Bollywood: 'Bride and Prejudice' Director Gurinder Chadha Interview

02 March 2005

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A: I’d been wanting to make a British-style Bollywood film for quite a while. I had attempted to make one in 1996 but I was working with an Indian producer who wanted to make quite an Indian one whereas I was more interested in doing something more British, so in the end that project fell apart. Q: And then the whole Bollywood explosion happened?Q: Such as? How would you describe some of these differences between Bollywood and western movies?

A: Oh, just all the singing and dancing, big musical numbers, bright colours, big emotions! I thought at least if the story was something familiar, people wouldn’t get so freaked out by all that stuff!Q: And Pride and Prejudice seemed like a natural choice?

A: I was washing up one day when I had the idea: why not take the most fantastic love story ever written? It was about a big family, they don’t have much money, daughters that need marrying off… very Indian! And the more I started working on it, the more I realised how pertinent Jane Austen’s writing of the late 1700s is to contemporary small-town India. And that’s when it all really started fitting and taking shape.Q: What are the main differences between your film and Jane Austen’s book?A: Well, the setting of course! 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 [The Ring’s Martin Henderson] American it also highlights the debate about first world/third world and him being Eurocentric.

Q: The opening of the film seems deliberately like an introduction to India and to Indian films. Is that intentional?

A: Totally, totally intentional. The opening titles of the film are very Indian: every Bollywood movie always starts with a religious icon, and I’ve started with the Golden Temple in Amritsar so you know you really are in India as opposed to Brick Lane or something. It starts with lush fields and seemingly romantic images of India, but then the foreigners arrive: they’re all having a bit of trouble with their luggage and traffic, and then you’ll notice the music goes down, the noises start coming up, you hear market sellers and animals and total chaos! That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen – after the opening sequence you’re supposed to be thinking “Oh my god, where the hell am I?!” Which is exactly what Darcy articulates.

Q: And there is clearly an attempt to show something of the ‘real’ India, more so than in most Bollywood films.

A: Indian films never show cows. When you go to India, the most noticeable thing is the cows. Everywhere you look there’s cows walking around! Just by introducing the idea of animals – livestock walking around – suddenly makes it more real. I mean, obviously movies are not real: they always take a place, they reduce it, they create a different reality and they clean things up. Things can look awful in real life but on film they always look great, so it’s not easy making something appear real. You’ve got to use visuals as well as noises and sounds. Quite often in Bride you’ll hear animals on the soundtrack but you won’t see them. It just helps to get that sense of a different time and space.

Q: Your films are often described as ‘feelgood’ movies but would you agree that there’s a sense of anger beneath the surface?

A: I think anger might be a little bit of a strong word, but I’m really pleased that you notice that. It’s... what it is…I’m not sure… I don’t often talk about the films like this, but basically all my films are about racism and prejudice. They might be dressed up as comedy but everything I’ve ever done is always about making whoever’s watching it think differently about the person on the screen. That’s not to say that they’re all big anti-racist statements, they’re just about humanising people who are different and showing you people in a different light and showing you people that you thought were different to you but actually were very similar to you. That’s what drives my work, it’s the engine behind everything and the reason why it moves. On top of that there’s the bodywork and upholstery and all the rest of it, and the bigger the budget the flashier the car, but that’s the heart of it underneath and then it’s dressed up in different ways.

Q: And in your writing you find that laughter is the best fuel for the engine?

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