Remaking Foreign Films: Friend or Foe?

I like foreign cinema. It's not all about explosions, for example. Foreign films don't go for the easy crowd-pleasing cliches. Sure, a lot of European films are just plain plotless, but a viewer can count on getting something different from foreign cinema than the same tired platitudes constantly regurgitated by American cinema. Which is why I was boiling made when I saw that a new Hollywood trend of remaking foreign films for American audiences is coming to the forefront.

Now sometimes this works. The brilliant The Departed is from a 2002 Hong Kong film Mou gaan dou (Infernal Affairs), but Jack Nicholson's performance and the thorough Americanization of the original cop/mole storyline hides the story's original roots. And I'm not saying I think stories are culturalized; stories are what unite all cultures. I'm against taking a film that was brilliantly done in another country, and deciding Americans are too stupid to appreciate it, so it has to be remade. This is true, Americans don't have much of an appetite for foreign anything unless its food. But for a well-rounded film education, one can't discount Kurosawa's brilliance with Rashomon, Ran, or Seven Samurai. ( which was remade into the American Western The Magnificent Seven, a poor copy at best, despite the presence of Steve McQueen.) One cannot discount Truffaut, Fellini, Bergman or Almodovar simply because their films are in French, Italian, Swedish or Spanish. And most Americans have never heard of Bollywood, despite its considerable output. Maybe it's the Hindi.

The impetus for this post is the growing anticipation for Let Me In, which comes out in October. The original film, Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In, 2008) is beautifully made, extremely watchable, and happens to be in Swedish. The original novel is Swedish, so it is appropriate for the film to be Swedish as well. Låt den rätte komma in is currently 204 on imdb.com's top 250 movies list, which is voted for by viewers. So why the American remake? Because, according to producer Simon Oakes, "...the story was so great, so beautiful, that it should be seen by a bigger audience. So I was always saying to myself, people in Manhattan have seen it, guys like you [genre journalists/fans] because it's in your wheelhouse, in New York, in Chicago, in Chelsea, in Notting Hill, in London but no one in Glasgow or Edinburgh or Bristol or Idaho or Pittsburgh has seen this film. It's a story that needs to be seen by a wider audience. Then it came down to [the question], how do you achieve that? By paying homage to the original." So they're not remaking, they're homaging.

This is a crock. Gus Van Sant tried this once by "homaging" Psycho in 1998 and what he got was a mess that bore no semblance to the brilliant original. Hollywood has a track record of not trusting audiences. They want a guaranteed return on their money, followed by Avatar-style profits. So the prospect of releasing a Swedish movie just isn't financially attractive. Occasionally some foreign, untranslated films do make the mainstream by being released in the USA, such as France's Amelie, Mexico's El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), and Y tu mama tambien, Spain's Volver (To Return) and Germany's Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). But these films are almost exclusively on the art house market, and not heavily advertised unless there is awards buzz. And so the snake eats its tail.

Other good foreign films set for the Americanized market include the South Korean thriller Oldboy (2003), last in development with Steven Speilberg as producer. Never mind that it's 113 on the IMDb top 250. Daniel Craig was just cast in the American remake of the Swedish film Män som hatar kvinnor (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2009), which is capitalizing on the English language release of the "Millennium" novel trilogy by Stieg Larsson. Again, most people don't know these were originally made in other countries.

Foreign films will never be staple in the US market until they're pushed into the mainstream. Since the studios don't trust American audiences, the audience demand is the only way this will happen. Get a good dub job, and release it. See what happens.

What do you think? Do you think foreign films should be a staple of the US film market, or should they stay in the art house and be remade for American audiences? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you to imdb.com for information that contributed to this post/rant.