We are so quick to pounce on our filmmakers for not being “original,” but what does antecedent have to do with achievement?
An American descends upon a bewildering foreign destination, reduced by war to a shell of its former self. His purpose is an encounter with a countryman, someone whose affiliations no longer lie with America, someone who’s gone missing, someone who’s no longer the man he was, someone who winds up brutally butchered, someone so larger than life that the character had to be played by an actor known as much for his great talent as his gargantuan girth. This quest leads our protagonist through byzantine byways, past the sphere of sanity, into the heart of darkness, and along this journey is uttered this line of dialogue to a man from the military: “I want to speak to you, Kurtz.” Indulge me, for a minute, as I turn quizmaster and allow you ten seconds to arrive at the name of the movie built on these plot points.
If you are any kind of film buff, you will – with nine of those seconds to spare – stifle a yawn and respond, “Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.” And I’m going to smile an evil smile and say: Better luck next time. I was talking about Carol Reed’s The Third Man. The war I was referring to isn’t Vietnam but WWII. The bewildering foreign destination isn’t Saigon but a bombed-out Vienna. The American who arrives isn’t Martin Sheen but Joseph Cotten, and the other American, the larger-than-life character inhabited by a larger-than-life actor, isn’t Marlon Brando but Orson Welles. Of course, Kurtz is but a bit player in The Third Man, while in Apocalypse Now, that’s the name of Brando’s very central, very cosmic character, the man at the root of the investigation who resists easy discovery in the manner of a god who tests His faithful and reveals Himself only to the most worthy – but that red herring I tossed in just so you’d fish elsewhere for an answer.
How startlingly similar the sketches of these two stories are, even if these outlines are developed by the respective directors into vastly different works of art – one a boundless phantasmagoria of acid sensation, the other a drum-tight noir. Coppola, of course, was famously inspired by Joseph Conrad, but what about Graham Greene, who wrote the screenplay of The Third Man and later spun off a novella of the same name? Considering Conrad’s reputation, it’s very likely that Greene had stumbled upon Heart of Darkness, which was published as the nineteenth century steamrolled into the twentieth. (The Third Man was released almost five decades later, in 1949.) But even if he did find his imagination fired by Conrad, consciously or otherwise, Greene’s work (and subsequently, Reed’s film) would be an indubitably valid achievement, a splendid tribute to Jean-Luc Godard’s contention that it’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.
Abbas Kiarostami transformed this notion to a full-length feature. In Certified Copy, the protagonist claims, through his book on art, that a reproduction is as valid, as valuable as the original. Perhaps to support this thesis, Kiarostami himself alluded to an earlier “original,” Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (which possibly birthed Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise as well), where, again, a man and a woman mint new definitions for their relationship in a new city. But we, in our country, seem to believe otherwise. The minute we spot something familiar – whether the structure of Mani Ratnam’s Aayitha Ezhuthu (“copied from Amores Perros!” we protest) or the throwaway shot of a reunion in an Elysian eternity in Rang De Basanti (“copied from Gladiator!”) – we are roused to indignation. Of course, not all inspirations are alike and plagiarism (very, very different from inspiration) needs to be punished, but we may enjoy our movies more if we focus on achievement instead of antecedent. If that’s good enough for Godard, maybe it ought to be good enough for the rest of us.
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here.
Copyright ©2011 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
rameshram
May 28, 2011
It’s not about the inspiration alone. It’s also about the staggering innuendo that without “western” “art” Indian film would have no ” inspiration ” save for escapism.
LikeLike
Hari
May 28, 2011
Was the editorial about Bob Dyaln in today’s(may 28th) Hindu by you?
LikeLike
Hari
May 28, 2011
Sorry Bob Dylan I meant..
LikeLike
Vasisht Das
May 28, 2011
(You had me there with that opening quiz!)
‘Rang De Basanti’ was essentially inspired from the Canandian movie ‘Jesus of Montreal’ but took it to an interesing place. As did ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’ which was a good variation of ‘A Walk in the Clouds’. And ‘Lagaan’ scored well playing ball with its inspiration ‘Escape to Victory’. Vijay Anand’s much revered (he only wrote the screenplay) ‘Hum Dono’ was a charming Indianization of the novel ‘The Wife of Martin Guerre’ by Janet Lewis (which was made into a French movie much later ‘The Return of Martin Guerre’ which was then remade in Hollywood as ‘Sommersby’) – in other words, we Indians have been at this for much longer than is usually presumed!
And, frankly, ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ kicked the ass of ‘Patch Adams’.
In such instances, it’s more than “good enough” for the rest of us.
LikeLike
bran1gan
May 28, 2011
Hari: No. Haven’t read it either. Did it sound like me though?
LikeLike
Hari
May 28, 2011
Yes it did with me having to make a couple of visits to the dictionary 🙂
LikeLike
Hari
May 28, 2011
As you have mentioned, inspiration is very different from plagiarism-Kishore Kumar(a big fan of Sehgal), modeled himself on the latter but later developed his own identity, Lataji took inspiration from Noorjehan. The question to be asked is “Does the artist/piece of art have an identity of its’ own beyond its’ source of inspiration?” Nobody is really going to accuse of Mani Ratnam of copying Amores Perros(even the IMDB mentions it as a ‘spin-off’) but can the same be said of the movies made by Vikram Bhatt, Abbas-Mastan, Sanjay Gupta and the like?
