Mix of Support and Brickbats for ‘Newton’ for “Inspiration” Charge

Will the negative buzz around ‘Newton’ hurt its chances at the Oscars?

Rajkummar Rao in Newton.

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap came out in support of Newton on Twitter after the film got wrapped up in a controversy over its originality. After being hailed by critics as an outstanding effort last week, the Rajkummar Rao film was soon facing allegations of having been inspired by the Iranian film Secret Ballot (2001).

Responding to the reports, Kashyap backed Amit Masurkar’s Newton with two tweets:

While most actors, filmmakers and critics chose to remain silent about the charges of similarities between Newton and Secret Ballot, senior film journalist and filmmaker Khalid Mohamed chose to withdraw his 4 star review after the news broke. Khalid said that “Newton is too close to comfort to Iran’s Secret Ballot”.

Filmmaker Jaideep Varma in his Facebook post while comparing both films said:

<i>Secret Ballot</i> is much more minimalistic and meditative compared to <i>Newton</i> and while their basic premise is similar, the rest of them go to very different places. The similarity between certain characters or rather characteristics in certain people is actually very logical within the context of their respective trajectories. Even if these similarities take away the sheen somewhat from <i>Newton</i>’s “original” status (and people who say things like “there are no original stories” or “how the story is told is more important than the story” are sadly very ignorant about both storytelling and originality, and disrespectful to those who constantly strive for it, not that they give a shit about that), it cannot be denied that both films have very different souls.

Jaideep Varma (Facebook)

In the midst of all this, The Hindu got in touch with one of the producers of Secret Ballot, Marco Mueller, for his take on the entire issue. Mueller responded by saying that he has never met the director of Newton and nor did he read any treatment or script of Newton, he hasn’t seen the film either. He also added that “several filmmaker friends liked it a lot, so am sure Amit is a very decent director,” before ending by wishing Newton the very best at the Academy Awards.

Now this means that Newton will not face any trouble from the makers of Secret Ballot. But could all the buzz around it not being original hurt its chances at the Academy Awards?

According to the Entertainment Editor of Eastern Eye, it could.

The Academy has a very stringent list of rules and regulations for the submission of films to be considered for the Oscars. It also has a history of disqualifying the John Wayne film Hondo in 1954 after it was nominated for Best Story, when it was found that the script of the film was based on a short story and not an original work.

While Newton is not in a similar situation, the negative buzz around the film has certainly dampened some spirits.