I love to watch Mira Nair’s movies, especially the ones filled with the color and beauty of India, like Monsoon Wedding and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love. One movie she directed that didn’t take place in India was Vanity Fair, but it too had her color and beauty infused into it.

I had a problem with her take on the story, though. The vivid colors and the Indian imagery were great, the production splendid, but she made the main character into a heroine, when Thackeray specifically stated in the subtitle that his story had no hero. Nair white-washed the utter bitch that was Becky Sharp, back stabbing, trash talking, shallow, lying, cheating… And on top of that she was a truly crappy mother, but even that was someone else’s fault in the movie.

Okay, so after watching the DVD interviews, it seems that Nair was bewitched by Becky as a young girl and always saw her as a great, yet flawed heroine. So, maybe she just wanted the rest of the world to see Becky with her same delusion. That’s okay, right? Image is everything.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 7:59 pm and is filed under India, UK and Ireland, US and Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.