There are numerous reasons to be against a new film version of Fiddler on the Roof. Many can be found on the JC’s Facebook page where Fiddler fans have expressed outrage by using the moral authority of multiple punctuation.
“Why???”, cried one. “No!!!” forbade another and “Why!!!” reinforced a third, reacting to the prospect of a remake nearly 50 years after it was first adapted for screen, and 56 since it first became a Broadway musical.
Others explained their indignation by expressing their understandable love for Topol. “There is only one” pointed out a fan with another slightly cryptically declaring “That’s not Topol!” which may be a reference to Mandy Patinkin reportedly being lined up for the role of Tevye.
But the most compelling argument against Fiddler 2.0 might be the posting that asked “What’s wrong with the first one?” This is a question that misunderstands the point of remaking.
I was lucky enough to meet up with Tony Kushner for an interview when he was in London last year while on a whirlwind visit to see his musical Caroline, Or Change. The next day the Pulitzer-winning creator of Angels in America would fly back to the US to continue work on his script for Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming new version of West Side Story. Kushner has become the director’s go-to screenwriter after their movie Munich about a conflicted Mossad agent. But neither of them is making their new West Side Story because they thought something was wrong with the first filmed version of Bernstein and Sondheim’s musical.
More to the point, as we sat one morning in the otherwise empty auditorium of London’s Playhouse Theatre where Caroline was playing at the time, the way Kushner talked about his latest film could easily be applied to a new Fiddler.
“You know, I think there is this great work of art that is itself a remake of a great work of art”, he said of West Side Story which was itself based on Romeo and Juliet. He could just as easily have been talking about Fiddler which was based on Sholem Aleichem’s stories.
“Usually you think of a film being made just once,”continued Kushner. “But this is a classic of western theatrical literature and music. Some of the issues of ethnicity and race and [questions about] who is on the inside and who is outside; who has ownership of a society and a culture are very much in the forefront of everybody’s thinking now.”
His point is that while many lovers of the original West Side Story movie may balk at a new version, remaking a classic is not a question of fixing something wrong with the original but “digging in” to the material and “finding what moves and excites that is new.”
Of course, Spielberg and Kushner’s new version may be dreck compared to the first when it eventually hits screens. But I doubt it. Whenever the pandemic subsides enough for it to be released in cinemas it will more likely resonate with today’s world as much as it does with the period in which it is set.
Take the horrible death of George Floyd. Derek Chauvin is the white Minneapolis cop charged with murdering Floyd by kneeling on his neck for over eight minutes. I can imagine an audience watching a new West Side Story with the memory of Floyd’s slow death still fresh in their minds and finding that the film chimes with today’s racial politics more powerfully than the original ever could.
It wouldn’t be a massive leap to see the likes of Chauvin, the cop who now embodies racist police brutality, as a descendent of what Kushner describes “the street trash of disaster children who had disaster children, otherwise known as the Jets. “
Imagine then how a new Fiddler on the Roof might resonate with today’s crises; how it might enlighten new audiences about antisemitism and migration in a way that the brilliant original simply no longer can.
Then of course there is one of the best scores ever to enjoy anew.
I think I might post: “Can’t wait!!!!” on the JC’s Facebook page.
