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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
MIRA NAIR
by Peter Sobczynski

September 6, 2004

Best known for "Salaam Bombay", her 1987 feature-film debut, and ""Monsoon Wedding", her surprise 2002 hit, Indian filmmaker Mira Nair has carved out an intriguing career by never doing the same thing twice (her other films include "Mississippi Masala", "Kama Sutra" and the HBO movie "Hysterical Blindness") while showing an artistic fondness for depicting both the dynamics of a family unit and the treatment of outsiders in a closed-off community. Her latest film is "Vanity Fair", an adaptation of the classic William Makepeace Thackeray novel about the exploits of Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon), a determined social-climber keen to improve her lot in life by any means necessary. Recently, Nair (currently rumored to be the choice to direct the fifth Harry Potter film) sat down to discuss her career, "Vanity Fair" and the irony of being an Indian directing a film about the British class system.

THE INTERVIEW

The films that you have done to date have covered a wide variety of subjects and time periods. Do you see any common thematic link between all of them?

I don’t like to really repeat myself in terms of making films, but I do see the sensibilities being fairly common in them-I like to think that my films are crackling with life and are as dense and complicated as life is. I don’t like to do things that I have done before-what is the point? Life is short and every time I make a film, I am taking time away from other things that I want to do. I always want to stretch myself whenever I make a film. However, I am always inspired by marginal people-people who are considered to be marginal and who are not quite in the bosom of their world. I guess that could be a theme.

You also show a concern and interest throughout your film in family dynamics, although in "Vanity Fair", the orphaned heroine has no family of her own and the family units that we see are fairly monstrous.

I think we all long for a connection with family, whether it is an unconventional one or what we normally think of as a family. The need for human beings to feel like a part of their universe is a basic part of our being. In "Monsoon Wedding", there was a sort of direct tribute to what I hold dear-I had lost two very dear friends suddenly in a plane crash and it made me think about mortality and why and how life is so short and what I would want to celebrate before I wasn’t here anymore. That was what led to "Monsoon Wedding".

How did "Vanity Fair" come about for you? Was this something you had been developing or were you brought into it later?

It was a wonderful coincidence. Focus Features, who had been developing the script for years, had had a big success with "Monsoon Wedding". When it kept playing on and on in theaters, they asked me if I would like to do "Vanity Fair", hardly knowing that it was one of my favorite novels since I was sixteen-I went to an Irish-Catholic boarding school that was steeped in English literature and "Vanity Fair" was what I read under the covers at night. It is one of those novels that I revisit every couple of years because it has lessons of all sorts and because it is just such a romp to read. When they offered it to me, they did not know this backstory that I had with it and I said yes because it would be a privilege to do it.

This is a fairly standard question for anyone adapting a novel of the period that "Vanity Fair" comes from, but for you, what is the contemporary relevance of the story?

The fact that all of us, as human beings, aspire for something that we cannot get and pine for more and the question of which of us is happy and whether those who reach their desires are content-those are the questions that Thackeray asked and those are the questions that are completely relevant today and in the future. Also, I think the character of Becky is as modern and timeless as they come. Today she would be running a bank and would be like any one of us making her way in the world. In those days, unlike a Jane Austen heroine who just sits around all day waiting for someone to propose to her, she was going to get up and do her thing. I think that is why I loved her so much and why I never forgot about her-she had to make her way alone and there is no one as hostile and territorial about class than the English and to traverse that route is not a pretty thing. She found a way to do it-whether it was right or wrong, she did it. That is a modern character and not someone restricted to one time period.

One of the interesting additions to the story is the way that bits of Indian culture are deployed throughout-especially interesting since the original book was written and set during a time when the British rule of India was at it height. In a way, the way that the British upper-class regard and treat Becky is roughly parallel to their attitudes towards the Indians. How did this particular addition come about?

It includes Thackeray as well. For me, one of the strong parts of the novel was the relationship that Thackeray described between the colonies and the empire. The fact is that at this time, 1815 and on, that England was beginning to feel the first flush of wealth from the colonies, especially India-the rape of India, as I call it. The middle-classes were getting fatter and richer from the money coming from over there and becoming part of the aristocracy simply because they now had the money to join the aristocracy. That was the milieu that Thackeray had based "Vanity Fair" on-that is why he called it "Vanity Fair". If you read the novel, he writes and describes the details of what things were coming in and the influence of the colonies at home. That was something I really wanted to stress-especially being from there. It allowed me to not make it a stuffy-frock period movie, a comedy of manners just set in a drawing room. I just wanted to explode it out of that and make it feel like a part of that time.

Did that approach-avoiding the typical trappings of the costume-drama genre-ever cause concern with the producers?

I think everyone was hugely energized by it and not too concerned. I didn’t have to bring anyone over to my side. I had to do a fair amount of convincing to get the money to go over to India. Originally, we started by trying to recreate India in England, but by the end of the movie, the studio was dazzled enough by the film that they let me go to India and get the exteriors. People ask if it is hard to be a woman director in Hollywood and the beauty of it is that I have always made my own kind of films marked with my own sensibility and when people come and ask me to make films for them, they know and want that sensibility.

With the casting of Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp, "Vanity Fair" marks the first time that you have worked with a top-level Hollywood star at the peak of their powers-you worked with Denzel Washington on "Mississippi Masala", but that was when he was still emerging. What was that experience like for you as a filmmaker?

Well, I’ve worked with people like Uma Thurman and other big actors, but Reese is the first at the top of her career. It was extraordinary. We had a relationship even before "Vanity Fair"-she loved my films and had asked me to direct her in a couple of her other films, the content of which didn’t appeal to me and so I didn’t do them. We had a friendship and when I was offered this film, she was the first and only person that I thought of for Becky Sharp. The whole process of making it has been one of great trust and intimacy. I asked her to do things that she had never done before and she loved doing them. It is wonderful to work with someone who takes you further-that goes for both of us.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
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