Sunday, September 12, 2004
Mira Nair to direct adaptation of "The Namesake"
Mira Nair's next project after "Vanity Fair" is a movie adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake". The Chronicle story also talks a little bit about Nair's interpretation of Thackeray's classic from a post-colonial perspective.
"The chief character in 'Vanity Fair' is really the early 19th century world, which was getting fattened on the plunder of the colonies, especially in India," Nair says. "The middle classes were all getting rich on the spoils from India and the colonies, and that's what gave them the money of aristocracy, but not the status and the title. So everybody wanted something they could not have. India is a total character in this movie. The myth of India. The symbol of India. The fact that Jos Sedley, a completely ordinary buffoon in England, can become a maharaja in India. That was the empire. It's within the realm of 'Vanity Fair' that I can show you my winking. All the lines I chose -- like 'Let him marry Becky; better her than a black Mrs. Sedley and a dozen mahogany grandchildren.' These aren't lines we invented. These are Thackeray's incredibly acute reading of his own society."
I haven't read "The Namesake" yet (it is definitely on my readng list), but I thought Jhumpa's "Interpreter of Maladies" was one of the most acutely observed set of stories about Indians in America. I was lucky enough to catch Jhumpa when she was in the Bay Area and get an autographed copy of "The Namesake". Here is looking forward to some good reading.
"The chief character in 'Vanity Fair' is really the early 19th century world, which was getting fattened on the plunder of the colonies, especially in India," Nair says. "The middle classes were all getting rich on the spoils from India and the colonies, and that's what gave them the money of aristocracy, but not the status and the title. So everybody wanted something they could not have. India is a total character in this movie. The myth of India. The symbol of India. The fact that Jos Sedley, a completely ordinary buffoon in England, can become a maharaja in India. That was the empire. It's within the realm of 'Vanity Fair' that I can show you my winking. All the lines I chose -- like 'Let him marry Becky; better her than a black Mrs. Sedley and a dozen mahogany grandchildren.' These aren't lines we invented. These are Thackeray's incredibly acute reading of his own society."
I haven't read "The Namesake" yet (it is definitely on my readng list), but I thought Jhumpa's "Interpreter of Maladies" was one of the most acutely observed set of stories about Indians in America. I was lucky enough to catch Jhumpa when she was in the Bay Area and get an autographed copy of "The Namesake". Here is looking forward to some good reading.
