Week of Film Recommendations: Remakes that Deserve Respect
Remakes that Deserve Respect #1
In a time when Hollywood seems intent on only making sequels, prequels, adaptations, or remakes, I think that remakes are often the worst idea. If a film is great, why not just watch the original? Well, John Chang recommended a number of ideas for film recommendations, and I will be returning to several other categories he created later this summer, but one suggestion he had caught my eye immediately: Remakes that Deserve Respect.
Indeed, there are remakes that do deserve respect. I am going to try to create several categories of remakes to discuss before I land on a recommendation for the day. The first category is director’s remaking their own films. This is a rare category, but I find it fascinating when a director decides that they want another shot at making the same film. There’s a famous saying sometimes attributed to Da Vinci, “no art is finished; it is abandoned,” and indeed, directors who continue to return to their films issuing new cuts (Coppola with Apocalypse Now or Lucas with Star Wars Episodes 4-6, or Ridley Scott with Blade Runner [after he fixed the studios cut of the film]) never seem to equal their original. Yet, some directors do succeed in remaking their own film into a better one.
The most obvious one is probably Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. Originally a silent film, the scope and epic nature of the remake starring Charlton Heston fit the story of a Biblical epic. Hitchcock famously remade The Man Who Knew Too Much altering the film, but more importantly, casting Jimmy Stewart in the lead. But for me, there is a film that I cannot recommend highly enough. It is streaming on the Criterion Collection and it is Yasujiro Ozu’s Floating Weeds.
Remakes that Deserve Respect Recommendation #1: Floating Weeds remade from The Story of Floating Weeds
If you love film, I think you eventually come to the simplistic perfection of Yasujiro Ozu. Using few camera movements and staging most of his scenes so the audience is a watching visitor, Ozu’s films have incredible quiet power. Floating Weeds is about a traveling group of actors (called floating weeds since they have no anchor) who come to a small fishing village, trying to save their financially strapped troupe. In the village, the leader of the acting troupe, Komajuro, visits an old love interest who bore his child. His son does not know that Komajuro is his father, but rather believes he is uncle. Exploring the questions of parenthood and love, this could be a set up for melodrama, but Ozu treats the story as merely the collection of a couple days where small incidents end up creating a large emotional impact. While Ozu’s composition is astonishing, adapting his original film which was silent, Ozu creates dialogue that does not provide exposition or reveal much, but adds to the flavor and richness of his subtle tapestry. Through these conversations we come to understand the importance of what is not said. A number of directors in silent films struggled with how to use dialogue but Ozu had no problem transitioning. Even though I said I didn’t want to just recommend “the great films”, I felt I had to in this case as it is one of the best remakes I’ve ever seen. If you get the Criterion Collection DVD it comes with the original silent film as well.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHpVeD9kJEI
Remakes that Deserve Respect #2
Until the victory of Parasite at the Academy Awards last year, it has always been problematic in America to convince audiences to see films with subtitles. I have never understood this. So many great films are made from around the world, but American audiences generally do not see movies made in non-English speaking countries. As a result, an entire industry has sprung up from remaking foreign films into American films. Keep in mind I am speaking about a pretty specific kind of remake. Not remaking a film from a decades prior like Sergio Leoni adapting Kurosawa’s Yojimbo into A Fist Full of Dollars. I am talking about when a foreign film does well at the box office internationally, but instead of having a large release in America, Hollywood decides to remake the film. Generally, in my mind, most of these movies are not only not as good as the original, but fail to add anything new. Such examples include Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman being remade into Tortilla Soup or Christopher Nolan’s much overrated Insomnia when compared to the stark devastating original Danish film of the same name. Vanilla Sky is an interesting attempt, but it’s so in your face compared to the subtlety of the original Open Your Eyes. Or the Argentinian masterpiece The Secret in Their Eyes remade into the American Secret in Their Eyes. The list can go on and on: Le Femme Nikita to Point of No Return, Mon pere, ce heros to My Father the Hero, Wings of Desire to the confused romantic comedy City of Angels. Don’t even get me stared on which version of Old Boy you should see. Just see the original!
However, even in this very specific category, there are good remakes. When both the original and the remake are good, I prefer to see both movies and not weigh one against the other, but to compare them to see how both work. Let the Right One In is one of my favorite horror films ever made, and the American remake, Let Me In, is also worth seeing. True Lies while not one of my favorite films is certainly an improvement over the original Le Totale! But for me, the one film that rises to the top of these types of remakes is Martin Scorsese’s take on the brilliant remake of the Hong Kong action thriller Infernal Affairs.
Film Recommendation #2: Martin Scorsese’s The Departed remade from Infernal Affairs.
