Remake: The KEEP (1983)

Michael Mann, Gandolf the prematurely Grayed, that guy you always mistake for a Carradine, Gabriel Byrne and not-the-girl-from-Flashdance. It ain't getting a Criterion release, so we must remake it now, here in 2022. Choose

director,

actors,

composer,

your preferred gaffer (and be sure to tell the rest of us what they do),

and feel free to shape the tale a bit (e.g., set it Ukraine during the Russian invasion or WWI).

Director: Chris Nolan

Composer: Brian Tyler

Glaeken: Travis Fimmel

Dr. Cuza: Stellan Skarsgard

Woerman: Oscar Isaac

Eva Cusa: Rooney Mara

Kaemffer: Bradley Cooper

Father Fonescu: Mark Rylance

Willem Dafoe: Molassar

Gaffer: Someone in the industry, and kick up a "best boy" while you're at it.

Oh yeah, I recall this one....pre-Miami Vice Michael Mann, the early 80's at their Tangerine Dream droning best. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I do recall that the whole movie was pervaded with a very strange, morbid atmosphere. It had toxic horror of the purely human kind, like a small village, nazis, Jews in mortal peril, and a subterranean monster that did't really care about human affairs at all, except to the extent that the nazis get in its way and unlock it, in spite of being warned to NOT do that; their hubris is their doom. In that respect, it was a monster in the Lovecraft mold.

If anybody was going to remake this, it should be Chris Nolan, but I think that almost any decent cast of people with a lot of Mitteleuropa WW II angst and who could to a lot of German soldier yelling as nazis, could do the roles. I recall that the best thing about the movie (have not seen it for a long time) was that it was so gloomy and incomprehensible and completely dark and evil. It's very Lovecraftian but not Lovecraft. Lovecraft was mainly too early to do nazis, but if had been writing a few years later, it would have been like The Keep.

The nazis especially seemed to be dawning in their awareness that they were fated to be dragged off into hell.

Maybe it's just my dislike for Nolan, but I don't see The Keep being a good fit for him. Like, not at all. Maybe someone like Brandon Cronenberg or Edgar Wright could work, haven't really given this too much consideration.

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Mann was very good at creating a feeling of atmosphere. His replacement would need to be someone patient, willing to hold a shot and linger.

If we could still trust Ridley Scott to make a Ridley Scott film, maybe? I don't trust Ridley anymore. It's interesting to note, that Tony Scott was aping his brother shamelessly in The Hunger and, at least, managed to create an interesting atmosphere in that film, which shows that the Ridley Scott style can work for a dark brooding sort of thing.

Nolan showed that he's willing to be patient in Dunkirk, but there was something rather sterile about it, I'll admit.

The creeping feeling of dread in Blood Simple and the darkness of their other works makes me think that maybe the Coen Brothers could pull it off. If not Nolan, I'd go the Coens.

I think the third act needs a bit of reworking too.

Considering how well he has so far dealt with the details of period pieces, and how naturally a fit The Keep's sense of paranoia and other worldly strangeness would be for his style, Robert Eggers would be the man for the job.

There is something very harsh and "Kubrickian" in his style. With Mann's there is something day-dreamy and lilting - carrying you off into a dream. Eggers kind of punches you in the face with weird aspect ratios, musical "stabs" and "drones," and scenes that estrange more than invite in. He is kind like a bite of dark chocolate or a cup of Turkish coffee. He would either be perfect for this or quite terrible.

The Witch was completely naturalistic. The Lighthouse is more deliberately cinematic, but even that manages to capture the sea-brine in the teeth experience it is depicting.



Mann is equally adept at naturalism as well as embracing the artificiality of movie making. And The Keep is one of his more cinematic type films.



While no one on earth is ever going to think to make a Keep remake, because not even most Mann fans are particularly keen on it (wrongly so), Eggers is the most natural fit I can think of.

Fair enough. I may fear the choice because it may be "too right" in a way if that makes any sense (e.g., ask for a rare steak from this chef, and it will bleed indeed).

Oh yeah. After The VVitch and The Lighthouse, I'd love to see Eggers do it. Apparently, however, he's absorbed in another Nosferatu remake, which I am eagerly awaiting, but yeah, The Keep is a movie that seems right up his alley with all of its grim, otherworldly, damned feel.

It would be so easy to set this thing in the contemporary Ukraine conflict. Russkies getting hunted by Molasar.

I feel like WW2 would be too contemporary for Eggers (based on guessing his interests from his movies thus far).


I could see him doing some type of remake of Der Golem though (no, I have not actually seen Der Golem, one of my many blindspots).

I can see Eggers doing The Keep, mainly because it's NOT in any real world. It might be WW II, but once the Nazis go into that village, they've entered into some sort of time/space warp, never to emerge. They are damned by who they are and that little village is just the portal to a hell made for them.