Indian-born, New York-based filmmaker Mira Nair has been well-received all over the world. Her first film, "Salaam Bombay!" was nominated for an Oscar and nearly all of her films have been decorated with awards from Venice and Cannes to the Golden Globes. Nair has displayed an incredible sensitivity in a broad range of films, from "Monsoon Wedding" to her recent adaptation of "Vanity Fair." Although often classified as a "crossover" filmmaker, Nair's treatment of alienation and humanity has won her a large and diverse audience across the globe.
Phoenix: How involved was Jhumpa Lahiri in the production of the film?
Mira Nair: Not really involved. I shared with her the shooting script just to see if she had any objections or any suggestions, so there was a lot of interaction like that. And also, [I] spent a weekend with her parents early on. She's channeled her mom for Ashima, for sure. So their house in Rhode Island was definitely very important in what we were trying to recreate.
Similarly, this is her story, and I actually ended up casting Jhumpa, her baby, as baby Sonia, and her parents and her whole extended family is the Bengali family of Bengali life in New York, and her [family] in Calcutta are the Calcutta family.
Phoenix: What really strikes you about making movies based on novels, and do you think it's more difficult than starting with an original script?
MN: I have to say that I really enjoy original screenplays. It's not that I look at novels to look for movies. But this thing, "The Namesake," I happened to read it arbitrarily on the plane. Really, I had already contracted to do two movies that were in the works, financed and everything. But when I read "The Namesake" I was in this period of terrible mourning. I had just lost my mother-in-law who was like a mother to me. I had never encountered the death of someone I loved in a country that was not fully home, for her, especially.
So I happened to read this novel in that period of mourning and felt like a bolt, like there was someone out there who completely understood what I was going through. It was like a fever from that point on. I knew I had to make this story.
Phoenix: You make very diverse movies. What inspires you?
MN: I hate to repeat myself, and I like the adrenaline of trying something different for myself. Life is short and making movies is hard and very obsessive, so I like to stretch every time in a different direction and not to get pigeonholed. For me, once I invest in something I go all out to try and present its humanity. But I do like to surprise myself, even, each time.
Phoenix: The script goes over a really long period of time, was it daunting at first to have to cover the family life for so long?
MN: You know, once I put my mind to something, I don't get daunted. But any adaptation is about sifting, and I knew early on that I was interested in the adults' love story. The two pillars for me were Ashoke and Ashima, and then Gogol, as opposed to the book, which begins with the parents and then becomes entirely about Gogol. Once I decided on that, then it was a balancing act of how to keep the parents alive and provide the counterpoint of Gogol and then Gogol's story also alive.
Phoenix: It was probably difficult for the actors to be playing a teenager in one scene and then be playing an adult. Did they have difficulty with the transitions? Especially Tabu (who plays Ashima Ganguli), who's only about seven years older than Kal Penn.
MN: She's an amazing actress, and she has seen life through her own eyes. And that's something that I can't direct. Either you have seen the world or you haven't, and that was the big reason that I cast her. Because I didn't want some latex horror make-up job, I wanted it to be from the inside. And of course, the make-up is just exquisite, but the internalization is what matters.
Phoenix: Were there any reservations about working with Kal Penn, in that his other major role was in "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle"?
MN: That's why I put the stoner scene in! Kal was brought to my attention and basically cast because of my 15-year-old who thinks that he is God. I literally didn't know of his existence, but his best friend Sam Walker took me by the hand and led me to Kal. And I said, "This guy is a comic goof!" And Kal wrote to me saying that he'd become an actor because of me, because when he was 8 he saw "Mississippi Masala" in a New Jersey mall, and he figured that people on screen could look like him.
So I said, "Fly yourself in," and he did, and his audition was the one that blew me away. It's interesting what's happening now as the movie is being seen as his big breakthrough and revelation. He brought in an urgency, a hunger and an authenticity to Gogol. He lives Gogol's life!
Phoenix: What do you think about crossover cinema? I know this term is used a lot, especially in Indian Press, about such movies. Do you think such cinema even exists, and would you label your movies "crossover cinema"?
MN: You know, my work is to make films and everyone else's work is to make these labels. I guess I am, somehow, some kind of symbol of "crossover cinema" because my films have crossed over into the mainstream in a country like this one or even in India where they are totally alternative to Bollywood cinema, but they run for weeks. The universality of "The Namesake" is that millions of us have left one place for another,.
Phoenix: How was working on a film internationally between two different locations?
MN: You know, it's what I've done all my life. And also, these two cities, these two situations, are like the back of my hand. I love orchestrating the chaos of an Indian street. And I also realized long ago that one has to pay for the chaos of an American street, in the sense that everything has to be literally paid for.
Phoenix: Was it difficult to get permission to shoot at the Taj Mahal?
MN: Believe me, I used to camp out at this office called the Archaeological Survey of India in the old days, like with "Kama Sutra," which was filmed in a temple. India has changed in that respect. It was not a big deal. Of course, it was because it was me, to some extent, and now I am kind of respectable there. We had to shoot in one day, the whole scene, which is a big scene. So that was a challenge, but [it wasn't] to get the permission.
Phoenix: How do you feel about the popularity of Bollywood movies in the West, and how do you feel that it impacts the reception of serious South Asian cinema?
MN: The popularity of Bollywood is very recent, and I think it's great because it's a very strong cinematic vocabulary that is entirely and completely different from the Western one, which I like. But I've been around for 20 years, so it's not like having Bollywood become suddenly popular impacts how my films are received, or films like mine. I don't think one has much to do with the other, except that sometimes the Western critics who don't understand about Bollywood confuse mine. They don't know what it is to be Bollywood.
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