Films had not figured out how to use cell phones to improve tension. So often, if characters in a movie could contact help, the plot would end. Infernal Affairs was a breath of fresh air in the genre. In the ingenious story of a cop undercover in the triads versus a criminal undercover in the police, the cat and mouse game reaches its height in a scene of ingenious tension involving a cell phone. Scorsese basically recreates that scene in loving homage to the original film. Based on that scene alone, I would prefer to watch Infernal Affairs which is a great film in its own right, but Scorsese demonstrates how to properly remake a film. Rather than simply reproducing what had been done before him (he also did this Cape Fear), Scorsese reimagines the story for his own thematic purposes. In this case, to focus on the moral implications of the story. What can be said about a society where evil can so easily pose as good and vice versa? He imbues The Departed with images of Catholicism gone astray where the worship of God has been replaced by the worship of a golden dome of power. Both are great films and both are worth seeing.
Trailer for Infernal Affairs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNCv6zj8tIg
Trailer for The Departed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iojhqm0JTW4
Remakes that Deserve Respect #3
There are two very distant sources that seem to be the most ripe for remakes. The first is a genre, and the second is from a particular source. One day we will cover the genre and the other we will explore the source.
The genre is horror. Perhaps there’s something primordial to horror stories that call for them to be retold. Or perhaps it’s the ever-changing level of special effects that allow for different scares. Horror films also lend themselves to being allegorical or satirical. This allows each generation to change what the horror represents. There certainly are great remakes of horror films but also numerous ones that fall flat. The most recent take on The Invisible Man was great and is one of the first Me-Too movement horror films. George Romero has had many of his films remade including some to great success including Dawn of the Dead. Dracula has been retold numerous times including the muddy Coppola version. Halloween’s remake is classic example of how pointless a remake can be. Sam Raimi remade his own film Evil Dead with a comical tone in Evil Dead II before remaking it yet again.
Of the horror remakes, one of my favorites would have to be David Cronenberg’s The Fly. The original Fly was a B-film at best, but the remake engaged in body horror in a way few films had up to that date. But for my recommendation, rather than reaching for one of the less known ones, I am going to recommend one of the absolute best: John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. John Carpenter’s The Thing was remade again in 2011. There is no need to see the 2011 film.
Film Recommendation #3: John Carpenter’s The Thing remade from The Thing from Another World.
The Thing from Another World wasn’t a great movie, but it was a horror / science fiction film from its day. In this film, an extraterrestrial alien, who is an intelligent vegetable (perhaps attacking the environmental movement), terrorizes a group of military officers and scientists in the artic. The creature needs to impregnant others to reproduce. The military officials who are the heroes want to kill the creature while the scientists want to keep it alive. The symbolic nature of the creature was representative of the unstoppable nature of communism which impregnated good people with an evil ideology. The scientists represented the liberals in America who wanted to protect the world through peace, while the heroes are the military officials who recognize the threat and want to destroy it.
The broad strokes of the story are great for a horror setting. A distant research outpost where characters are trapped with a powerful alien who is hunting them down one by one. John Carpenter in the 1980’s took that idea, but morphed the alien into another metaphor. Rather than the alien being an unstoppable vegetable, it acts more like a parasite. Taking a sample of the DNA of an individual and then becoming that individual. The result is an enemy hiding in plain sight. This could still be a reference to the Cold War with an enemy hidden within the US, but the fact of the alien being a parasite could also be a reference to the AIDS epidemic. The film also does away with the idea of the liberal scientist being the villain and instead preaches a message of coming together to face adversity. With all that being said though, it is also a horror film with real scares, gore, and great special effects.
Trailer for The Thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lq6I4u_kqY
Remakes that Deserve Respect #4
There are two very distant sources that seem to be the ripest for remakes. The first is a genre, and the second is from a particular source. One day we will cover the genre and the other we will explore the source.
Yesterday we covered the genre, horror. For the source, it is none other than William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s works have long been adapted to the screen in varied and original ways. Julie Taymor’s adaptation of Titus Andronicus remains one of my favorites. O is a fascinating high school take on Othello. Ten Things I Hate About You is based on The Taming of the Shrew. But all of those are adaptations. What happens when a film version of the play becomes a standard in cinema? Then, the future works become not only an adaptation of Shakespeare but in many ways a remake of the original film.
In this category, how can you examine Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet without comparing to Zeffirelli’s? I am in the group of filmgoers who does not consider Luhrmann’s remake an improvement in almost any way. But great remakes occurred when Kenneth Branagh remade both of Olivier’s Hamlet and Henry V. Akira Kurosawa remade the Orson Welles version of Macbeth into Throne of Blood. Polanski also recognized Welles Macbeth in his own version. Branagh set the standard for Much Ado About Nothing which Whedon remade with an astonishingly personal take, filming it at his own house. But, I am trying to recommend films that are not as widely known. So for this pick, I am selecting another version of Hamlet which was born in the shadow of both Branagh’s masterpiece and Olivier’s.
