We’ll always have New Delhi?
The Hollywood Reporter is carrying a Reuters story that Indian director Rajeev Nath has mounted a remake of the 1942 classic Casablanca, changing the setting from war torn Morocco during World War II to the more modern day ethnic struggle in Sri Lanka.
”My film will be a tribute to the original,” Nath is quoted as saying. In place of Humphrey Bogart’s cynical and mysterious nightclub-owner Rick will be a former Indian diplomat turned restaurateur who aids his lover and her husband, Tamil sepratist rebels, in escaping from India. Ethnic Tamils have been fighting a civil war with Sri Lanka for the establishment of a separate homeland on the island since 1983.
Despite the political background, Nath states the film ”is neither against nor in support of their cause.”
Titled Ezham Mudra (The Seventh Seal), the film is slated to begin production next month, with some shooting scheduled for Sri Lanka. A 2008 release is expected.
This wouldn’t be the first time that the basic plotline of Casablanca has been placed against a different background by an Indian director. In 1981, director Anand Sagar’s Armaan (The Desires) transplanted the story to the Indian state of Goa where the natives are fighting for freedom from Portuguese the colonists who ruled them.
Meanwhile, Hollywood reworked the story for the 1996 bomb Barb Wire, setting the story in a grungy, futuristic city with Pam Anderson in the Bogart role. Hopefully Nath will have better luck with his project.
Via Film Ick
