Salman Rushdie on bringing Midnight's Children to the big screen

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Salman Rushdie a Lily Rothman, pubblicata ieri da Time. Salman Rushdie on bringing Midnight’s Children to the big screen:

'Why now, a movie version of Midnight’s Children?

I had actually more or less given up on the idea that there would ever be a film of Midnight’s Children. After all, it’s rather an old book. [Director] Deepa Mehta and I had dinner together in Toronto at the time of the publication of The Enchantress of Florence. We were talking about this and that, and possible collaborations, and discussing other novels of mine that she was interested in. And then suddenly, out of the blue, she asked about Midnight’s Children and did I have the rights. I said I did, and she said, “Can I do that instead?”

You make it sound very easy.

It took 30 years for it to be easy.

Was the plan always for you to write the screenplay?

No. In fact, initially, I said I didn’t want to. I, more or less straightforwardly, refused to do it. I thought I’d written this already. One of the things I’ve learned in the last four or five years is that if Deepa wants something badly enough, in the end she gets it.

She was determined...

She went on and on at me about it. In the end, I agreed to do it for a number of reasons. One, it was the first of my books to be filmed. Given that I loved movies, and here’s a movie being made of my book, probably it’s a good idea to dive in. I thought I might enjoy that, I might learn something from it, that it might be fun. Also, because the novel was written so long ago, I was able to be distant from it in the way that I would need to be. (...)

Were there any scenes you particularly enjoyed writing?

There’s a scene that doesn’t exist in the novel. In the novel, Shiva, Saleem’s alter-ego - who was swapped with him as a baby - never finds out about the baby-swap. In the movie, I thought, if you’re going to do something as Bollywood melodramatic as swapping babies at birth, at some point, the swapped babies have to confront each other. If I’d been sharp enough 30 years ago, I would have included that scene in the novel. (...)

Were you very involved in creative decisions during filming?

The thing I didn’t do is, I didn’t go on the shoot. I thought, I know enough about movies to know only one person directs. I also know that if you’re on a movie set without a very specific job to do, you’re the most annoying person there. And it’s also really boring. But before, and after the shoot, I was quite involved. One of the things I think is quite wonderful in the film is the production design by Dilip Mehta, Deepa’s brother. I showed him a lot of old photographs of my family so that he could get the look of that time right. I made the mistake of telling Deepa that when we were children in my grandparents’ house, one of the things that really scared us was that my grandmother had a very terrifying flock of geese. When I saw the rushes, I realized to my horror that there were the damn geese in the movie!

What was it like the first time you saw a complete version?

The first rough cut was well over four hours long. I felt that it was there, but at that point, you’re in work mode and all you see is what’s wrong. It’s the same when I’m writing a book; if I write a draft of something, when I look at that draft, I’m looking for what’s wrong and how I can fix it. Then there was a moment - Deepa keeps reminding me that I burst into tears at this point, which maybe I did and maybe I didn’t - where we saw a cut, and I felt that everything that had finally come together.

What’s it like seeing the movie with an audience?

That’s been what’s been most interesting to me. Deepa and I have now seen the film, like, 400 times each, and we don’t really need to see it again. But what I do when I sit in screenings is, I watch the audience. We showed it at [the Telluride Film Festival, where it premiered last August], and when the lights came up, there was a gentleman sitting next to me who had tears on his face. I said to him that I was sorry I made him cry - which was a lie, by the way. I was not sorry I made him cry. I was rather pleased I’d made him cry. And he said this sweet thing, he said, “No, don’t be sorry, because these are tears of beauty.” I thought, Can I take that and put it on the poster, please?

And when you’re writing a book you don’t get to see people crying or laughing.

It’s quite true. People are always telling me that they’ve seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever. Other people tell me they see it all the time, but somehow the world is so orchestrated that I never get to see it. So this time, of course, it’s been very delightful to actually be able to watch from the back of the hall'.

