Remakes are not in the least unusual, not down in Kerala, where people get a heavy dose of Priyadarshan movies. Films have been handed between languages, scripts rewritten to Hindi or Tamil from Malayalam. Priyadarshan is not the only culprit, just the more notorious one. The argument in support being that remakes take the original stories to more people, who understand a different language. But then there came remakes of Malayalam films into newer Malayalam films, works of an earlier decade retold.
The case in point, the reason for this banter, is of course the remake of the iconic Bhargavi Nilayam of 1964 into Neelavelicham in 2023. Director Vincent’s Bhargavi Nilayam has been considered a classic, a horror movie that set the standards for horror movies, and above all, a Vaikom Muhammad Basheer script. When nearly 60 years later, a team led by Aashiq Abu takes up the old script and gives it a new treatment, the obvious question about remakes resurfaces: are they necessary? Or more specifically, do they work?
Remakes within Malayalam cinema began when classics of the 1970s and 80s were taken to newer times, a few decades down, and coated with newer visions. Neelathamara of 1979, made by Yusuf Ali Kechery from MT Vasudevan’s Nair’s script, was remade 30 years later by Lal Jose. In 2012, sons of two famous directors remade the originals their fathers made in the 1970s and 80s — Sethumadhavan’s Chattakkari, by son Santhosh, and Bharathan’s Nidra, by son Sidharth. Another famous remake was of Bharathan’s 1978 classic Rathinirvedam, by TK Rajeev Kumar in 2011.
Lakshmi in the original Chattakkari
Critics are divided in their opinion of remakes, as are viewers. Chances are those who have watched and adored the originals would not be too welcoming of another version of the films. “When you have the resources and opportunity to make a film, why do something which has already been done?” Thereza asks a genuine question. A nonresident Malayali who follows Malayalam cinema seriously, she says that the only films she would like to see remade are the “bad ones”, not the classics.
“Bad adaptations of good books especially. Most of the time they end up ruining the reading experience and I wish someone could give it back to me,” Thereza says.
When Neelavelicham was announced, questions poured in from many quarters: will the story be different, will it fit the times, plucked as it is from another era, will the making or the performances mar the original script.
Watch: Song from Bhargavi Nilayam
Neelavelicham has not been the usual remake, in the sense that it is not the film Bhargavi Nilayam that has been remade, but the script that Basheer wrote, says its additional screenplay writer Hrishikesh Bhaskaran.
“More than remaking an old film, what excited us were the text possibilities of the script, the sound scape and colours. We felt that a different visual experience would be possible. Aashiq ettan (director Aashiq Abu), I, and all of us [behind the film], say that this is more a re-imagination than a remake,” Hrishikesh says.
He also points out something else interesting, that horror films that came after Bhargavi Nilayam reflected similar storylines. He talks of Manichithrathazhu – one of the most celebrated works in Malayalam cinema based on dissociative identity disorder. “Doesn’t it too have an old story of a dancer falling in love with an artiste next door and getting killed (as in Bhargavi Nilayam)? Even the songs ‘Varuvanilla Aarum’ in Manichithrathazhu and ‘Vasantha Panjami Nalil’ in Bhargavi Nilayam have a similar meaning,” he says.
When the originals were made, the cast and crew had little to no idea they would be iconic. For instance, Krishnachandran who played the teenage hero falling for an older woman in Bharathan’s Rathinirvedam says he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He was just 17 years old, following what the director was telling him to, but happy that he could work with this filmmaker he adored.
Still from Rathinirvedam / Courtesy - Saina / Movie Reels
“Back then, the comments I heard were often offensive, like ‘ivane veetil kettan kollilla’ (you shouldn’t let him into your house), maybe because of the character I played. It took many years for the film to be discussed as a classic. Just the way I learnt that people actually liked some of my songs a lot, like the lullaby ‘Alliyilam poovo’,” says Krishnachandran who is also a singer and dubbing artist.
