Remade in China

After Sinhalese remake, Drishyam now gets a Chinese version with an altered climax

67-Drishyam Crossing borders: A scene from Malayalam movie Drishyam.

A father who goes to any length to protect his daughter’s dignity, and save his family from the clutches of a legal system he has no faith in. This was the backdrop of a crime thriller that saw the audience root for a father who tries to cover up a murder—his wife’s killing of a police officer’s son who harassed their daughter.

The Chinese remake has minted over Rs1,000 crore, within a month of its release.

It is this relatable setting that made Drishyam, a Malayalam movie that released in 2013, appeal to viewers across languages. After being one of Mollywood’s biggest box office hits, Drishyam was remade in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and even in Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese. While the Malayalam version had crossed Rs75 crore, the Tamil and Hindi versions raked in over Rs100 crore each. And now, its Chinese remake titled Sheep Without a Shepherd has earned more than Rs1,000 crore, within a month of its release. Dubbed versions of Indian films, especially those of the Khans and Rajinikanth, have a huge fan following in China, but this is probably the first time an Indian film was remade in China.

Scene from the Hindi remake. Scene from the Hindi remake.

The Chinese team had initially approached the makers of the Hindi version for rights, not knowing it was first made in Malayalam. What is it that makes this crime drama click across borders? Jeethu Joseph, writer and director of the Malayalam film, says the answer lies in the universality of family love and father-daughter bond. “The Chinese makers must have seen something that resonates with their culture, too,” he says.

In the Indian versions, the family gets away with the crime, with a crisp climax flashback showing the cops sitting in a police station that was literally built on the dead body. It is here that the film transcends beyond the genre of a mere crime thriller—for many, the protagonist symbolised a common man’s fight against social injustice and police high-handedness. The Chinese climax is, however, a stark departure from the much-loved Indian version. In China, you cannot get away with duping the system, or so the makers try to say, as the father turns himself in for the crime. Farsana Ali, a writer and movie enthusiast based in China for the past 11 years, says the change could have been made to cater to people’s sensitivities or appease the censor board. “The director, being a Malaysian, could have studied the Chinese market, censor issues and also delved into Chinese beliefs of karma and punishment,” she adds.

Joseph’s film had repeatedly faced allegations of being rooted in The Devotion of Suspect X, a best-selling Japanese novel in which a single man helps cover up a murder committed by his neighbour and her daughter. Joseph, who always maintained that his plot was original, is content that it has struck a chord with the Chinese as well. 

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