Aamir Khan: Time 29 aprile 2013

Il numero del 29 aprile 2013 di Time è dedicato alle cento persone più influenti del pianeta. Il numero prevede sette diverse copertine, una delle quali è dedicata ad Aamir Khan. Aamir rientra nella categoria pionieri, occupa la 48esima posizione ed è introdotto da una breve presentazione firmata da A.R. Rahman:

'About 13 years ago, Aamir Khan, the producer and lead actor of the Bollywood film Lagaan, was sitting outside my studio as I was writing the film’s main choral theme. After he heard it, he came in with moist eyes. “A.R., what a great feeling this is,” he said. “My movie is made now!” I saw a childlike honesty in his eyes. In a world of false diplomacy and evasiveness, Aamir is a straightforward man. A man of his word. His movies are commercial successes - Lagaan was nominated for an Academy Award - but they also display a sense of social responsibility: they tackle important themes, like poverty and education. His TV show, Satyamev Jayate, is part journalism and part talk show, and it confronts India’s deepest social ills, from sexual abuse to caste discrimination. He uses his gifts as a charmer to give his audience the most bitter medicine. Hypnotized, we take it without complaint. That’s Aamir’s magic at work. Satyamev Jayate was not intended to provide solutions but to ask hard questions, the kind society is often reluctant to address. By showing the courage to ask those questions, Aamir has started a movement that will help change the world in which Indians live'.

 

Awaara entra nella Top 100 di Time

Richard Corliss ha aggiornato con venti nuovi titoli la lista dei 100 migliori film selezionati da Time, lista compilata a partire dal 1923, anno di nascita della rivista. Awaara di Raj Kapoor è fra questi. Nella motivazione si legge: 'Raj Kapoor was the great star-auteur of India’s postcolonial golden age of movies - Cary Grant and Cecil B. DeMille in one handsome package. The ’50s films he headlined and directed became huge hits not just in his newly freed homeland but also across the Arab crescent from Indonesia to North Africa. Kapoor, who modeled his screen persona on Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, was 26 when he filmed Awaara (The Tramp). A pompous judge (Kapoor’s father Prithviraj) disowns his wife (all-time Indian cinema mom Leela Chitnis) when some months after being kidnapped she returns pregnant; his baseless suspicion is that the bandit she’s been with is the father. In ignominy and in secret, she bears the judge’s son (Kapoor), who is raised a vagabond and, decades later, goes on trial before the judge. Sensational revelations! As Kapoor sees it, the wellspring of these torrents of guilt is a society divided into Brahmins and outcasts. Beyond the social finger-pointing, Awaara is a glistening showcase for Kapoor and the great India siren Nargis (his lover onscreen and off); it features a sadistic-sexy beach scene and a dream sequence that starts in delirium and revs up to delicious. And of course it’s a musical, whose main song, “Awaara Hoon,” by the famed Shankar-Jaikishan duo, soared to the top of the pop charts in India, the U.S.S.R. and China'.

The 10 greatest movies of the millennium

Il 15 maggio 2012 Time ha pubblicato la lista dei dieci film più grandiosi distribuiti a partire dall'anno 2000. Devdas occupa l'ottava posizione.

The 10 greatest movies of the millennium (thus far), Richard Corliss:

'A year after Moulin Rouge! had its world premiere at Cannes, another visually intoxicating musical opened at the festival, introducing sang-and-danced Bollywood dramas to the international culturati. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s (...) novel inspired at least a half-dozen film versions before this one - in its time, the priciest movie in Indian history (at about $ 10.6 million). The plot, based on a 1917 novel, is good-ol’ family-values propaganda, drenched in luscious masochism: rich-boy Devdas (all-world charismatist Shahrukh Khan) leaves home, abandons his girlfriend (former Miss World Aishwarya Rai) and suffers magnificently while dallying with a prostitute (Madhuri Dixit, a hot number who had danced flamenco on men’s libidos for a decade or so before appearing in this worldly-wise role). The piece is played with such commitment that the tritest plot twists seem worth believing - and dancing to, in nine nifty production numbers. But the fervid emotion is what makes the thing sing. Beyond that, Devdas is a visual ravishment, with sumptuous sets, fabulous frocks and beautiful people to fill them; it has a grandeur the old Hollywood moguls would have loved'.