‘Don’: How Do You Remake a Film Ahead of its Time?

Chandra Barot, on the surface, seemed like any diaspora kid. He grew up in a Gujarati family in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. But his life would take a more unexpected turn. After visiting his sister, who was a singer in Bombay, he got roped in by none other than actor-director Manoj Kumar (yes, the very same whose Shah Rukh Khan’s character in Om Shanti Om pretends to impersonate) to become an assistant director. And, then, a perfect storm happened. A cameraman named Nariman Irani, who often worked with Kumar, had lost a significant sum (about $400,000 in today’s dollars) in making a film. The only way out, Barot and others suggested, was to make another one. They went to Salim-Javed, the foremost hit screenwriters at the time, and asked for any material. What they got was a script that everyone else had rejected. Beggars can’t be choosers, so they said yes, and Barot got roped in to direct.

What makes Don (1978) singular is that nothing after it ever came close. This was partly due to fate: producer Nariman Irani died before the picture finished and Barot never made another Hindi action film. And it was also partly due to timing: superstar Amitabh Bachchan was at his peak and Zeenat Aman, who had become the first South Asian to win Miss Asia Pacific in 1970, was as well. Barot was then only 38 or 39, embarking on a film with a different sensibility than those who had grown up in Bombay. Decades later, when Javed Akhtar’s son, Farhan Akhtar, chose to remake it, it seemed obvious. The result is a story that has most dialogue unchanged, a testament to how far ahead of its time the original was. As director Farhan Akhtar said in 2006, “There is nothing wrong with the original, it is fantastic the way it is, and that is exactly why I am so excited to remake it.”