Also, the present-day viewer, steeped in the culture of consumerism cares neither about the content nor about the antecedent as long as the piece provides him with what is called in business jargon as ‘value-for-money'(even if it comes from an item song or a trailer shown in the intervel). The species of discerning viewers is endangered, though that has not stopped our makers from experimenting given the ground movie-making as a business has covered.
As far as my perspective goes, I, as an admirer of creativity, surely am looking for content which stimulates me-inspiration is fine as long as efforts are taken to acknowledge the presence of one(rather than taking the credit for screenplay/story) but then I have also read somewhere that the originality of your content lies in how smart you are in hiding your sources :).
LikeLike
Niranjan
May 28, 2011
While I take your point as a good, and indeed valid one, I think that there is a little more to it. Indian audiences have been taken for granted by Indian filmmakers for quite a while and that is perhaps the reason for that comment of scorn, though it sometimes comes unfairly or even rather stupidly.
For instance, when the title credits for “Bheja Fry” read “Written and Directed by Sagar Bellary”, it is being plainly being disingenuous, as the plot is straight out of “The Dinner Game”. WWhile the Hindi version was a very good adaptation, and actually well made, this deliberate (and I cannot believe that this man’s work was coincidentally the same story line as the french film, despite all their latter pleas!) lack of acknowledgment leaves a bad aftertaste. Dinner for Schmucks might have been a poorer movie than the Indian version, but at least they had the basic decency to credit the original source properly. Perhaps we tend to think that an acknowledgment will somehow dilute all your efforts.
LikeLike
Arun Athmanathan
May 28, 2011
I think the question is how organically what is borrowed fits in with what isn’t. For example, you pointed out individual scenes in your review of Sriram Raghavan’s Johnny Gaddaar that were from other movies. But (at least IMO) they were fit into a story so well as not to stand out and shout “This is from….”. Contrast this with say, anything by Sanjay Gupta, where the borrowed stuff is paraded in your face and sticks out really badly, simply because there’s very little he’s able to add to it.
LikeLike
Ravi K
May 29, 2011
Films like Johnny Gaddaar or Sholay are genre/style homages. This I don’t have a problem with. But when the aforementioned Bhatts and Guptas of the industry simply take one or two foreign films and more or less copy them beat-by-beat, that’s clearly a ripoff. I bristle at this kind of blatant ripoff not only because of the lack of creativity, but also because the filmmakers are profiting from minor adjustments of someone else’s accomplishment without giving them credit or money. Its lazy and cynical to find films that your target audience may never see and simply copy them.
LikeLike
Karthik S
May 30, 2011
As someone who painstakingly catalogs inspirations in Indian music (for over a decade), I couldn’t agree more with Niranjan’s comment above. Inspiration is a necessary trait these days (Mahesh Bhatt has been saying this forever anyway), but what differentiates creators is perhaps the guts to list their inspirations and let people decide on how well the adaption works. Unlike Sagar Bellary who only had the guts to pass off someone else’s work as his.
LikeLike
Jabberwock
June 3, 2011
Very nice piece, but I think you cheated a bit with “someone who winds up brutally butchered” – not sure that really applies to Harry Lime being antiseptically dispatched offscreen with a bullet fired by a close friend!
LikeLike
bran1gan
June 3, 2011
Jabberwock: Well, I did cheat a bit for the sake of the quiz, but it also depends on how you define brutal butchering, no? Being shot by a pal with your back to him (literally, some sort of backstabbing — backshooting?) inside a sewer – kinda-sorta fits the bill, methinks.
The bigger bit of “cheating” here is in “an actor known as much for his great talent as his gargantuan girth” — which is right in a lawyerly sense because Welles did end up a very big man, but in the film (unlike Brando) he wasn’t all that huge. I thought that would be point out first 🙂
LikeLike
Gradwolf
June 3, 2011
Surely you saw this?
http://vimeo.com/14912890
Also watch Part 2.
I agree with the general idea of the article but like others before, I think the cynicism is bound to exist.
LikeLike
Jabberwock
June 3, 2011
Oh my preferred form of butchering involves gently hacking away at the limbs and upper torso for a bit, so that some of the internal organs make a glistening appearance on the surface of the body long before the subject has lost consciousness. But I understand your reservations about dying inside a sewer.
LikeLike
Jabberwock
June 3, 2011
Anyway, there’s nothing particularly glamorous or heroic about being killed by either Martin Sheen or Joseph Cotten.
LikeLike
Radhika
June 3, 2011
@ Vasisht
I don’t think “Hum Dono” was really an adaptation of ‘The Wife of Martin Guerre’ or ‘Sommersby’ – in HD, the hero is a reluctant impersonator of his doppelganger, in the others, he is deliberately takes the place of the husband – I’d say Ratnadeep (Girish Karnad, Hema Malini) is more of an adaptation – as was Paheli (which mischievously had a ghost take the place of the missing husband).
Of course we have “inspirations” galore in Hindi movies, the list is too long to put in a comment.
LikeLike
bran1gan
June 4, 2011
Radhika: Yes, Ratnadeep. There’s that lovely what-if song in Aisa ho to… Asha sings it so beautifully. Wasn’t this film based on a Hindi or Bengali novel?
LikeLike
Radhika
June 4, 2011
Yes, and also that lovely Kishore song Kabhi Kabhi Sapna Lagta Hai : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbdb5b_9nEs&feature=related
RD at his mellow best
Not sure if it was based on a novel – but a lot of BasuC movies were hugely “inspired” without credit – Choti si baat, Baaton baaton mein, Manpasand – among others
LikeLike