Ever judged a whole film based on a scene or a couple of scenes that seem similar to some movie you saw? Because Hey, it is the same idea. Smartly rewritten.
Like it is the easiest thing in the world to write, let alone rewrite something that’s already got the status of a classic.
I was guilty of this too well up to a decade into my career as a film critic.
So I have been there and done that too before I thankfully evolved from making such reductionist comparisons.
The story is just one dimension of the multi-dimensionality of this complex craft of cinema that needs to evaluated not just loosely in terms of story (or some possibly obscure part of it)… But through the studied understanding of form, content, intent, text, subtext, context, representation, politics, themes, people such communication is targeted at, their socio-political reality, the need and gratification that’s being catered to, the language and visual grammar that’s needed to make that connect/communication and also, the accidental, unintended consequence of the idea from the mind that has been translated to the screen and any noise or hurdle that is preventing the said idea from head to screen, technical (pertaining to any department of the craft including acting) or social (sensibility used that may or may not connect with the desired audience) among a whole lot of other things – like history, geography, physics, politics or literature or anything specialised that the film might deal with… through deconstruction of a hundred other cues – visual and aural – hidden in the narrative, often clues planted in there by design to help you decode the larger meaning.
A point of influence or inspiration is debatable and cannot always be proved unless admitted by the filmmaker and is often inconsequential and irrelevant except for maybe academic interest during dissection of the tiny specifics and/or trivia related to the film. It does not even have much of show off value for you stand the chance of embarrassing yourself by your limited database of movie moments from memory. As Navdeep Singh, director of NH-10, gave some critics a sound spanking earlier this year for calling his kick-on-the-balls-of-patriarchy an adaptation of Eden Lake: “Good that you have seen this one movie, now go see the five other movies that had the same idea.”
A holistic wholesome review should ideally try to look at the larger picture. Is the film working or not, why or why not, all backed up by instances or examples that validate your arguments.
A remake or an adaptation means the film is a reconstruction or recreation of the same story with a few changes. But if your interpretation of such changes is too reductionist, then you have a long way to go before understanding the point Godard has been trying to make.
Drishyam vs Suspect X:
SPOILERS FOLLOW: In the most recent edition of the inspiration versus plagiarism debate, some critics accused Drishyam to be a “rip-off” of Suspect X – a term they would quickly replace with “smart adaptation” as if the two terms are one and the same and can be used inter-changeably. Sure, as long as they are willing to only refer to Reservoir Dogs as a smart adaptation of The Killing and City on Fire or True Romance as a rip-off of Badlands. Because you know, the Badlands theme playing during the opening credits and the You’re So Cool track used in the opening credits of True Romance are the same tune too. But they wouldn’t say it because they know that they would sound stupid the minute they said it aloud. So Tarantino “rips-off” Kubrick and Malick and we don’t care because… like Godard said: It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.”
Suspect X is the story of a man who kills another man to have the cops investigate the wrong murder to protect the guilty. When the cops question the suspects, the narrative of the accused is based on absolute truths of where they were on that day. The cover up is based on facts. They were actually at a movie on the day of the murder. Nobody is lying. The case is solved with facts because the professor has replaced the question and made the investigators arrive at the answers for the wrong question (and not the question they thought they were answering).
It’s the story of devotion of a man who could literally kill to protect the woman he loved. This is a cover-up and work of a genius who would leave nothing to chance. It’s about using truth to protect the guilty.
When one whodunnit is not the same movie as another, how is one How-hide-it same as the other?
Drishyam is also about a cover-up but it is about the movies. Or lies. And how filmmakers resort to devices for manufacturing the world of make-believe. It’s a meta-narrative. It’s not about devotion, it’s about power of inception by repetition of manufactured lies – the ability to make people think just what you want them to believe.
Like Coppola said the core of movies need to be about one or two words. “When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.”
Drishyam isn’t Suspect X because they have different cores. Drishyam is powered by myth-making and Suspect X by devotion. They are looking at different themes through different characters (a self-taught street-smart father taking a risk with his limited skill sets as opposed to a genius professor who would leave nothing to chance) using different languages (cinema and mathematics respectively) and stories (which you know are about the beginning, middle and end – NONE of which are similar in the two films)
The only thing similar to both films are scene elements that cosmetic and superficial (the constant reference to the dates during investigation) and movie tickets as alibis (and even those are used very differently – in Suspect X, they have tickets because they were at that movie for real, in Drishyam they don’t have tickets – they watch the movie the next day and just say they were at the movie) and the choice to retain these similar elements, for all you know, is a nod or tribute to a possible point of inspiration.
To assume that the entire film is an adaptation based on these two inconsequential and plot-irrelevant details (he could have changed any of those details since they don’t anyway affect the film) is absolutely reductionist and reveals the competence of the critic.
The accusation of plagiarism or use of the word “rip-off” is extremely irresponsible when a storyteller, irrespective of his point of inspiration, has gone ahead and made a movie that stands on its own. Inspiration comes from everywhere – people, places, things or people, places and things we have read/seen in books/movies.
Everybody gets them. What you do with it is what makes you an artist. And it is your ability to see the departures between inspiration and expression that makes you a critic. It’s fine to have an opinion. Except that criticism is informed opinion validated with a set of arguments. Not empty superficial judgments.
Spot-the-scene-deja-vu is not film criticism. It proves you have seen only one, NOT many of a kind.
Spot-the-scene-deja-vu is not film criticism. It proves you have seen only one, NOT many of a kind.
MADRAS INK. 