Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Knock-off
This morning, I caught the last half of the film Sarkar, Bollywood’s version of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 hit The Godfather. All of the elements are present: an above-the-law boss to whom people appeal for justice; a good son, a bad son; a conspiracy of local criminals to whom the Godfather (or Sarkar) poses a financial threat. The Vito/Michael cognates are Subhash Nagre and Shankar Nagre, played by real life father-and-son actors Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan. That’s Amitabh to the right. I wonder if they were chosen for their resemblance to Michael Corleone’s actor, Al Pachino?
It’s a fun movie, what I saw of it, delightful for its similarities as well as its culture clash differences. For example: remember the scene in The Godfather where Michael has to scramble to protect his father in the hospital? The Don has survived one attempt on his life, and Michael realizes that killers are coming to finish the same job. Imagine that same scene with background music chanting, “JESUS, JESUS, JESUS,” and you’ll have some idea of the surprises in store for you from the Bollywood production. There’s a similar moment during the settling-scores ending montage; in The Godfather, this is accompanied by organ music (Michael is serving as godfather at his nephew’s christening), while in Sarkar, someone sings, “Such injustice, how could anyone tolerate it?” . . . just in case the audience begins to lose sympathy for Shankar, thanks to his new appreciation for violence.
Of course, the point of The Godfather was Michael’s tragic fall from grace. We may understand his crimes, but we’re not supposed to excuse them. In Sarkar, Shankar/Michael becomes an instrument of righteous vengeance rather than a good man gone bad.
Out of curiosity, I searched the tubes for other knock-offs of The Godfather. Surprisingly, Sarkar is it. There have been numerous nods to The Godfather, including The Freshman, Shark Tale, and even Rugrats in Paris, and Bollywood is preparing a comedic version, but other close cousins are lacking.
The other odd thing is that it took so long for another country to crib from Coppola. Thirty-two years passed between the releases of The Godfather and Sarkar. In contrast, it only took Turkey five years to produce the execrable Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam, their version of Star Wars. (IMDB, however, points out, “Two space cadets crash-land on a desert planet, where an evil wizard seeks the ultimate power to take over the world. Although the movie borrows some background footage from Star Wars, the plot is mostly unrelated.”)
Not particularly apropos of this discussion . . . but I found a video that gave me a lot of laughs this morning. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visits the line of fans waiting to see Clone Wars. Almost good enough to make me watch Conan.
D.
hey you…i sent you an email, to the harborside.com addy, haven’t heard from you so i’m wondering if i have the wrong address? did it change?
also, i updated my LJ *twice* in the past week! i’m so proud of myself. 🙂
oh! and i dunno if you saw it, but i won a Sony Pocket reader from the smart bitches! a pink one! you were talking about readers recently, werent you?
okay. hehe.
i need to see the Godfather, still. i had an ex that wanted to watch them with me. then he dumped me. oh well.
Hi Shaina. Yeah, I hardly ever check Harborside anymore, since for every good email I get, I receive about 500 spams — no exaggeration.
Godfather is must-see cinema. One of the greats.
My main email nowadays is malmerkinx at gmailx dotx com, take out the x’s. Although now that I think about it, malmerkinx does have a certain flair to it . . .