Film Recommendation #4: Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet remade from Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet
Rewatching Almereyda’s Hamlet, it, at first, feels like a relic of the age it was made in, 2000. Certainly, the film takes place in 2000, but more than just it’s setting in time, the film exudes the cocky arrogance of the dot com era. Denmark is not a country in this film but a tech company ripe for a hostile takeover. But, go with the film, and watch how ingeniously the movie weaves the Hamlet story into one set in the computer era. Hamlet is a computer programmer by nature, a nerd, and not the greatest with social skills. After the death of his father, he drowns himself in technology withdrawing from the world. It is here that the “ghost in the machine” appears to him. At this point, the conceit of the film is really working. Hamlet’s paranoia is played out in video camera footage and surveillance bugs.
Ethan Hawke stars at the titular Hamlet while the Ghost of his father is played brilliantly by Sam Shepard. The cast is filled with outstanding performances from greats. Kyle McLaughlin plays Claudius, more intellectual than most versions. Julia Stiles plays Ophelia while Live Schreiber plays Laertes. But perhaps the best casting, in a moment of genius, is Bill Murray playing Polonius. Polonius is one of Shakespeare’s great blow-hards. A character so full of himself and unaware of his own shallowness, Bill Murray imbues him with comic brilliance. Really his performance alone is reason to see the movie, but it's also a very good film in its own right. Is it as good as either Branagh’s or Olivier’s Hamlet… no. Is it as good as Mel Gibson’s? Yes. I think it’s better.
Remakes that Deserve Respect #5
For my last recommendation on remakes, I turn to when a great director or actor or artist sees a movie they love and decides that they want to take a shot at it. The best of these allows the director to take a work they love and make it totally their own. People do not always succeed. I am hopeful for Denis Villanueve’s Dune coming out later this year. Jonathan Demme is one of my favorite directors but his remake of both Charade (The Truth About Charlie) and The Manchurian Candidate pail in comparison to the original films. Even on their own, neither film works well.
As previously mentioned, Martin Scorsese remade Infernal Affairs into The Departed, but he also successfully reimagined the original thriller Cape Fear into his own film. Scorsese’s Cape Fear takes a much more difficult stance with the thriller’s story, turning the protagonist, Nick Nolte, into a morally questionable character. It also heightens his confrontation with his daughter and her relationship with the killer who is stalking them. Another great remake, Eddie Murphy saw the potential of Jerry Lewis’ Nutty Professor and created a wonderful comedy where Eddie stretched his acting skills by playing almost all of the Klump family members. Perhaps my favorite of these films is Werner Herzog taking on one of the great films of all time, Nosferatu, with his incredible remake of the same title. If you haven’t seen both of those, they are worth a watch.
But as I am trying to recommend films that are not as oft talked about or seen. James Mangold is an underrated director. Sure, some of his films like Knight and Day are misfires, but he’s developed a chameleon like ability to take on different genres. His Walk the Line was not only an outstanding biopic, but also a great musical. Girl Interrupted while flawed had an incredible performance from Angelina Jolie. Logan is not only a great western but one of the great superhero films. In 2007, he decided to remake another western and produced one of the best films of that year.
Film Recommendation #5: 3:10 to Yuma directed by James Mangold remade from Delmer Daves 3:10 to Yuma.
Delmer Daves’ original 3:10 to Yuma was majestic in tone. Shot, like so many westerns, in wide shot to demonstrate the vast vistas, it is beautiful. It also borrowed from High Noon by making use of the ticking clock. By 3:10, the criminal Ben Wade must be on the train to Yuma prison. But, like so many of the westerns of the 40s and 50s, 3:10 to Yuma is a simple morality tale. The hero, Dan Evans, is never questioned as the hero. Although Ben Wade, the criminal, is charismatic and charming, he is still a villain. James Mangold took the formula for the film and messed with its colors (both literally considering the original was shot in black and white and metaphorically in its characters).
Christian Bale plays Dan Evans as a desperate man. He is failing in every aspect of his life. His son believes him a coward. His wife sees him as a failure. He desperately needs money. He agrees to escort Ben Wade not because it is the right thing to do, but because he has no other choice. His son worships Ben Wade as his personal hero. Ben’s charm is merely the persona, underneath we discover a man who writes poetry and draws, talks philosophy and reads. Ben is not a criminal per choice but rather responding to his own wounds. In one moment, we receive a flashback to Ben’s childhood that is so profound and sad. Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma complicates its message and morality, providing us with characters who are not typical Western archetypes but real humans.
Original 3:10 to Yuma trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CigUBkud7o
Remake 3:10 to Yuma trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX1m45CwvJ8
