The first thing you’ll notice about humanist Mira Nair’s colorfully saturated and emotionally rounded adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s classic British novel Vanity Fair, is how visually imaginative Indian-born Nair’s interpretation of the classic social comedy is. But it’s when you dig to the picture’s heart that it all starts to make sense. Nair, with her always compassionate and life-affirming style, has turned a favorite novel into a memorable story, putting forward an impossibly complicated young heroine too smart for her own means, a bit too selfish to really be good and much too caring to be all bad.

As I discovered recently when I sat down to talk with the director sometimes referred to as "the crown jewel of India," Nair is as spirited and generous as her work in Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay! and so many other memorable pictures would suggest. And though she initially might seem an odd choice to helm a traditional British period piece more closely associated with the whisperings of drawing rooms and parlor tea, Nair’s passion for artistic independence and stylish survival are not completely unlike those born to her gilded anti-heroine, played with great wit by a grown-up Reese Witherspoon.

Lee Shoquist, ReelMovieCritic.com: I’m very interested in discussing your approach to this film. We’ve seen this period and type of story before, with the English class system, feminine liberation, issues of society, etc. But you seem to have taken this to an original realm because the film has a ripe exoticism to it that’s so voluptuous and romantic, and alive in ways that you don’t expect from films that depict class struggles in this era. So tell me about that, about how you put the life into that story and added your signature to it.

Mira Nair: Good! That’s what I wanted. I could not be dragged to see a stuffy, English period frock movie with chintz curtains, and the girl is just waiting to be proposed to. And I’ve loved this novel since I was sixteen years old. It’s one of those novels that I return to read every couple of years, just because it’s a romp to read and it’s really about the panoply of life. It’s like Gone with the Wind. I always told the studio that. It has all of those things.

And that’s my whole coda as a director—amplify every frame. And because I loved the novel so much and knew it so well, it was how, in every scene, to back in four or five more things in the novel than just the one point per scene. For instance, stylistically I took as much out of the interiors into the exteriors as possible. And early 19^th century England—London—was this cacophonous, actual pigsty. I mean, there were pigs and mud and feet and street vendors. I really wanted to sort of bring alive, without giving you a lecture, the theory of the leisure class—the fact that the upper classes that you see in the drawing rooms and whatever, how much they have to be supported by the armies below.

And also, that makes something feel timeless. It makes it feel like it’s today. The old spinster is having her manicures and pedicures and her baths and massages, it’s just like now! So I was finding every which way I could to make it more cinema verite’ of this day, which is exactly what Thackeray wrote about. That was not just my challenge, but my aspiration and my joy.

LS: How about Becky Sharp? In your films there’s a lot of this struggle between the traditional and the progressive, the past and the modern. And I think what’s so interesting about her in this film, and I can see it even in the film’s poster, in the expression on her face, is that we don’t quite know how to read her. First of all, we’ve got Reese Witherspoon, a big, likeable American star in the role. But the underpinning of Becky Sharp is that she’s ultimately a social climber, and she’s got all of these gray areas…

MN: She’s a survivor. She wants to climb in a place where I tell you there is nothing more straightjacketing, or whatever the word is—hostile—than the English class. There is nobody who will understand the English classes better than an Indian, because the Indians have a much more refined class system. And the English only reinforce that, or vice versa. So that’s something we understand. And for that class system to admit a girl like Becky Sharp, even into their drawing rooms, is tantamount to blasphemy. And so the job that she seems to want to have is just insurmountable, practically. And that’s what I love about Becky is that she’s such a survivor, but she’s a great, stylish survivor. She sets the style, and she has the bravery of the orphan.

LS: Nothing seems to interfere with that ambition—even her child, who is at an arm’s length relationship, and much closer to his father. And including her marriage, though you know she feels the pain when it falls apart.

MN: Yes, yes. I think- the way I saw it, because I really wanted to build that credible love story, I saw it as an earlier Bonnie and Clyde—just two rascals who love the rascal in each other, who recognize each other and genuinely love each other. So that actually when Rawdan leaves, it is the abyss for her, you know? But she is a survivor, and she’s done that before. She hasn’t suffered that much of a loss, but she has gone through that before too. And she has to live again. But with the son, I didn’t want to sweeten it. I wanted to keep it like that, that the father was the great love of the boy and this girl wasn’t. And I wanted to keep it that way. The studio was really anxious about that. They wanted her to, you know (cradles arms in loving gesture). And I said ‘Look, you can’t do it. These are the deals we make with ourselves.’ And I think it’s more complicated because we are complicated people, human beings.

LS: You’ve said that you only want to make films that get under your skin and make your heart beat faster. When we look at Vanity Fair, what are the elements that affected you in this way?

MN: At its heart, the story [is] of this survivor called Becky Sharp, whom I think is as modern and as timeless as they come. It’s a story that could be told today with different clothes on. And I love the carnivalesque aspect of the structure. That’s what I’m put on Earth to do, I think, is make these sprawling, interrelated, big cast ensembles. I mean, I just love the circus of the world. It has all the most important themes that we know and deal with, whether it be unrequited love, whether it be betrayal, whether it be ambition, whether it be surviving. It allows me to flex muscles in any direction. Besides the fact, of course, of working with people like Jim Broadbent, for whom I just will die happier knowing.

