Director Mira Nair's latest film The Namesake is her most personal film to date, linking Calcutta and New York in a story about love, loss and family.
The materialization of The Namesake, the book by Pulitzer-prize winning novellist Jhumpa Lahiri, into The Namesake, the Mira Nair film starring Kal Penn, Tabu and Irrfan Khan, seemed to be determined by a series of coincidental events that brought the eventual collaborators together for this special, cross-cultural project.
Director Mira Nair had found a story that spoke to her. Towards the end of production of her last film, Vanity Fair, the director had suffered a devastating, personal loss that left her in a state of vulnerability. On a plane ride to India, she picked up The Namesake and read it all in one sitting, finding solace in the writer's words that elegantly captured her state of mind as well as her own journey as an Indian American immigrant. As soon as Nair landed, she knew she wanted to make the novel into a film. She called to see if the rights to make it into a film had already been bought. When she found out it hadn't, she made the purchase on the spot.
Somewhere not so far away, John Cho was chastizing his Harold and Kumar costar for not having read Jhumpa Lahiri's book yet. Kal Penn immediately read it, loved it, and the pair even ruminated about getting the rights to the novel themselves. They were happy to find that Nair had beat them to it. Nair was a direct inspiration for Kal Penn's decision to become an actor when he was younger. This, coupled with his intense reaction to the book, fueled him to write an impassioned letter to her, asking for a chance to audition for the lead role. He detailed her influence on his life -- seeing Mississippi Masala at 12 years old had made him realize that people that looked like him could act in films -- and his visceral connection to the character of Gogol -- so much that as he was traveling as an actor, when he wanted to anonymously check into hotels, he'd use "Gogol Ganguli" as his pseudonym.
Although she had already cast the role of Gogol, Nair asked him to come meet her. It helped that Nair's thirteen-year-old son was a huge Harold and Kumar fan. Despite being more known for his comedic talents, Penn managed to impress and eventually was given the part of Gogol. To round out the Ganguli family, Nair cast Irrfan Khan as Ashoke, Tabu as Ashima, and Sahira Nair as Gogol's younger sister Sonia. As Gogol's love interests, Jacinda Barrett plays Maxine, and Zulieka Robinson plays Moushumi.
Mira Nair has been an inspiration for many filmmakers ever since she made her first feature film, 1998's Salaam Bombay!, which won her a Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Since then, she gave Denzel Washington his first major role in 1991's Mississippi Masala, enchanted audiences with 1991's Monsoon Wedding, and recently contributed to the Avahan India AIDS Jaago Initiative (backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), as she and several well-known Indian filmmakers -- such as Vishal Bhardwaj, Farhan Akhtar, and Santosh Sivan -- made a collection of short films to help bring about awareness to AIDS in India. In addition to her numerous projects in the works, Nair has also opened a film school in Kampala, Uganda, with the goal of training South Asian and East African students so they could learn to share their stories by making films.
APA asks Mira Nair about her motivation for making The Namesake, her illustration of Calcutta and New York through music, and her next production starring Amitabh Bachchan and Johnny Depp. --Ada Tseng
Interview with Mira Nair
March 5, 2007
Beverly Hills, California
Interview by Ada Tseng
Video edit by Oliver Chien
Asia Pacific Arts: When you were planning to make this film, were there moments in the novel that you could immediately visualize, in terms of shooting it for the screen?
Mira Nair: Well, I first wanted to make the film because of the shock of recognition, having lost a parent in a country that was not my home. So first it was understanding what that lost feels like, what that melancholy is that you live with forever after that. But then it was uncannily the road that I had myself traveled when I had left from Calcutta when I was 18, 19 to come to New York City, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years. So I felt like I was definitely born to make this book into a film, and I definitely had a sense of clarity about what I would do -- how I wanted it to be a story about parents and children, and very much about that seasaw that we all will experience one day.
APA: The music in The Namesake is so varied, from traditional Indian music to hip hop [in the scene when Gogol shaves his head], can you talk a little bit about your musical choices in the film?
Mira Nair: Well, because this is a story that goes across thirty years and links Bengal, which is East India, which has a fantastic musical tradition of both folk music and boatman songs as well as classical Indian music, with today’s New York, which is a very exciting and confident time for the South Asian sound. And it was an interesting marriage of old and new, so I had a chance with this film to use music that covered that gamut, as well as you know, hip hop and ‘60s Bengali music and Bollywood love songs that had been remixed by new South Asian singers.
And I also went to Nitin Sawhney, who’s a really cutting edge musician in London, a British Asian musician with a great sound, to make the orchestral score so that this music is a modern look at this blend of India and today. So the music is something is something that I work on very carefully. We have a soundtrack that’s coming as well. Monsoon Wedding was a very successful soundtrack and I love the idea that people have an arm of my films that they can enjoy again and again.
APA: Within the past few years, many films by Indian Americans have emerged onto the Asian American festival scene. How do you feel like you fit into that scene, and how is it different than when you were first starting to make films here?
Mira Nair: Well, I feel like I’m the granddaddy of that scene [laughs]. In the sense that I started maybe 25 years ago. My first film Salaam Bombay was I think the first Indian film to get distribution all over the world. Even I didn’t know that it would be possible at that time. I think it’s important that we put ourselves on screen and put our stories onscreen but I always think it’s vital to do it as excellently as possible. And that’s what I try to do.
APA: Can you tell us a little bit about the film you're working on now: action/adventure, Amitabh Bachchan, Johnny Depp, and five continents?
Mira Nair: Sure, the next film I’m making is called Shantaram, which is another monumental book about a heroin addict who escapes from prison in Australia and comes to India in the ‘80s. He’s mistaken for a doctor in the slum and he chooses to live there because he can preserve his anonymity, and he meets a number of people who lead him into the underworld of Bombay who eventually teach him what honor is, and how then he achieves it for himself. Shantaram is the name they give him, which is a Hindi word that means “man of peace,” and Shantaram is played by Johnny Depp, who is such a remarkable actor and someone who combines this fluidity of East and West so beautifully. And I’ve asked Amitabh Bachchan to play his father figure in the film called Kader Bhai, and I think it’s going to be an extraordinary meeting of two extraordinary actors in a story that is really a un-put-down-able book, and, really, a spiritual action film.
APA's commentary on Fox Searchlight's trailers for The Namesake
APA's interview with Kal Penn
APA's review of The Namesake