Martin Scorsese recently arrived back in the US after a long European trip following the completion of the shoot for his upcoming gangster flick The Departed, a remake of Infernal Affairs, directed by Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak. 

Infernal is HK's fifth highest grossing film of the past two decades, having taken HK$55,063,646 at the local BO.

The question many are asking is: will The Departed merely be a bland Americanization riding the wave of popularity of an idiosyncratically HK production? Will Scorsese's remake overshadow the achievements of this 'fragrant harbour'?

Because Martin Scorsese is helming the project many in the West are willing to see this as a stand-alone instance of a film artist remaking a movie from a culture whose cinematic heritage he admires, rather than as part of a larger trend involving Hollywood's aggressive push into the HK marketplace.

Chris Doyle, cinematographer for such quintessentially HK films as Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, feels strongly about the Americans appropriating HK movies and keeping every aspect of them except their HK identity.

He said, "I find it disappointing, if not depressing, to see someone of the integrity and scholarship of Marty apparently not knowing or caring where the original originates from, which I find insulting to our integrity and efforts, our energy and perseverance..." He continued: "to have something fall into one's lap because one is supposedly competent in a certain kind of filmmaking is exactly why accountants are making non-subtitled versions of what we do."

What then is the responsibility of filmmakers such as Scorsese in preserving national cinemas, such as HK's?

Derek Elley, Senior Film Critic, Intl. at trade journal Variety, told me that he doesn't "think a remake need have any loyalty to the original, especially if it's in a different culture. Industries remake films, either credited or uncredited, the whole time, and HK has probably 'remade' far more US  films than the other way round! And they remade them as totally HK films."

HK cinematic culture might be plundered by US studios trying to alchemically transform these movies into American gold, but the originals continue to fascinate. For many in the West, HK cinema is still a misty horizon over which strange and fascinating things float and which, though integrated into non-Asian cultures, never quite loses the exotic flavour of its origins.

The Departed is currently scheduled for US release in November 2006.

(hkfilmart December 16, 2005)