film
Salaam,
Bombay! This film is considered by many to be her best work although
she may be better known for the controversial subject matter of her latest
film Kama Sutra: A tale of Love.
Biography
The highly acclaimed director from India, Mira Nair leapt into the world's
spotlight with her film
Salaam,
Bombay! This film is considered by many to be her best work although
she may be better known for the controversial subject matter of her latest
film Kama Sutra: A tale of Love.
Mira Nair was born in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa to a civil servant in 1957. She went on to attend the University of New Delhi where she studied Sociology and Theater. Dissatisfied with the quality of the education, she applied elsewhere. As result she came to Harvard in 1976 on full scholarship to continue studying Sociology. While at Harvard her focus drifted to documentary film. She describes documentary as "a marriage of my interests in the visual arts, theatre, and life as it is lived" (CurBio 424).
Mira's first film was Jama Masjid Street Journal which was also her Master's thesis project. This film explores the life of a traditional Muslim community from the Western perspective. Her most acclaimed documentary was India Cabaret. Ultimately, the standards of objectivity and non interference inherent in documentary film proved to be a trying constraint. She told the West Side Spirit writer, "While I was working in documentary I was impatient sometimes, many times, with waiting for something to happen and not having it happen like I hoped it wouldÉ." She goes on to say that she wanted "a lot more control over gesture and drama and faces" in her work (qtd. in CurBio 424). As result she tried her hand at fictional narrative. Her greatest recognition came with her first feature film Salaam, Bombay! She was awarded the Best New Director at the Cannes Film Festival as well as a nomination for best foreign film at the Academy Awards.
The
influence of Mira Nair's sociology background is easy to perceive in this
film. Her first narrative film details the lives of the unfortunate children
who live in the streets of Bombay. The main character Krishna/Chaipau spends
his time as a runner for a tea shop in a neighborhood replete with prostitution
and the drug trade. It is in the teeming environment of the streets that
Krishna must save 500 rupees before he returns to his village. At the same
time several episodes serve to demonstrate the hopelessness of everyone's
condition.
Even though the film is interspersed with moments of occasional happiness and camaraderie, the tone of the film is predominately bittersweet and poignant. The strengths of the film lie in its extraordinary realism. All the scenes were shot on location. Also, the realistic performance of the actors might be ascribed to the fact that most of them are actual street urchins. Only a handful of the actors were professional. The thrust of the film is the squalor and poverty these people live in and cannot escape. There are no solutions forwarded and the state's response is critiqued. In the orphanage/reformatory, one individual has been held for four years without a hearing. Furthermore, the encounters Krishna has in the reformatory are in essence no different than the ones he had on the streets. The film ends with Krishna staring dissolutely off screen after having his innocence stripped. This ambiguous ending is reminiscent of Truffaut's The 400 Blows. It also confirms what the viewer already knows. The situation is virtually hopeless and there are no simple solutions for the conditions of so many slum and street children in Bombay (now known as Mumbai).
Awards and Honors
India Cabaret earned Best Documentary Prize at the American Film Festival and Global Village Film Festival in 1985.
Salaam Bombay! earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film as well as the Golden Camera Award and the Prix du Publique at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988.
Works by Mira Nair
Filmography Documentaries
Jama Masjid Street Journal (1979): This film describes the life of a community of Muslims in Old Delhi.
So Far From India (1982): This film presents the feelings of separation experienced by an Indian immigrant in New York and his wife and child who remain in India.
India Cabaret (1985): This film centers on the aging strippers of a seedy strip club in Bombay.
Children of a Desired Sex (1987): This film examines the difficulties of pregnant women who are carrying girls. The difficulty is that they are pressured to abort because of the privileging of male heirs.
Other Films
Salaam Bombay (1988)
Mississippi Masala (1991): This film explores the racial tensions among minorities in the South. It involves immigrant Indians from Uganda and resident African-Americans.
The Perez Family (1993) : This film is about the Cuban Mariel refugees who came in 1980.
Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1997) : This film is about a 15th century love story set in I India.
Works Cited
Current Biography Yearbook. 1993. 54th Vol. Ed. Judith Graham. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1993.
Contemporary Theatre, Film and Television. Volume 12. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994.
Related Sites
Author: John Brestan, Fall 1997
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