Mira Nair writes in the New York Times Magazine about the chaat-fueled filming of Hysterical Blindness. We apparently share a favorite snack, kachoris from Jersey City’s Little India:
As others tucked into Krispy Kremes, I’d pop the just-made almond kachori in my mouth, no cutlery needed, licking the sour-sweet taste of tamarind chutney off my fingers… Uma [Thurman] would sidle over to me in her ripped Joan Jett T-shirt and blue eye shadow to ask, “Is it samosa time yet?”… I would pop kachoris directly into Juliette Lewis’s rosebud mouth so not to disturb her lipstick. The gaffers and grips would holler across to me, “Did my Indian balls come in?” Soon the little box of snacks from Rajbhog grew into a stack, and kachoris conquered Krispy Kremes.
hysterical blindness is the worst mira nair movie I ever saw.. cannot even figure out why she made that sad movie.. wonder how spicy chat and yummy kachoris fueled such a bland bad movie?
Was it worse than Kama Sutra?
It was a billion times better than Kama Sutra. I actually think Hysterical Blindness was pretty good, and I am not a huge fan of Nair’s work. She did a pretty good job of capturing New Jersey desperation.
I only saw a couple of mira nair’s movies. And if I remember the movie right, I liked the theme of the movie “hysterical blindness” (which some of us suffer from repeatedly trusting people, repeatedly imagining that people love us though they really might not love us, repeatedly committing same mistakes in relationships and also the insecurities of single people desperately wanting to settle with someone).
Reasons why I did not like the movie are there were too many wasted scenes in the movie ( bar scenes etc repeated multiple times.,), strange dialogues and poor script, some odd characters in the movie coming and going though they had no real connection with the story, weak plot and scenes, bad uma thurman’s acting, unrealistic overemotional scenes and obsessive behavoir here are there. On the whole when u watch it, u get a feeling that movie was not a well made and why mira nair choose to make that movie. She did not capture hysterical blindness really well and the flow was not natural..
I saw the movie — should I read the book too? 😉
I chewed on the book, definitely better than the film 😉