When a master does a remake

[summertime]

When a master does a remake

Special edition of Geoff Pevere 's DVD column: Infernal Affairs and Oscar-hopeful The Departed, under the microscope

Feb 18, 2007 04:30 AM
Geoff Pevere

Men do not change events," observes one of the key characters in the 2002 Hong Kong crime movie Infernal Affairs. "Events change men."

But men do change movies. Especially when they adapt them for different cultures, different audiences and entirely different artistic purposes. Just listen to what happened to the foregoing worldview by the time it came out of Jack Nicholson's mouth, in Martin Scorsese's almost universally praised remake of Infernal Affairs, The Departed: "I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me."

The last word, spoken by the Satanic father-figure mobster Frank Costello, is pronounced with stepped-on Nicholsonian emphasis, a statement not only of the movie's ensuing examination of the corrosive effects of ego, but the star's own eclipsing persona. (First time Nicholson slides on screen, it's in backlit silhouette; he might as well be the moon crossing the face of the sun.) And The Departed, widely hailed as a triumphant return to form for the 64-year-old filmmaker, certainly bears Frank's philosophy out: when Jack's Frank is onscreen, the movie becomes him.

This is in keeping with Scorsese's penchant for the exploration of infernally scorched souls: from Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull right on through Gangs of New York and The Aviator, Scorsese has been fascinated by personalities so volcanic they erupt and incinerate everything around them. Whether it's the director's well-documented conflicted Catholicism (before turning to movies, he seriously considered the priesthood), or his attraction to performer/collaborators as internally combustible as Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, Daniel Day-Lewis or (belatedly, when you think about it) Nicholson, Scorsese makes movies about environments at the mercy of the ego.

With Scorsese's strongest-looking Oscar bid in years just a week away, this week saw the release of both The Infernal Affairs Trilogy (the 2002 original plus its two essential sequels) and The Departed on DVD. A closely proximate viewing of both is revealing – both of the process and the potential of cross-cultural adaptation.

At the narrative core, both the Hong Kong (directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak) and Hollywood versions are about parallel infiltration: at the same time a young gangster is embedded within the police force as the eyes and ears of his underworld boss, a young cop goes undercover as a mole within the gangster's operation. As each side is tipped off to the presence of a rat within their ranks, the noose tightens around the necks of both impostors.

The product of one of the most popular and prolific of international commercial film industries, the original Infernal Affairs features two Asian superstars (Tony Leung and Andy Lau) in a movie that's at once a hyper-efficiently taut genre exercise – with a wristwatch as one of its more apt recurring motifs – and a deeply intelligent and complex investigation of the outer limits of morality. But where Scorsese's robustly profane and character-driven remake (scripted by William Monahan) tends to wear its thematic interests on its frequently blood-stained sleeve – with lots of talk of betrayal, loyalty, power and death – the Lau/Mak original lets the action do the thinking.

This might account for the discrepancy in running times: Infernal Affairs, which forgoes dialogue wherever possible or integrates it into sequences in which people are running, driving, hiding or being shot at, clocks in at a tidy 100 minutes; Scorsese's version, luxuriantly laden with thickly dialected speeches, musical montages, slow-motion interludes and incidental swearing matches, fills up nearly 2 1/2 hours. It does, however, get about two-thirds of the trilogy's story told.

There are also shared incidents with telling differences. When Nicholson's Costello is considering taking on the anxiety-prone newcomer Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) as a gang flunky, he tests the loyalty of the kid by smashing the cast on Costigan's injured arm and beating savagely on the limb with a heavy shoe. "Are you a cop?" Costello screams as Costigan howls in pain. "Are you a f--kin' cop?"

In Infernal Affairs, the same incident happens in an instant, but in a crucially different way. Suspecting that the new triad member Yan (the comparatively stoic Tony Leung) may be wired beneath his cast, the gang boss simply nods at one of his henchman, who grabs the arm and whacks it on a table. Yan howls and backs off, and then it's back to business as usual. Savage maybe, but nothing personal. He's got the job.

But there's more to the movies' dissimilarities than can be explained by the authorial indulgence that comes when a superior piece of non-Hollywood genre filmmaking is handed to "America's greatest living director." There's also the matter of those two quotes cited above. Because where The Departed earns its sprawl at least partly because of its focus on personality over circumstance, Infernal Affairs is all about behaviour as a function of uncontrollable circumstances. Both movies are really about rats, but only the original is about rats in a maze.

As sleek, urban and steely as a Michael Mann movie, Infernal Affairs and its sequels – which complement the first movie so seamlessly the three qualify for legitimate saga status – view the circumstances of their parallel-world infiltrators with the cool detachment of the surveillance cameras, cellphone cameras and electronic tracking devices that seem to watch everyone constantly.

In this regard, Hong Kong has none of the almost aromatic neighbourhood specificity of the Boston Irish setting of The Departed, but it becomes something else: a sinister, utterly impersonal urban landscape made up of glass-walled skyscrapers, footstep-echoing parking garages and after-hours offices lit only by the glow of overworked computer monitors. Even the colours emanate from different worlds and world views: Scorsese's movie is full of the hues of flesh, blood and barroom décor, where Lau and Mak's is marked by the hard reflective surfaces of glass, chrome, plastic and black leather.

I had initially been struck by the amount of cellphone barking that goes on in The Departed, but that was before I saw the Infernal Affairs Trilogy, which uses technology not only as a means of surveillance and communication, but a metaphor for each character's isolation. People in these movies spend more time engaging with gadgets than people, and this too reinforces the films' central idea of individual will being consumed by external forces.

When watched as a trilogy (as I heartily recommend), Infernal Affairs covers ground The Departed – given its body count, not exactly sequel-friendly – barely even nods at. The early experiences of the two moles, for example, or the fascinating, mutually respectful relationship between the chief cop (Anthony Wong) and the gang boss (Eric Tsang). The role of the woman police psychiatrist (Kelly Chen), easily the least stable of The Departed's structural pillars, is far more carefully integrated, and even acts as the point where the two mirror-image undercover characters merge and intersect.

Even more pertinent to the presence of the shrink is the fact that the final act of the trilogy is about madness: the loss of sanity made inevitable by a life spent in the shadow between two identities.

In early interviews following the release of The Departed, Scorsese made it clear he hadn't watched Infernal Affairs because he wanted to keep his vision pure. As he has. Indeed, in many respects, The Departed may be the purest Martin Scorsese movie since Goodfellas. But by proceeding in that manner, by steering his interpretation so utterly clear of the original, he has reminded us of the real power of popular genre: the tale is told in the telling.

http://www.thestar.com/artsentertainment/article/182944

[D-love]

Very good Summertime. I really enjoyed it .

D-love
_________________
Tony is Grrrrrrrrrrrrrreate

[summertime]

Hey D-Love,

Glad you enjoyed it