So it’s really been one of my favorite novels, so I know this tale very well—none of which was known to the studios. So it was just this unbelievable coincidence, which rarely happens, when something is meant for you.

LS: You mentioned Jim Broadbent. So when we talk about the cast, including Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Eileen Atkins, Geraldine McEwan, and the list goes on and on, with so many top-flight British actors. Many times in the past you have worked with non-professional casts and so forth. What is it like when you step on the set with these regal actors? Do you just kind of stand back and watch them do their thing?

MN: No, it’s the same. So actors, whichever side they come from, the finest actors, are extraordinary and are not the same as in the same human beings. But they’re all equally unique people. As a director, I have to attune to each of their instruments. I must say, I don’t have fear. I don’t have awe. I don’t do that thing. Because what I believe is we all want to do good work, and we all want to be taken further in what we do. And my instinct is what makes me special to anyone else. Each one has to retain their instinct. So my work is to exercise that instinct with these great, extraordinary instruments.

For instance, Jim Broadbent’s character, old Mr. Osborne, what I loved about Thackeray is that he never made anybody just a crass villain. He gave you all kinds of shades, and that’s what I love. There are two lines in the book where he says, ‘When he crossed his son’s name out of the Bible, he wept silently.’ So in that scene when they are fighting, he and the son—he and Johnny Rhys-Myers—Johnny walks out. And in the middle of the shot, I said to Jim, ‘Say his name. Call out "Georgie."’ And Jim stayed in character and called out ‘Georgie’ after he slams the door in the scene. And it’s in the film, actually. He was a little surprised that I directed him while he was acting.

But sometimes an idea comes to me right there, and I want to fuel every one of his scenes with that type of nuance. And Jim just loved that this was how we were going to go for it, you know? He just went for it and loved it. He can do no wrong in any case, but the question is how much more can we get from each other? So I was not intimidated. I was just enjoying with each one.

LS: You’ve often entertained social and political subjects in your films, such as topics like street kids, for one, in Salaam Bombay! I have to tell you, I saw that film when I was about 18 and haven’t seen it since. But the last shot and the musical score in that moment have stuck with me over the years. I have them memorized.

MN: Oh. Mmm.

LS: Anyway, the street kids in that film, AIDS, interracial romance, sensuality, things like this. Do you think that’s the role of a director or an artist, to be a provocateur? And what do you see as your overriding ambition as a director, in terms of the stories and themes you want to commit to film?

MN: Well, I’m not very good at those Sunday afternoon movies; pleasant movies that you forget about. There’s a definite place for that type of movie, but I’m not good at making them. I am much more interested in making films that in some way hold a mirror to the world we live in. Not to give you a lecture, because that’s the most boring thing in the world. But to give you a reality that makes you think about yourself or the world or what you’re thinking about in a certain way. That’s what I aspire toward.

I must say now that I grow up more, I feel much a sense of wanting to also balance it better. We all know the cultural imperialism of Hollywood in terms of how much is put out in the whole world. I live half the time in Africa, and I see what goes on. It’s very important also to have an alternative worldview to America. You should look at America even from the outside as well as from the inside, you know?

So now I’m fueled more and more to put our own realities on the screen. I’m just starting- we’re starting next August a big dream of mine, to create this East African/South Asian film lab for young- create filmmakers, basically, where I live, and just raise the money. We’re really putting it together. It’s going to be fantastic.

And the reason is that if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will tell them for us. They will not. It won’t happen. So if I have that opportunity to make something like that happen, that will give me more fuel for anything.

LS: Can you talk a bit about the experience of being a woman director in Hollywood—an Indian woman director in Hollywood—versus the experience of being a woman director in India. I know all of the trouble you had in India with Kama Sutra. What are the parallels between working in those two different industries?

MN: I am in independent filmmaker anywhere. So in India, I’m totally not part of any system. I always made alternative movies to that system. And I’ve been lucky enough with both Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding to have gained huge audiences, which that same system gets, but with an alternative kind of movie. So now I’m being accepted by that industry, but I’m technically not from within its bosom. I use it, I have friends and everything, but I’m an alternative.

Similarly here, but I play the Hollywood game and I’m offered a lot of scripts I turn down, all that, and go on. But one good thing is I’ve never sought to be on the Hollywood A-list or B-list or whatever list. I make my own films, and it takes a lot of struggle to do that, but I do them and somehow they have audiences and they make money and they get rewards, or whatever.

Now when people come to me, and even through the years when people came to me, they come for my sensibility, for my voice, for my panache and whatever. So it’s not like I have suffered. It’s not like I can give you some stories of endless discrimination in Hollywood and all that, because I don’t want- not that I don’t want it, but I’m not seeking the ‘best teen comedy of next year’ to direct. I’m not.

LS: When you say you’re considered an independent in India you’re referring to not being a part of the Bollywood industry, correct?

MN: Yes. And I’ve also made very radical films. I’m not a part of that system. I haven’t been. Now I’m embraced by that system totally, but I’m not from within it.

LS: I must tell you, many of my Indian and American friends are jealous that I’m here with you today.

MN: Thank you so much. Send them all of my ‘salaams!’