In the last few years, it's become increasingly fashionable on the part of the critical community - not to mention the writers, directors, and producers - to, whenever possible, insist that their film is not a "remake," but instead a re-adaptation of the source material. This is nowhere more evident at this moment in the reactions to Joel and Ethan Coen's version of True Grit. The reviews are split, almost evenly, not along lines of quality, but in what to refer to the film as.
A cursory glance at Rotten Tomatoes provides the following descriptions: " new adaptation of Charles Portis' novel True Grit" (Pete Hammond), "remake of the 1969 classic Western" (Emmanuel Levy), and "the Coen brothers' back-to-the-book remake" (Pete Levy). There are plenty of mentions of John Wayne's Oscar winning* performance as Marshall Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn, but even among those who write about film, there's some debate how to handle remakes vs. re-adaptations. While I begin topically, True Grit exists in this essay to launch a broader discussion about what re-adaptations are, how they discursively differ from "strict" remakes, and the ambivalence surrounding the distinction exists.
From an audience perspective, it's doubtful that any such distinction matters, which further complicates the matter. As far as casual filmgoers are concerned, True Grit - like a number of other films "of the same name" - is merely a remake of the 1969 film, assuming they've seen or heard of the "original" in the first place. From at least one anecdotal case, it's clear that audiences of a certain age are refusing to see True Grit because it draws too strong a comparison to their memories of John Wayne. Trying to explain that a) this is not strictly a remake of that film, and more importantly b) that the "original" was actually based upon a book that this new iteration is drawing from is an exercise in futility.
This does not, however, render the discussion moot; audience reaction is a component of understanding film and film history, but of one steps back further, it is also clear that critics struggle with the dichotomy, one which is harder to ignore when the creative personnel behind any remake, re-imagining**, or re-adaptation insist that their work not be compared strictly to its cinematic ancestor. Why the sudden shift to stress that this "new" film is not merely artistic repetition, but is instead a wholly revised take on the "first" incarnation of the story (which, as a professor of mine was quick to point out at any occasion, was strictly the case with True Grit***).
The answer, functionally, is that the term "remake" has such a negative stigma attached to it that filmmakers feel shoehorned or lessened in their artistic goals by re-making a film. This is not necessarily a new phenomenon: when Steven Soderbergh was interviewed in 1995 during the release of his film The Underneath, based on Criss Cross (a novel by Don Tracy that was adapted in 1949 by Robert Siodmak), he was quick to point out that his version of Criss Cross was not to be viewed as a remake but as a re-adaptation of Tracy's novel for the modern era****. John Carpenter made a similar argument thirteen years earlier with The Thing, which was to be understood as an adaptation of John W. Campbell's short story "Who Goes There" and not a remake of The Thing from Another World.
Until the advent of the "Blockbuster Era" following the success of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, the practice of remaking a film was considered the norm in Hollywood. Studio chiefs thought nothing of the concept of revisiting familiar stories, favoring a style of artistic repetition that mirrored theatre: one story could (and should) be told in varying fashions by differing talents over the years, and very few films were considered sacrosanct or un-remake-able. The Maltese Falcon (adapted three times), Ben-Hur (twice), The Ten Commandments (twice), The Man Who Knew Too Much (twice), The King of Kings (twice), and Gaslight (twice), to name a few. Technically speaking, The Maltese Falcon acknowledged today as the "definitive" version - John Huston's 1941 film - is the third adaptation of Hammett's novel.
After the success of Jaws, one could argue that the rise of "pastiche" cinema - films which borrowed directly from several sources but were not technically remakes (for example, the synthesis of Buck Rogers and Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress to make Star Wars) - replaced the concept of strict artistic repetition. Films were no longer always directly based on one film, and direct remakes tended to be limited to foreign films re-crafted into English language versions*****. This changed to a large degree in the early twenty-first century, when a wave of remakes of easily recognized horror titles (Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) were met with success at the box office. Audiences, perhaps unfamiliar with the film but certainly aware of the title, flocked to see remakes, and the floodgates opened.
With success comes excess, and if one remake works, the easiest solution for a studio is to simply green light more remakes, often with little concern to whether the film is any good or not******. However, that excess also draws harsh criticism from audiences who feel an affinity to the original and writers who study film and film history. The discourse becomes something along the lines of "why is this necessary to remake?" or "is this simply artistic laziness on the part of writers, directors, producers, and studios?" which, in the amplified echo chamber of online reviews, blogs, and "instant reaction" websites, is detrimental to any claims of "artistic integrity" on the part of "serious filmmakers", a term I put in quotations because of the ongoing debates by members of the critical community about what that means and who qualifies.
Enter the return of the claim of re-adaptation, a method by which directors like Steven Soderbergh (Solaris), Brian Helgeland (Payback), Steven Spielberg (The War of the Worlds), or Tim Burton (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) can leapfrog a highly recognized film and instead lay claim to adapting the source material - almost always a novel - without the taint of "remaking" a classic film. This is not to claim any disingenuous-ness on their part, but it does distinguish their attempt at artistic repetition from the highly criticized practice of crassly cashing in on a recognizable title. It's certainly become a way for critics and professors to distinguish a "quality" remake from "standard Hollywood fare."
The problem with using re-adaptation as the preferred discursive term is that it often places a value judgment on "classes" of remakes - i.e., "remakes" are made for commerce and "re-adaptations" deserve serious critical assessment - which is not always the case. It assumes, and not always correctly, that the "auteur" theory is somehow linked to the intent behind artistic repetition, and accordingly some directors ought to be left off the hook or excused when they claim to be re-adapting from the source material whereas others should not. This, I suspect, is the reason that explaining re-adaptations to the broad movie going audience is so difficult for critics: while there is some merit in the distinction, its use discursively is still up for debate, and until the terms are disentangled from value judgments, one continues to see a schizophrenic approach in writing about remakes.
Hopefully, this has been helpful in some capacity, at least in demonstrating that there are differing schools of thought on remakes, both on the part of the people who make films and the people who write about them. If nothing else, it may ease navigating reviews of True Grit, which are likely to continue struggling with the ramifications of arguments listed above.
* His only, by the way, which is why 1969's True Grit casts such a long shadow for many viewers of the Coens' 2010 version.
** This term, while used almost as frequently as re-adaptation in circumventing the term "remake" is nevertheless easier to put aside for the time being. Technically speaking, it's an argument over semantics based on the "intent" of the filmmakers.
*** He also refused to show The Ladykillers during a class on the films of the Coen brothers, arguing that the other "official" remake they've done didn't merit studying.
**** The interview is available in the book "Steven Soderbergh Interviews" from The University of Mississippi press.
***** Another curious practice I'd like to return to at some point, as it replaced the idea of releasing a foreign film to an "art house" audience on its own merits somewhere between Amelie and Let the Right One In, and includes The Ring and The Departed as high profile examples.
****** Perhaps this is a cheap shot, considering that the same argument could be made about ANY film green lit of any medium: 3-D being the latest "gimmick" du jour.
No comments:
Post a Comment