Remakes are revisits to iconic films of the past, says film critic CS Venkiteswaran. It makes you look back at works that eventually became celebrated as classics. Retelling old stories over and over again is what made the originals classic or iconic, in Hrishikesh’s view.
“From the time of hunter gatherers, knowledge, tales, and epics were passed on through generations through storytelling. Most classics have been sustained because they were retold. How many interpretations and adaptations of Shakespeare’s works have been made over the centuries – including the Malayalam film Joji (loosely adapted from Macbeth). We want to retell MT or Basheer stories because they are classics,” Hrishikesh says.
That could be one reason that people remake old stories. There are many more. Sometimes it is a homage to a great movie or actor or writer, sometimes a compulsion to reinterpret it for current times, says Venkiteswaran.
“Maybe also because the director sees some significance that has been left unexplored in the earlier versions,” he says.
That is what got Sidharth Bharathan to remake Nidra, a classic directed by his father, the late Bharathan, in 1981. It was presented as a project to him, he says, and he saw something in the original that he could expand upon. “Otherwise, I don’t know if there is a point to remakes. Nidra is a film that looked at the way society viewed insanity. In the remake we did, we portrayed the ending differently. The milieu had also changed, from the 1980s to the 2010s. A frame by frame adaptation would not have worked,” Sidharth says.
Watch: Song from Nidra
He speaks of Martin Scorcese’s The Departed, a remake of a Hong Kong film Internal Affairs and also loosely based on the real life Winter Hill Gang. In every such remake, there is always a new element to be added to the original, midway through the film or the end. “An extra two lines,” Sidharth phrases it.
In Neelavelicham, these “extra lines” come in the visualisation. There have been viewers’ posts commenting on the visual experience of Neelavelicham. Especially the blue radiance that Basheer’s original script had described the narrator’s room as emitting, which could not be realised in the black and white film of 1964. “Neelavelicham is a straight remake of Bhargavi Nilayam and as someone who saw the original, I was curious to see how Aashiq Abu will technically enhance it. I enjoyed both,” says film critic Neelima Menon.
There is also an opinion that remakes are not exactly made for the viewers but for the makers. Harikrishnan, an IT professional who loves Malayalam cinema, felt that Neelavelicham was made for Aashiq Abu, not for the Malayali audience. “That is unless you change it totally like Dev D (a retelling of the Bengali novel Devdas). A different take. You change the story or the way it is told. Something you didn’t like about it,” Harikrishnan says.
An example of that in Malayalam is Yakshi, Malayattoor’s novel, which was adapted into film twice, once as Yakshi by Sethumadhavan in 1968, and the second time as Akam by Shalini Usha Nair in 2013. This is not an example of a remake, however, both being adaptations of the same book.
Watch: Scenes from Akam
Neelima gives another such example – of Joji, the Macbeth adaptation mentioned above, which was also an inspired remake of Irakal, KG George’s psychological thriller from 1985. She says the two films are distinct in flavour and composition though the core was the same.
“Sometimes remakes tend to improve upon their source material. The Hindi remake of Drishyam 2 is an example,” she says. But she is not a fan of the Priyadarshan remakes from Malayalam to other languages, in every one of which she finds the humour and performance taking the toll, she adds.
“I also felt it even negatively affected how we viewed the original film. Manichithrathazhu for instance, I felt, was one film that shouldn't be touched and rightfully so. All the remakes failed miserably. But adapting a foreign film into our terrain, suiting our sensibilities isn't a bad thing at all,” Neelima says.
There is also the case of the new viewers not having watched the original, when the remake will be a brand new experience. Without prejudice, without anything to compare it to, it can make wholly different impressions.
“Like how a filmmaker used to impress Malayali audiences of an earlier era (when foreign films were not easily available) with his ‘remakes’ of Hollywood hits,” Harikrishnan says. With the internet and easier access to films from across the world, these were all called out and people embraced the originals with love.
But then the remakes also became a reason for people to go in search of the originals and watch them. Many watched Bhargavi Nilayam when Neelavelicham came. That is one good reason remakes should happen, so the originals are never forgotten, Hrishikesh points out.