Deserved Oscar winner or rip-off ?
Chinese film fans are overjoyed that a revered filmmaker has finally won an Academy Award, but they are ambivalent whether the film that got him the accolade deserves an honor by itself.
The Departed producer Graham King (left), actor Leonardo DiCaprio (center) and writer Felix Chong pose at the 79th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball in Hollywood. The movie won the Oscar for Best Film. Chong is also one of the two script writers for the original Infernal Affairs. Reuters |
However, Infernal Affairs, a modern-day Hong Kong noir with a cosmopolitan feel and sophisticated sensibility, raked in only $169,659 in box office receipts when it debuted in the United States. The Departed, on the other hand, got more than $131million. As a result, many Chinese movie fans concluded the American remake had unjustifiably overshadowed the original even before the latter's Oscar glory.
It is very hard for them not to make comparisons. And that has led many of them to believe that the remake is not as good as the original. Chen Daming, director of One Foot Off the Ground, said "The Departed is genuinely not a good movie." He hastened to add that he is a fan of Scorsese, but loves his early work only.
Chen is not alone. In a Sohu.com survey, about a third of the respondents expressed displeasure at the American version getting credit for something they feel is borrowed.
The misgivings these people have about Scorsese's version of the gangster drama derive from several factors: The original is embraced so wholeheartedly that any difference in treatment would automatically be judged with suspicion; on the other hand, the remake follows the original's plot so closely that some feel it's a rip-off.
But there are critics here who point out the Scorsese remake stands on its own as a piece of engrossing filmmaking. It is so different in style from the original as to make comparison meaningless. It is a totally new film infused with rich American undertones. The same survey also found that slightly more respondents are happy that the movie they love has found a new incarnation. Director Zhang Yuan echoed these sentiment when he said that the Oscar nod to the remake is also a resounding encouragement to the original.
To add a dramatic twist, the announcer for the Oscar show misidentified Infernal Affairs as "a Japanese film", creating an immediate backlash online. Fortunately, Martin Scorsese set it right when he took the podium and said something nice about it and "Asian films" in general.
In other China-related news, ancient China lost to ancient France in the sartorial duel as Best Costume Design went to Marie Antoinette instead of The Curse of the Golden Flower. But Best Documentary Short Subject was given to The Blood of Yingzhou District, a stunningly shot, sensitive portrait of the epidemic through the life of an AIDS orphan in Anhui Province.
The Oscar show was not televised live on the Chinese mainland. CCTV-6, the movie channel, aired an abridged version in the evening slot after primetime. Many eager viewers turned to websites for updates, and some discovered a secret overseas site that streamed the event live online.
The predominant favorite among Chinese viewers was Babel, the polyglot multithread drama with globalization as its theme. It has been selling briskly on DVD stands and is expected to hit movie theaters soon. Otherwise, with the absence of a major Chinese participant in the Oscar race, the Chinese press has been discussing why Zhang Yimou's Curse was shut out during the nomination process, and studying tea leaves about Oscar's "new trends".
(China Daily 02/27/2007 page18)
