{"id":359,"date":"2004-09-09T07:58:30","date_gmt":"2004-09-09T12:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=359"},"modified":"2005-05-13T03:13:01","modified_gmt":"2005-05-13T08:13:01","slug":"mira_nair_at_wo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2004\/09\/09\/mira_nair_at_wo\/","title":{"rendered":"Mira Nair at work on ‘The Namesake’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time Asia<\/i> runs an interesting profile<\/a> on Mira Nair (also see Sajit’s post<\/a>):<\/p>\n\n

\nNair was also, she claims, an unwanted child\u00c2\u2014or, as she puts it, a “contraceptual blunder.” In 1957 the Indian government was worried about its exploding population, and her father, a senior bureaucrat, had sworn to limit the family to the two sons they already had. He sent his wife Praveen to a clinic for an abortion, but she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it…\n\n

\n\n…Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love<\/i> was universally skewered, and even Nair disowned it as an “aberration.” (Time)<\/i><\/blockquote>\n\n

As Amardeep Singh has fisked in far greater detail<\/a>, some reviewers have complained about the desi influences in Vanity Fair:<\/i><\/p>\n\n

The buzz is all about how Nair has played up Thackeray’s Indian influences\u00c2\u2014he was born in Calcutta\u00c2\u2014including a Bollywood dance number and an ending shot in the Rajasthani fort town of Jodhpur. The New York Times<\/i> griped about the “outlandish” sight of Witherspoon doing a “grinding Indian-flavored hoochy-cooch, worthy of Britney Spears,” saying it seemed “shoehorned in from another movie.” (Time)<\/i><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nair defended her colonialism-centric angle<\/a> as a legitimate, innovative interpretation:<\/p>\n\n

The basis of what I loved and which I thought Thackeray plumed so acutely and beautifully was the relationship between the colony and the empire. Thackeray himself was born in Calcutta and came to England, and I always saw him and his writing as a sort of satiric look at his own society; that he was the ultimate insider\/outsider and I think it was in that realm and that vein that he created his great heroine, Becky Sharp… (Metro)<\/i><\/blockquote>\n\n

Next up for Nair is a film version of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake<\/i> and, following in the footsteps of Bombay Dreams,<\/i> bringing Monsoon Wedding<\/i> to Broadway at the end of ’05:<\/p>\n\n

She’s working on adaptations of The Impressionist<\/i> by Hari Kunzru, The Namesake<\/i> by Pulitzer winner Jhumpha Lahiri and Tony Kushner’s play Homebody\/Kabul.<\/i> She’s setting up the International Behenji Brigade, a Bombay production house with the backing to make three low-budget Asian movies… transforming Monsoon Wedding<\/i> into a $14 million musical, complete with a wedding tent that Nair plans to assemble over the audience during each performance. (Time)<\/i><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time Asia runs an interesting profile on Mira Nair (also see Sajit’s post): Nair was also, she claims, an unwanted child\u00c2\u2014or, as she puts it, a “contraceptual blunder.” In 1957 the Indian government was worried about its exploding population, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}