hollywood would remake this film, sanitise it with precisely the Hollywood treatment… they did, it was called 13.
Cinema should be about showing an array of films of different genres and stories. Unfortunately, we live in a capitalist world where what sells is repeated, the ethos of “bums on seats”, along with cynical marketing and commodifying success… It is a case repeating ad nauseam. Then some film that breaks the mould slips into the cinema and gains success which treats the audience with intelligence and respect as opposed to considering us as drones who are addicted to chewing gum for the eye. I assume that variety is the spice to life, so I can sit happily and watch daft films that resurrect the Cold War but has great action scenes (Salt), cerebrally adventurous and fascinating (Inception), surreal off-the-wall yet thought-provoking (Dogtooth), specific historical periods that spotlight turbulent political eras (The Secret in Their Eyes and The Headless Woman), taut original narrative of modern film noir (The Disappearance of Alice Creed), along with the usual Hollywood fare of clichéd hackneyed nonsense (Knight and Day…. Ok, I saw it…guilty as charged!). But that’s the point people like different things but there is an obsession with the movie industry with what sells we will just churn it out 10 fold. Boring rip-offs usually.
And the remakes and sequels continue; Shakespeare In Love 2, Bad Santa 2 and Rounders 2. Also there’s a remake of Brighton Rock which I will be fascinated to see as it stars Sam Riley (who, incidentally, appeared in 13) as Pinky Brown. Though in saying all this…… sometimes remakes are better than the original, Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven was far far far more superior than the Rat Pack original (poor old Lewis Milestone who made All Quiet On The Western Front and the original Front Page). His version of Solaris is equal to Tarkovsky’s original.
Mentioning, Front Page there have been some wonderful remakes of this such as His Girl Friday full of wise cracking barbs and Rosalind Russell. To be honest, I always preferred Mann’s, L.A. Takedown than the Pacino/De Niro face off in Heat.
Other successful remakes include Nolan’s Insomnia from the ’97 Norwegian version. The Magnificent Seven from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Scorsese’s The Departed from Wai Keung Lau & Siu Fai Mak’s Infernal Affairs. Also, Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes impressive remake of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. Another Kurosawa original, Yojimbo, remade as a spaghetti western classic, Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars.
But with every success there are duds pure unadulterated pap such as the Coen brothers, The Lady Killers (can’t wait to see what they have done with True Grit), the Hollywood-ising = happy ending of the excellent creepy, Spoorloos to the dull awful, The Vanishing (poor old George Sluizer…he directed both). Depressed I was when I stupidly watched the ’90s remake of Clouzot’s classic Les Diaboliques. And why, oh why, oh why why why WHY did Gus Van Sant think it necessary to remake Psycho. It was shockingly staggeringly… shite. And why did Haneke think necessary to make an English language version of Funny Games? Nothing much different stylistically or dialogue but the acting is better in the original and has the edge over the remake.
I think Philip French makes a pertinent point when he writes: Many American film-makers only go to see foreign movies, especially French comedies, as possible fodder for rapid transposition to the US. Given production costs and the public’s fondness for the familiar, it’s not surprising the temptation to rework successes is often irresistible.
Well, I will wait and see what 2011 brings cinematically….. Happy film viewing!!
Not sure I can agree that Soderbergh’s Solaris was as good as Tarkovsky’s. I was surprised by how good it was, but as a die hard Tarkovsky fan I don’t think I could ever admit that it was as good, even though it’s not one of his better films. Also, not entirely sure it’s a remake – they’re both based on the book and my impression was that Soderbergh went back to that rather than just going from Tarkovsky’s (although I haven’t read anything about it so he might have been explicitly doing a remake). Of course, he must have been influenced by it, because he did it in a similar way: concentrating on the psychological and the relationship with his dead wife to the exclusion of the sci-fi elements that dominate in the book. That’s actually one of the weaknesses of the Soderbergh version: it has much more of the sci-fi elements than Tarkovsky’s, and even Tarkovsky said that it was his great mistake for that film including as much sci-fi as he did. (Which he corrected in Stalker.)
They always seem to fall down at number 3