Don ko pakadna mushkil nahi…
I haven’t yet had the chance to catch Farhan Akhtar’s indulgent remake of ‘Don’, but the reviews from professional critics as well as the feedback from friends and acquaintances has been anything but enthusiastic.
And the reason for that has been the inevitable comparison with the original, that a remake evokes! Nostalgia invariably plays a huge role in such comparisons and that tilts the balance, fairly or unfairly, in the favour of the original. I am not saying that the original ‘Don’ wasn’t any good. Far from it! I thought the Amitabh-starrer was an awesome entertainer… and a representative of the kind of movies in vogue during those years. However, it was anything but a classic!!… something that this review explains in much better words. Chandra Barot’s ‘Don’ was technically quite shoddy. What kept it from sliding away as ‘just another Amitabh movie’ was Amitabh’s bandwidth as an actor. Based on Shah Rukh Khan’s body of work, I am not convinced he has the same bandwidth!
As I read review after review flaying Farhan Akhtar, almost chastising him for attempting a remake, I can feel a certain fanboy anger on the part of these reviewers who seem to have convinced themselves that the original ‘Don’ was a sacred cow that could not be touched! For God’s sake, comment on the quality of the movie! … not on the way it apes or deviates from the original! I concede that some amount of comparison will be inevitable, but the review should not end up being one huge comparison!!
2 comments
Hey,
Whenever there is a re-make, comparison is inevitable because that was the ground on which you’ve made the film and if director is not capable to cope with the original one, then it is going to be rejected. And this is what happened with DON too.
When you already have everything ready with you: plot, music, characters, script and then also you’re not able to make it perfect and present it in a very good way then criticism is obvious. So it’s not a matter that original DON was sacred and shouldn’t be touched but it is just a matter of presentation and quality of a well made movie with the same plot and Frahan Akhtar was unsuccessful in doing that, so I guess comparison is something which is bound to happen and is justified too.
Nandita>> True. Comparisons are inevitable and I’m not saying you shouldn’t compare. But the comparison should be objective and should not reflect the reviewer’s bias.
But then again… hardly any reviewer is unbiased these days! Most of them have tremendous commercial compulsions to judge a movie is a particular way.
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