The 1966 sci-fi cult classic that Gaspar Noé has always wanted to remake: “I heard someone else is doing it”
When it comes to remakes, it’s easy to think of the kind that Hollywood butchers, like Spike Lee’s infamously terrible version of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy or that disastrous Nicolas Cage interpretation of The Wicker Man.
The issue is, remakes are often made as a lazy way to cash in on pre-existing material, saving a studio the hassle of hiring someone to come up with a completely unique idea – something that we seem to be seeing less and less of in recent years. A remake usually gets people to the cinema, too, whether that be out of familiarity or curiosity. Will the remake be better? Or will it be inexplicably worse?
If a remake is interesting enough, however, taking a completely different approach and bringing a modernised angle, or perhaps providing an alternative perspective from a different character, can often work. It’s one thing to recycle a movie, but to put a completely different spin on it is certainly not a crime. Directors have gotten away with much, much worse.
You’d think that someone as original as Gaspar Noé wouldn’t ever have dreams of remaking a movie, but there’s one he has always been keen on. The Argentinian-born filmmaker makes films that are unmistakably his, most notably finding equal parts acclaim and derision for his 2002 movie Irreversible, a disorienting, nausea-inducing journey through senseless violence, including a ten-minute rape scene – with its thumping score and tilting, fluid camerawork, Irreversible is a difficult watch, but it’s inarguably an artistic feat of filmmaking.
He’d continue to leave his mark on the more experimental side of cinema with the likes of Enter the Void, Climax, and most recently, the avant-garde Lux Æterna, which featured heavy use of epileptic imagery. You might not like his work, but nothing he makes can be called derivative or uninteresting, so it seems unusual that he’d ever want to make a movie that’s not based on one of his original ideas.
Yet, in the Criterion Closet, Noé once picked out Seconds by John Frankenheimer, a neo-noir blend of sci-fi and horror that has since become a cult classic following its release in 1966. Based on the novel by David Ely, Lewis John Carlino’s screenplay explores the story of a man who undergoes extensive surgery that alters his entire appearance – even his vocal cords – allowing him to start a completely new life.
“I love this movie,” Noé said, “I even thought of making a remake one day of Seconds, and I heard someone else is doing it.” While there have been rumours of potential remakes over the years, nothing has ever come to fruition, so perhaps Noé could still remake the movie after all. But should he?
Seconds is a fantastic film, noted for its incredible imagery, like haunting close-ups and disorientating angles, and it’s not hard to see why Noé likes it. It’s shot in black-and-white, though, so perhaps in the Vortex filmmaker’s hands it would get a bright injection of colour?
It seems unlikely that he’ll ever remake Seconds, considering that he hasn’t made a movie in the past five years, but who knows… Noé is a man of many surprises; maybe his own version of Frankenheimer’s movie will appear one day.
