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WHEN Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair released last month, it was her tenth feature film. Though she has covered a wide range of subjects she seems to be most at home with immigrant or Indian diaspora films because she is able to feel this uprooting and assimilation of other cultures. But even her first feature film Salaam Bombay highlighted one fact — that she is an excellent marketing person. The impact of the film which dealt with Bombay’s (now Mumbai’s) street children and their instinct for survival was phenomenal. Especially in the West which was probably its target audience. A cousin of mine in Canada went gaga over it. "Even if it changes just one person it would have succeeded," she wrote to me. I showed the letter to Nair who was naturally impressed. But she was not able to fulfil the Salaam Bombay promise and her later films lack consistency. Her debut film touched a chord in almost every heart and the developed nations had a good insight into how the other half of the world lived. It had an excellent screenplay by Sooni Taraporewala who has worked with Nair in many of her projects. After Salaam Bombay her next venture was Mississippi Masala which clearly brought out the immigrant feeling through the story of an Indian family moving out from Uganda to the Deep South of the United States. Denzel Washington, then just about starting out, and Sarita Choudhury did a good job and portrayed that mixed feeling about their respective identities. Mississippi Masala was one of the first Indian Diaspora films and today such films have become a genre by themselves. Her next film The Perez Family followed in the
footsteps of Mississippi Masala, the only difference is it dealt
with a Cuban family. It also had an impressive cast of Anjelica Huston,
Marisa Tomei and Chazz Palminteri but I haven’t seen it. May be it
wasn’t released in India at all. But her next film Kamasutra : A Love Story was
an absolute disaster. In the first place the title was a misnomer.
Secondly, she tried in vain to market the Kamasutra factor. Then she
made some very defensive statements when it ran into trouble with the
censor board. Nair was simply quibbling with words. It was obvious that
her marketing ploy failed and her bluff was called. The film, of course,
does little justice either to that Indian classic sex manual or whatever
love story she had in mind. It was two hours of absolute hogwash
apparently meant to titillate. For me it undid the good impression I had
formed of Mira Nair as a filmmaker. The next film I saw of Nair’s was My Own Country,
a moving story of an immigrant doctor, Abraham Verghese, and his fight
against AIDS in Africa. It was a sensitively made film which gave AIDS
the importance it so deserves but it also delved into the immigrant
issue which by now had become synonymous with Nair. Then came Monsoon Wedding, and what a delightful entertainer
it was. Maybe Nair was at her best in capturing the Delhi-Punjabi
culture in all its exuberance. But she didn’t hesitate to take a dig
at non-resident Indians. It was rambustious, fun-filled, and its climax
which blew the lid off the doings of that lecherous uncle had the
viewers in shock, reminding one of that Horace Walpole quote, "life
is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel." |
