Many cineastes think Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is the most influential film of all times. times. Here’s saluting the Godfather clones, good bad and the awful.
Dharmatma (1975): Feroz Khan was always ahead of his times. So no surprise that he was the first Bollywood filmmaker to jump on the Godfather bandwagon with this wildly out-of-control remake, an almost scene-by-scene reaffirmation of the original with Feroz playing Al Pacino and Premnath as Marlon Brando. A laughably crude homage to the original, the silver lining was the beauteous Hema Malini as Reshma the the exotic Afghani lass whom Michael, sorry Feroz falls in love with. Hema dancing to Lataji’s Mere galiyon se logon ki yaari ho gayi would have probably given Coppola enough reason to not make Godfather 2. But what the heck! This was Feroz Khan. He could do anything.
Aatank Hi Aatank (1995): The other major Hindi adaptation of The Godfather was this convoluted but not entirely unpalatable drama where Ishrat Ali’s role of a Mumbai gang lord is a desi doppelganger of Brando. Rajnikanth and,ahem, Aamir Khan , their only film together , played roles roughly inspired by Sunny and Michael Corleone . The film went through many troubled episodes from behind the camera and I suspect the tensions off camera were just as dramatic as those on camera.
Nayakan (1987): Mani Ratnam’s Nayakan, the 1987 Tamil film written and directed by Mani Ratnam and starring Kamal Haasan. The cult classic based on the life of gangster Varadarajan Mudaliar was given pride of place in Time Magazine’s ‘All time 100 Best Films' for 2005. It boasts of one of the most accomplished performances by an Indian actor. Kamal Haasan’s portrayal of the gangster in Nayakan is comparable with Brando’s The Godfather. After Nayakan’s runaway success, both actor and director became too big in stature to be accommodated in one film despite being family. Mani is married to Kamal’s elder brother Charu Haasan’s daughter Suhasini. Kamal in an interview with me admitted, “Yes, both Mani Rathnam Saab and I are great fans of Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola. I love Marlon Brando. But Coppola was my hero in Godfather. I was proven right when the uncut version of Godfather was recently shown at Cannes. The man is still a hero. The underworld genre is nothing new in Hollywood cinema. Paul Muni had done Scarface many decades ago. It’s part of their culture. We wanted to get away from the Hollywood stereotype and re-root Nayakan into our environment.” Feroz Khan directed a Hindi remake of Nayakan. Dayavan was a pitiless parody of Nayakan which was an astute adaptation of The Godfather.
Sarkar (2005): One of Ram Gopal Varma’s better films after Satya, Rangeela and Company, Amitabh Bachchan’s Subhash Nagre was clearly Brando’s Godfather combined with Shiv Sena Supremo Bal Thackeray. The “parallel government” theme was brilliantly etched. Mr Bachchan was the teacher of the taut. Abhishek playing the indigenous Michael Corleone was also in superb form.
Malik (2021): Mahesh Narayanan’s Malayalam Malik was as inspired by The Godfather as Gulzar’s Parichay was by The Sound Of Music. The opening festivities at Sulaiman (Fahad Faasil)’s residence is captured in a lengthy 12-minute shot which reminded me of the wedding in The Godfather, as I guess it is meant to. From this ostentatiously impressive beginning Malik never stops being that film which wants us to look at its subversive take on Coppola’s film. The frames are littered with legacies of unspoken violence and recrimination. Cinematographer Sanu Varghese (he also shot the same director’s first film Take Off) makes a virtue of a depressing dinginess that accompanies the narrative everywhere it goes. Sulaiman wants to wash away his sins by going on a pilgrimage. In a black-and-white CCTV-styled sequence he is stopped by the cops at the airport and arrested under TADA. Stop right here. Are we supposed to respect a “hero” who is a suspected terrorist? I am afraid Sulaiman lost me there. From this point onwards the lengthy film (it clocks 2 hours and 40 minutes of our viewing time) flashed forward and buckled backwards with tales of Sulaiman’s bravery that are meant to be folklore. Alas, this is cornier than Corleone. At the most Malik is a fabulous failure. At worst, it is a self-indulgent paean to criminalized behaviour.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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