There is no easy answer to the question whether legendary films should be remade or not and the debate has been raging on for years. Some believe that great films stay on in people’s memories, others feel they should be allowed to stay on celluloid or in digital form, not just in the mind.
The 1954 Tamil drama Ratha Kanneer of M.R. Radha is one such movie that evokes the debate yet again. For actor Radha Ravi, son of the legend and who holds the rights to the film, it is a gnawing quandary, one borne out of the fear of ruining the original.
In a freewheeling chat with The Hindu , the actor speaks of his dilemma, the festering issue of piracy and the dynamics of the industry. “I often contemplate a remake. But there is also the fear of ruining the original. Enga Veetu Pillai is an ordinary social drama that anyone could reproduce. But, it could never capture the charm of MGR that made the movie what it is. All said, even an Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan could not reproduce the magic of the original Devdas . That’s what I mean,” says the actor.
But he does think that the memory of the movie should be preserved for posterity. “There is no pucca negative of the movie. Also, it should not be remade in colour.”
If remade, ask him who would enact M.R. Radha’s role, and he says, “Of course that would be me.” After all, it is a role he has been performing since 1980, through theatre. “Ever since my bypass surgery in 2007, doctors have been advising me to cut it down. The play is both emotionally and physically draining,” the actor, who now stages the play about 10 times a year, says.
“ Karnan ran for 100 days each at three theatres in Chennai alone. That is a record since no movie runs for more than 100 days. My hope is that I don’t ruin the original if it is remade,” he says.
Piracy problem
As the Tamil film industry grapples with pirated DVDs, Radha Ravi wonders why the industry does not want to learn from the experience of Bollywood. DVDs of some Bollywood movies are released simultaneously, without impacting their profits. “There are some such as Ben-Hur that can only be watched in a theatre, and an exception can be made for those kinds of films,’ he says.
According to him, it is time producers and directors sat together and resolved this issue. “It’s time we moved from the streets to the sets. In our age of Twitter and smartphones, there is no controlled release of a movie preview. The enigma of movie stars is lost,” he says.
And that is why movies should step back into the sets. “Movies that were made in sets have turned out to be blockbusters, be they Aranmanai or Bahubali ,” he says.
As for small-budget movies, Radha Ravi believes that increasing the number of small theatres would help.
“Those days, small films will be shown next to a theatre showing a Rajnikanth movie. They too made profits from the spill-over crowd.”
