Destiny brought director to ‘The Namesake’
28 March 2007 | Movies | No Comments
From the beginning, Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake was destined to become a movie. An epic story about two generations of an immigrant Indian family, it combines old and new into a colorful and illuminating story perfect for the big screen. Director Mira Nair saw these striking qualities the minute she began reading the book. By the time the last page was turned, she knew it was a story she was destined to direct.
"The novel spans 30 years and takes place both in Calcutta, where I grew up, and contemporary Manhattan, where I now live," Nair said. "I've walked all of these streets. For the first time, I felt I was born to make a film." Yes, Nair may live in New York and work in Hollywood but she's never forgotten her roots in India. When she first read The Namesake, she was in deep mourning for an old friend who had passed away and who had been buried in a country not her own. Nair immediately related to Lahiri's story of change, conflict and grief.
Within two weeks of reading the novel, Nair had secured the rights and eight months later was shooting the movie. The first day of filming featured the movie's heroine dressed in sari and light shawl dragging a laundry cart through snowy New York streets. It was a scene close to Nair's own experience as a student at Harvard. …
Nair, who lives in New York City with her professor husband Mahmood Mamdani and 15-year-old son Zohran, comes from a middle-class Punjabi background; she grew up in a town south of Calcutta with one movie theater. Bollywood films were the craze, but she didn't pay much attention to them. "I really didn't think cinema was something to be taken seriously," she admitted. Even the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray meant nothing to her until she was a student at Harvard, where she first saw "The Apu Trilogy," a long-held classic of world cinema. It was also at Harvard where she discovered her talent for cinema-verite documentary filmmaking and embarked on a successful career with films such as "India Cabaret." ….read more
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