Written by Mythrayi M. R.
Do you have a favourite movie for bad days? In the hopes that rewatching mine would lift my spirits, I sat down to watch Maara again. But the movie refused to do its trick this time, apparently I had overdone it. So, I decided to watch other remakes of the original movie it's based on- to mix things up without straying too far from what I enjoy. And I couldn't have been more wrong. The plot stayed the same, but the movies couldn't have been more different from each other.
The ‘plot’ is the story of a responsibility-hating man-child living his life as a hippie artist. His story is told through the eyes of the female lead, an adventure-loving graphic artist, who quits her job and runs away from home to avoid a marriage. Forced to live in an apartment still full of his belongings, she tries to reach out to him, to ask him to get rid of them. But, he simply asks her to throw away his stuff. The initial hatred slowly turns into fascination when she discovers a comic book illustrating the artist’s various escapades. One of the comics illustrates his time with a man who enters his house as a thief. Unsatisfied with the abrupt end of the story, she takes up the quest to find the thief as her first escapade. The journey draws her towards other characters who have known the vagabond artist. The film unfolds as characters narrate fascinating anecdotes about the artist.
Maara is, in the director's words, the Tamil adaptation of the Malayalam movie Charlie (most remakes are so bad, that the word itself has become taboo now). Charlie is one of the most successful Malayalam movies of all time, the movie was also remade in Marathi under the title Deva in 2017.
However, the budget for movies varied significantly. While Maara had a grand budget of 25cr, Charlie was made with 6cr, and Deva with even less (1cr). The variance in budget led to a difference in quality. With different actors came alternate portrayals of the characters, some better than others. The diversity in shooting locations and crew members led to each movie's changed background and settings, weather, and colour scheme.
Charlie is a movie that relies on its theme more than the story. Its main selling point is the dynamic between the two characters - the female lead’s desire to break out of the shackles of society and the male lead’s free-spirited vagabond lifestyle. While the story stayed the same in the remakes, the domino effect of the many differences made to adapt to different audiences took the remakes too far from the original movie's theme.
Deva's female lead is a writer, not the graphic designer we meet in Charlie. Her trip is no longer a spur-of-the-moment decision, it has a motive - finding inspiration for her second novel. The change makes her an ironically and problematically less rebellious character in a movie that uses a plot driven by the character’s ‘I want to live life on my own terms' attitude. Ankush Chaudhari portrays the titular Deva character as an angelic figure. The vagabond’s entry into the lives of characters is considered a fated event that will forever change their trajectory. The movie neither does justice to the original plot nor is pleasing to watch. It is so bad, forget the rating; it is not even listed on the Tomatometer.
Maara, unlike Deva, was a massive hit. It ditched the free-spirit theme from the original movie to focus on the female leads' curiosity and independence. In Maara, the titular character is not a magical free spirit, but merely a person kind to the people around him. Maara intentionally skips the love interest dynamic between the characters to focus on her independence instead. She is a building restoration artist who moves from city to city for work. She already lives the vagabond life and doesn't ‘need’ Maara to save her. Maara builds a different castle using the blocks borrowed from ‘Charlie’. The movie is a visual treat with its warm colour palette and beautifully pictured sequences. The movie’s grounded nature, grand visuals and focus on the female lead's curiosity and independence make it more appealing to me than Charlie.
However, it is not that the changes made in Maara are flawless. Characters often show up in the same scene with no apparent reason. The movie also has several minor plot holes. Yet, Charlie is not a movie I would watch more than once. The soul of a story lies not just in its telling but in its adaptation through diverse creative lenses. People always love what they identify most with. While remakes use a tried and tested plot, the movie's success comes down to how well it has adapted to its people without losing the spirit of the original. Maara wasn't just a remake, it was a reimagining that resonated deeply.
Correspondent
Renesa
Comentários