Sujoy Ghosh on Blind: The worst thing is to try and better the original

Adapting Blind from a Korean film of the same name, creative director Sujoy Ghosh says filmmakers must treat source material with respect when remaking it

We’ve come to expect taut thrillers from Sujoy Ghosh. The latest from his stable is the Sonam Kapoor Ahuja-led Blind. Ghosh serves as the creative director and producer on the movie, which is an adaptation of the 2011 Korean film of the same name. The filmmaker is no stranger to adaptations—only four years ago, he gave us Badla (2019), which was based on the Spanish hit, The Invisible Guest (2016).

So, what’s the cardinal rule of adapting well? “I communicate with my audience through my film, like [I do on] a mobile. For me to speak to you on the phone, the line has to connect first. It’s important that my film connects with you. The world we set our story in and the characters must work,” he says.

Ghosh then highlights a mistake that many make when adapting—of trying to be cleverer than the original. “The toughest part is to be faithful to the source material. I am remaking because I love the original, the worst thing I could do is to try and better it. That is a big no-no for me. What is the point of falling in love with one person and marrying someone else? Do not mess with the source material just because you can. If the film could have been bettered, the original writer would have done it. So when you get something good, treat it with respect,” emphasises the filmmaker, who has another adaptation in the pipeline with The Devotion of Suspect X.

Shome Makhija’s directorial venture Blind, which premiered on JioCinema yesterday, sees Kapoor as a visually-impaired woman who witnesses a murder by a serial killer, essayed by Purab Kohli. Then on begins a cat-and-mouse chase between the two. With Korean content making waves around the globe since Parasite (2019), one might assume that Ghosh is jumping on the bandwagon. But he refutes it. 

“The action quotient in Korean films is mind-boggling, but some of those films are devoid of any emotion, and rightfully so. If you are fighting 100 men with one axe, do you have the time to feel any emotion? But if you added a dollop of emotion in that, it could be a neat Indian film. There is a lot of potential in Korean content to be adapted in Indian films, but one will have to work hard to achieve [the right balance].”

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