If
you thought the kitchen was a place only for conjuring up recipes and
dish-washing was a dull routine, think again. This mundane routine
provided the Eureka moment for Gurinder Chadha's latest flick. It was
in her kitchen that Chadha, director of the mega box-office hit Bend It
Like Beckham, drummed up the recipe of marrying a British love story to
a Bollywood narrative with a taut story line, a la Hollywood. And
voila! Bride and Prejudice was born.
This
British director of Indian origin, who forayed into filmmaking with the
critically-acclaimed Bhaji on the Beach (it centres on the experiences
of a group of Asian women from three generations on a day trip to
Blackpool) became a household name internationally with the stupendous
success of Bend It Like Beckham.
Though
soccer is an alien game to the Americans, the tenacity of two girls to
overcome all odds to play the game struck a chord with the audience who
ensured its numero uno box office position. The popular acclaim and
jingling cash registers also caught the eye of Hollywood moguls and
Chadha has been signed to direct a big-budget Hollywood production.
With Bride and Prejudice, which premiered in North America in February,
the filmmaker hopes to consolidate her position among the best. Chadha
will also be producing a film called The Mistress of Spices which her
screenwriter husband Paul Mayeda Berges, a Japanese American, will
direct.
Bride
and Prejudice, which has Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai in a lead
role, is based on the 18th century Jane Austen novel Pride and
Prejudice. Chadha however transplants it to India, infuses the love
story with Bollywood song and dance numbers, and has an American
playing Rai's love interest. So the film takes viewers on a journey
from Amritsar to Los Angeles via England.
On
a whirlwind trip to North America for Bride's release in February, (the
film released in UK and India last October), Chadha had a brief stop
over in Toronto. In a day punctuated with media engagements, Chadha was
using every free moment on the phone, trying to work out the logistics
of getting US visas for Aishwarya Rai's hairdresser and make-up person
as the actress wanted them to accompany her for the film’s premiere.
Chadha
is all praise for the 'beautiful and hardworking' actress and hopes
Bride will be Rai's launch pad in Hollywood. While going great lengths
to explain how the film is different from Bend it Like Beckham, Chadha
however hopes that 'those who saw Bend it Like Beckham may like it
(bride).' She has set out to entice the audience with the masala mix of
Jane Austen's popular novel and Bollywood with an unabashed display of
exaggerated emotions, dance numbers and songs.
She
fends off queries about peppering the film with songs by citing
examples of musicals from Hollywood such as Chicago, Moulin Rouge etc.
'I have grown up watching Hollywood and Bollywood movies in London and
though the western audience may find the Bollywood style different,
they may enjoy it because it is an experience,' she says with her
characteristic crackle.
The
montage of her cross-cultural experiences has undoubtedly shaped
Chadha's filmmaking style. Born in Africa and raised in England with a
few years of India stay thrown in, Chadha grew up in London's Southhall
on a staple of Hindi movies and parents' sermons on 'how good Indian
girls behave' even as she was exposed to cross cultural influences at
school and university. She absorbed all these influences — within and
outside the home — acquiring multiple identities in the process and
chartering her own course.
So,
instead of devoting herself to mastering the culinary art as her mother
hoped or becoming a doctor that her father wished her to be, she opted
for broadcast journalism. And though the Bollywood influence does
permeate her filmmaking, her films are not an imitation of its fare. As
she remarked about Bride and Prejudice, which had western actors like
Martin Henderson, Naveen Andrews and Daniel Gillis, dancing to Hindi
songs, 'everything about this movie is a blend of East and West. I
can't take pure Bollywood and I can't do pure Hollywood. I have to
combine them.' The biggest challenge, according to her, was to fuse
Bollywood and Hollywood traditions. 'At the same time,' she adds in her
clipped British accent, 'I wanted to make sure that I was not making
fun of Bollywood.'
Chadha’s
tryst with the camera began after a stint as a broadcast journalist
with the BBC. Her debut directorial venture was I'm British But..., a
documentary which uses the phenomenon of bhangra music to explore
issues of identity and belonging among young British-born Asians.
In
1990 Chadha made her first short film, Nice Arrangement, concerning a
British-Asian family on the morning of their daughter's wedding. This
was followed by another documentary, Acting Our Age (1991), in which
elderly Asians living in Southall recount their experiences of living
in Britain. These various concerns came together in Chadha's first
feature film, the comedy-drama Bhaji on the Beach (1993). The film
centres on the experiences of a group of Asian women from three
generations on a day trip to Blackpool. As Chadha has said, in the film
'You have tradition on the one side and modernity on the other,
Indianness on the one side, Englishness on the other, cultural
specificity and universality - but in fact there is a scale between
each of these polarities and the film moves freely between them.'
After
a two-part drama for the BBC, Rich Deceiver (1995), and a number of
television documentaries, Chadha went to Los Angeles to make her next
feature film What's Cooking? (2000), a series of overlapping stories
involving four families (Hispanic, Vietnamese, African-American, and
Jewish), all preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. Once again the film
stresses diversity over difference through an increasingly adept mix of
drama and comedy. Chadha has said that 'For me the whole point of the
film is that the four families mirror each other and as you become
emotionally invested you forget about where they come from — you stop
seeing difference and realise they all want the same thing, to keep
their families together.
And
then ensued her most commercially successful film to date, Bend It Like
Beckham (2002). The partly autobiographical story revolves around a
young Asian woman trying to pursue her ambitions as a footballer while
accommodating the demands of family and tradition. Chadha masterfully
weaves a nuanced picture of the South Asian community in the narrative
driving the point home that the British Asian experiences are as
diverse as those of any cultural or ethnic group, thereby emphasising
the universality of those experiences. She said in an interview, 'what
I wanted to show was the fact that the community is not often what you
think it is. As we move from generation to generation, both parents and
the kids change and adapt. All of my three films share a lot in common.
The South Asian community in England is a very strong community. It's
not just Indian, but a part of everything around it, so coming from
Britain and West London gives you a very strong sense of who you are
and where you are and thatís portrayed in my work.'
And
this is what she has to say on transplanting Jane Austen's novel to a
Bollywood setting and making Will Darcy an American character, 'I
didn't want to just make it Indian, I wanted it to be international
because I wasn't interested in making a film just in India (the film is
set in Amritsar, London and Los Angeles). I wanted to update the
Bollywood genre with my own vision and the way I see the world, which
is much more international than nationalistic. Hopefully in focusing on
the whole Indian diaspora element and by making Mr Darcy (Martin
Henderson) American it also highlights the debate about first
world/third world and him being Eurocentric.'
Chadha
is looking forward to direct her next venture, a mega-budget ($80
million) Hollywood biggie. In an excitement-laced voice, she says, 'It
is a prequel to I Dream of Jeannie, a big summer blockbuster for
Columbia Pictures which is all set in Arabia 200BC. It's all about a
young girl who really wants to be a soldier and she's really good at
sword-fighting but she's not allowed to do it. Basically she gets into
trouble and the king turns her into a genie and she ends up spinning
round space and then turns up in 2004. It's much bigger than the
original TV series, and for me it's fantastic because it's like a big
Boy's Own-style adventure only with a girl in the lead. And it's an
opportunity for me to work on lots of special effects and action stuff
in a way that I was never ever going to be able to do.'
Will
this one also have a few Bollywood elements? Of course, she says,
categorically, adding that it will have British influences as well but
'it will inevitably be described as an American movie.' That's
typically Chadha — a filmmaker who draws on national influences but
prefers to have an international persona.
Site Designed & Developed by SiDS iNTERACTIVE