"I really wanted not to make a museum piece. I feel that what was brilliant about the novel is that it's completely timeless," Mira Nair said of her latest film Vanity Fair based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. In August, the DGA hosted screenings of the film in New York and Los Angeles. Following the screenings, Nair participated in Q&A discussions – in New York with director Bob Balaban and in Los Angeles with director Jessie Nelson.
"I read this book in Irish Catholic boarding school in India," Nair said. "It's such a banquet of a book that it gives me something different every time I read it. The studio who offered me the book had no idea of my history with it."
Having harbored a personal relationship to the material for so many years, she jumped at the chance to translate it to the big screen. In the process of doing so she enlisted the help of writer Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park).
Eight months before being offered Vanity Fair, Nair got a call from Reese Witherspoon who was a fan of Nair's work. In turn Nair had seen Witherspoon in Election and The Man in the Moon and was "marveled" by her work. "We met and the things she was doing I didn't quite jive with, so we kept up our professional friendship," Nair said. "Then I happened to be offered Vanity Fair so I called her and said would you be my Becky Sharp? And she said yes instantly. And of course the studio was ecstatic about Reese."
The film features performances from its supporting cast which includes Jim Broadbent, Romola Garai, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and a somewhat unexpected dramatic turn from Rhys Ifans who is well known for his comedic talents in such films as Human Nature and Danny Deckchair.
To bring the script to screen Nair relied on the talents of artists with whom she'd already had a rapport with, including cinematographer Declan Quinn, producer Lydia Pilcher, composer Mychael Danna and editor Allyson Johnson. Just like Nair herself, no member of her established "film family" had ever worked on an English period film before - which had been Nair's intention.
"[The film] feels very contemporary," Balaban said. "I think this is due to your approach to dealing with the people. It's not making it into a frozen beautiful confection, it's dirty; it's very, very real."
"That was the intention because I couldn't be dragged to see a period prop drama, which is full of young ladies waiting to be proposed to," joked Nair. "It's not my idea of fun. And what Thackeray gave us was an extraordinary, the chief character was the world, the milieu of the nineteenth century."
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