Surge in Korean film remakes in India

Date

6/26/2016 1:54:59 AM

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(MENAFN- Asia Times) Amitabh Bachchan (L) and Vidya Balan in TE3N, a remake from the South Korean film Montage

As recently as June 10, two Bollywood blockbusters — TE3N and Do Lafzon Ki Kahani — hit the screens, and both were remade from Korean dramas, and acknowledged. While TE3N, with an iconic star like Amitabh Bachchan playing a pivotal role, was plotted out of the 2013 Montage, Do Lafzon Ki Kahani emerged from Song Il-gon’s (renowned independent director known for Magicians, Flower Island and the superbpsychological thriller, Spider Forest) Always (2011).

“Korean cinema, as a fount of inspiration for Hindi cinema, is a sudden influence that was first seen in the last decade, but more actively in recent times”, says Vinod Mirani, a trade analyst.

A still from the South Korean film Montage

“Since we do not have good writers, or good writers do not get sufficiently paid, our movie-makers need to look outside for stories. Hollywood films are now released simultaneously here, so that is no longer a hot source. European cinema as good as does not exist. And stories from Asian sources somehow have greater identification with India,” says Mirani.

Music and high emotional quotient are very apparent commonalities.

(Indeed, Indian movies — much like Indian lifestyle — is full of music. It may be songs or background score — which though more often than not can be intrusive, drowning dialogues and marring the beauty of hyphenated silences.)

However, since Korean cinema is often clinically narrated and is laced with crime and violence that leave little scope for tears and heartache, Indian writers and directors have usually felt the need to tinker with it.

TE3N is a great example of this. Suresh Nair, who co-wrote and co-produced the Hindi film, says: “Most Korean movies are thrillers. They also tend to be grim and dark and while we have to adapt them to our audiences, certain changes would look odd in the basic tenor. What we did with Montage was, however, something of a high for us. We removed the character of the mother, who was the protagonist in that film, and made it a grandfather-grandchild story. The idea was to cast Amitabh Bachchan in that role. Also, the policeman played in my movie by Nawazuddin Siddiqui is just an ex-cop in Montage. But in my film, he becomes a priest.”

One presumes that the mother in Montage who loses her little daughter and sets out to find the culprit would have certainly lent herself to a high degree of emotionalism, but this was a path much traversed in Indian cinema. Sometime ago, we saw the glamorous star and Cannes regularAishwarya Raiplay a distraught mother in Jazbaa who leaves no stone unturned to find her missing daughter.

So, the mother in Montage was replaced by a grandfather in TE3N — a role essayed by Bachchan. And his commercial viability is impressive now. The movie changed something else as well to attract footfalls into theatres. It roped in the attractive Bollywood actress, Vidya Balan, to portray a cop, and in the producers’ eagerness to infuse as much glamour as possible into the film, Balan was never seen in uniform. For, that would have made her look dull and less ravishing. And Siddiqui as a Christian priest gave the movie another unique angle. In the original Korean edition, there were no policewomen.

Yes, the core plot of a kidnap-for-ransom gone wrong in Montage has been replicated in TE3N, and so too many scenes. I watched both versions, and found that while the Korean adventure was precise, objective and thrilling, the Bollywood work was meandering and emotional, and much less of a thriller.

“Thrillers, especially suspense thrillers, are appreciated, but as movies, they have a smaller yet dedicated audience, for whom they can become cult films, like Jewel Thief (a superb hit in the late 1960s) for me,” explains Nair. “Budgets have to be right as they can never be blockbusters. The scenario is similar in Hollywood.”