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Saturday, Nov 22, 2008
"My Son the Fanatic" director Udayan Prasad on Hanif Kureishi, the spiritual life of Pakistani cab drivers and the art of stealing ideas from those more talented than you.
Jul 8, 1999 | The ads for "My Son the Fanatic" proclaim: "A new comedy from the Oscar-nominated writer of 'My Beautiful Laundrette'!" And why not? Hanif Kureishi has become a literary brand name here and in his native England. Besides, this script about a confused Pakistani taxi driver in northern England (based on Kureishi's 1994 New Yorker short story of the same name) is the most emotionally acute and potent work the writer has done for the big screen since he broke through with "Laundrette" in 1985. The newfound Islamic fundamentalism of the cabbie's son forces the cabbie to confront his midlife dissatisfactions.
The movie takes off from the hero's pivotal outburst in Kureishi's story: "I can't understand it! Everything is going from his room. I can't talk to him anymore. We were not father and son -- we were brothers! Where has he gone? Why is he torturing me?" Kureishi writes the juiciest fractured-English dialogue since Clifford Odets -- and like Odets, he has an amazing gift for slangy popular poetry. His language sweeps audiences to emotional heights by moving every viewer individually.
But the success of this wrenching funny-sad tale belongs equally to Udayan Prasad, the Indian-born, British-bred director. Under Prasad's guidance, the lead actor, Om Puri, enlarges on the story's questions. Puri's soulfulness transforms the flailing taxi driver into a gut-level liberal who refuses to accept yawning cultural gaps. And Prasad coaxes a haunting performance from Rachel Griffiths as the prostitute who befriends the cabbie, then becomes his lover. Whether Puri is making love to Griffiths or wrangling with his son, Prasad's vivid atmosphere and staging prick the imagination and pierce the heart.
When I spoke with Prasad both at the Telluride Film Festival last September and on the phone from London in June, he made it clear that "My Son the Fanatic" was as personal a project for him as it was for Kureishi. In the '80s, Prasad explored Pakistani and Anglo-Indian subjects in British TV documentaries. His debut feature, "Brothers in Trouble" (1995), employed half the core creative team of "My Son the Fanatic" -- the cinematographer, Alan Almond, the composer, Stephen Warbeck, and Om Puri -- and also centered on Pakistanis in northern England. In that volatile social melodrama (available on video), Puri imperiously, sometimes blindly, leads a band of 17 illegal aliens crammed into one house. In "My Son the Fanatic," Puri plays a vastly different figure: a bumbling, innately liberal man who at first can't face the realizations that his marriage has become stagnant and his son (Akbar Kurtha) will never find happiness with the local police chief's daughter. In both films, however, Puri strikes up a risky relationship with a white woman of ill repute. And in both films, Prasad juxtaposes urban squalor with the Pakistanis' dreams and the beauty that surrounds them in the countryside.
Making "Brothers in Trouble" helped prepare Prasad for "My Son the Fanatic," which lifts the farce and melancholy of that first feature into the realm of glorious tragicomedy. Kureishi gave birth to "My Son the Fanatic." But Prasad was uniquely qualified to be a co-parent, not a midwife.
How long have you known Hanif Kureishi?
When I first approached him I was still at the National Film School and he was writing "My Beautiful Laundrette." He was already a respected writer for the stage; I hoped there was some way we could collaborate. And I happened to know Stephen Frears, because I had worked as an editing assistant on two Alan Bennett pieces Stephen both produced and directed for TV. I remember when I met Hanif, he said he was thinking of sending "My Beautiful Laundrette" to Stephen. I said I think Frears is a fantastic choice, a great director. I take no credit for him becoming the director but I was delighted he did.
Was Frears a big influence on you as a director?
Absolutely. He taught me that you can't be precious about the material. His attitude was, "Well, we shot it, but we have to forget the experience of shooting it and look at it dispassionately and be ruthless when it comes to putting it together and not be afraid of trying things and having them fail." Actors who were coming in to do post-synchronization of dialogue responded to the way he worked with them, which was to listen to what they had to say and not impose stuff on them all the time. In the end he would make the choice but he would listen.
There's a wonderful story about Robert Mitchum at the time when he was big box office, and the producers and director of his latest film were complaining that he'd turn up, say his lines and go home. His riposte was, "You got me into this movie because you want my face. If you want my face, you have to pay me. But if you want my interest, you have to interest me." Actors are not stupid people, and if you interest them they will give you more -- they have a much better capacity to surprise you.
Stephen also taught me to collaborate with your writers. Stephen and Alan Bennett would be together all through the process. Particularly when it's someone else's original idea, it's incumbent on me to precisely understand what it is and see if I can better it, not say I want to do my thing. With Hanif on "My Son the Fanatic" the collaboration was complete.
We had kept in touch over the years. Before the story was published in the New Yorker he sent me a copy and said, "Listen, do you think there's any chance that it could be expanded into a film?" I said, "Of course there is." What excited me was the way the story looked at a global phenomenon. Fundamentalism affects every major country and religion in the world, whether with fundamentalist Christians in the United States, or fundamentalist Hindus in India. But he was depicting how it affected a really humble man -- a taxi driver, a cabbie, an ordinary guy who doesn't expect to spend too much time mulling over this particular problem.
When we first meet this character Parvez, played by Om Puri, he is a buffoon embarrassing himself in front of the people he hopes will be his son's future in-laws. Then we discover, gradually, "Hang on: He's not such a buffoon. There's much more to this character than first meets the eye." And when we first meet Rachel Griffiths' character we think she's just a prostitute. She has a client who fucks her in the back of a cab, so we have certain preconceptions about this woman. Then we realize, "Hang on: She's rather an interesting woman who happens to be a prostitute." And I love stories that allow you to go behind the fagades of the characters and see them in a different way.
You moved from India to England at age 9. Does your affection for people who feel like outsiders and yearn to belong somewhere have anything to do with your own life?
Life was much easier for me than it is for my characters. My parents were liberal, educated and aware of what was happening in the society around them; they prepared me well for the change. My interest in these characters is driven by curiosity. I actually am quite at home belonging to two cultures. A lot of people who find that there are two cultures inside of them feel as if they're lost in a limbo-land, but I'm not one of them. I love my life in England, and I love being in India when I'm in India. And having that duality enables me to enjoy the vagaries of other cultures.
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