Ø Brothers, Where Art Americanized Remakes?

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

On second thought and sober reflection, that's a really dumb post title. Oh well, it stays.

Though I haven't seen the original Danish version of Brothers (and my time machine's in the shop, so I haven't seen the American remake either), you raised some interesting points in your last post that I'd like to address.

To remake or not to remake. Whether 'tis nobler to introduce great stories from foreign films to wider American audiences, or just to say "No, sorry, sometimes watching a great work of cinema means having to read a little." It's kinda a tough call. My first instinct is to condemn remakes, updates, reboots, etc. and to encourage people to embrace the original instead, even if it's in another language, in black and white, or doesn't have any actors you recognize from the covers of People, Us Weekly, or Tiger Beat. But that would make me a hypocrite, wouldn't it, since only a couple posts ago I was gushing over a trio of great remakes. There have been plenty of good, even great, remakes of older foreign films, from The Departed, which you mentioned, to The Good Thief (based on Melville's Bob le Flambleur), Twelve Monkeys (based on La Jetée), A Fistful of Dollars (based on Kurosawa's Yojimbo), and, of course, Star Wars (based on The Hidden Fortress, also by Kurosawa). (Here is a handy list of English-language remakes of foreign films. Of course, this kind of influence is a two-way street; for example, two of Kurosawa's films, Throne of Blood and Ran, are based on Shakespeare, Macbeth and King Lear respectively.)

One particularly interesting example, discussed previously, is Funny Games, originally made in 1997 in German, remade in 2008 in English. Both were directed by Michael Haneke (who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last spring for his most recent film, The White Ribbon), using the same script and all the same shots; the only differences were the actors and the language. I suppose Haneke did this to expose a wider audience to the ideas in the original; I doubt he was just trying to cash in on the American market, since there are a lot more audience-friendly stories out there if you're just trying to make a buck. Regardless of his motivation, it almost can't be considered a remake, since there's virtually no creative difference between it and the original; except for the actors' performances, you might as well be watching a dubbed version of the original.

The main reason why this issue is of interest to me is the forthcoming American remake of the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In (trailer), my number 2 film of that year. It has fantastic, understated performances, particularly on the parts of its child-leads, Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson; its cinematography and music create a beautiful, almost dreamlike atmosphere; and the story has a mixture of innocence, uncertainty, and fear that's particularly appropriate for a film about adolescence. Oh yeah, and it has a deathless minion of Hell damned to feed on the living for all eternity, so basically it's the total package. It's been out on DVD for a while now, and I would've bought it in a heart beat, but the English subtitles in the DVD version are significantly different, and vastly inferior, to those in the theatrical version. Why they would do that I have no idea, but it breaks my heart; I'm almost tempted just to learn enough Swedish to avoid the subtitles altogether. The North American distributer, Magnolia Films, has said it would release a version with the theatrical subtitles, but I haven't seen it yet. This isn't the first time I've been burnt by shoddy subtitles to the foreign films I love; I saw Park Chan-wook's Oldboy twice in theaters, and I'm positive the subtitles in my DVD are different. Seriously, this crap make me pull my hair out.

To get back on topic, the American remake is scheduled for release next year, with Matt Reeves (The Pallbearer (a David Schwimmer vehicle—I didn't even know there was such a thing), Felicity, Cloverfield . . . ugh) directing. Some casting news came out recently, with Kodi Smit-McPhee (soon to appear in the adaptation of The Road) and Chloë Moretz (recently in (500) Days of Summer, also in the upcoming adaptation of the comic book Kick-Ass) as the two kids and Richard Jenkins as the girl's "guardian." It's good to see they're keeping the kid characters young (Smit-McPhee is 13, Moretz 12) instead of going the more bankable, less squicky route of teen actors, as is Oscar-nominee Jenkins's involvement. There had previously been noises that Philip Seymour Hoffman would get that role, but I won't lose any sleep over Jenkins getting it instead. Hoffman would've captured the sad-sack-schlub aspect of the original's character (I'm imagining his roles in Happiness and Synecdoche, New York), but Jenkins can evoke a tired, forlorn quality (seen to such great effect last year in The Visitor) that I think would work great as well.

Though the casting seems promising, other elements—in addition to Reeves's filmography—are less so. First off, it may get a different title, "Let Me In" or "Fish Head." The former refers to a particular scene in the film, but in a slightly more obvious way than "Let the Right One In" does; as for "Fish Head," I haven't the slightest clue. Also, the original's director, Tomas Alfredson, made the good point that it doesn't make a lot to sense to remake what is already a fantastic film, especially so recently afterward. It threatens to distract from the original people who might otherwise see it, offering in its place a work that, even if as good as the original, is merely piggy-backing on its ideas.

In a move that may work for or against his film, Reeves apparently wants to hew more closely to John Lindqvist's novel. (Of course, he's already failing to do that by changing the setting from Sweden to the United States, isn't he?) I mention this because it's good to keep in mind when discussing remakes that the original film isn't always a canon from which any deviation is necessarily wrong; originals are themselves often based on their own source material, deviation from which may help or hurt them. So we'll have to see what impact that has.

Another reason the remake leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that it seems a bit like a cashing-in on the explosion of all things vampiric in popular culture right now. (A few years ago it was zombies, starting with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later in 2002; the zombie renaissance seems to have mostly burnt itself out by this point, except for the occasional film like Zombieland that takes a slightly different approach from the well-worn "motley crew of survivors spend the running time killing the undead in gruesomely creative ways, most of them dying themselves along the way" template.) Since Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels started making big bucks, it seems like you can't walk ten feet without seeing a new vampire-themed film or TV series, be it the films Twilight and New Moon, True Blood, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, Daybreakers, the inexplicable continuance of the Underworld franchise, etc., etc., etc. On the one hand, Reeves has some of the best source material—cinematic and (presumably) literary—that one could hope for; on the other, he is apparently going in a more "accessible" direction. As long as he doesn't have his young vampiress sparkling or playing baseball, I guess that'll be some kind of victory, at least.

Anyway, that's what I have to say about American remakes of foreign films (at least until I see either version of Brothers and can comment directly). I also agree that there doesn't seem to have been any high-quality films about the Afghan or Iraqi wars other than Kathryn Bigelow's outstanding The Hurt Locker this summer. I don't have a whole lot to say on this point; honestly, I think The Hurt Locker is the first I've seen because, well, the others weren't supposed to be that great. Maybe it's a matter of needing a little more distance from the subject matter, maybe it's just the fact that, regardless of subject matter, a lot more crappy movies are made than good ones. Keep in mind that it took a while for films like The Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), and Full Metal Jacket (1987) to come out; prior to that, it had mostly been the Duke kicking VC ass in The Green Berets.

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On an unrelated note, here are some great, insightful interviews with Stanley Kubrick, the tenth anniversary of whose death was last March. There's one each on A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining. Enjoy!