Just Her Cup of Chai

By Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles

She has taken to introducing herself this way: "I'm Mira Nair. Rhymes with fire." The director of acclaimed independent films like Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala and Monsoon Wedding offers the mnemonic to help people pronounce her name. But it could also be a warning. Nair is fiercely passionate about everything, especially the way she makes her movies.

The best of her films have been authentic depictions of the Indian diaspora, small in scope and locale but with themes universal enough to have generated a warm and lucrative Western following. Monsoon Wedding, which cost just over a million dollars, earned almost $14 million in limited release. Audiences have been enthralled by Nair's signature carnivalesque style and her craftiness at tying down epic scenes, like Wedding's elaborate, traditional rain-soaked Indian nuptial ceremony. So at first glance, her latest undertaking, a $23 million adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair, may come as something of a surprise. It's an unveiling of 19th century London through the eyes of the indomitable social climber Becky Sharp, who starts life in poverty but uses her beauty and cunning to rise in status. The film, which opens this week, is being marketed mostly on the box-office clout of its star, Reese Witherspoon. But Nair's hand creates the movie's personality: she fills the film with vibrant costumes and boisterous energy. "Early 19th century London was filthy and cacophonous; it had coal and pigs and s___ on the street," says Nair. "That city we never see onscreen; everything is always genteel drawing rooms. And I wanted you to smell the s___, because I couldn't be dragged to see those genteel, hope-the-guy-proposes-to-me kind of movies."

Nair grew up in Bhubaneswar, India, 300 miles south of Calcutta, and later studied film at Harvard. These days she lives mostly in New York City (she teaches at Columbia University) and Kampala, Uganda (her husband Mahmood Mamdani is a native). But her connection to Thackeray is long-standing. "I've actively loved this novel since I was 16," she says. The broad strokes of India in the film, she adds defensively, are mostly from Thackeray, who spent his early childhood in what was then a British colony. "My criterion for doing something is, Can I think of anyone else who can do this?" she says. "And if I can, then it's not for me."

Witherspoon, who was the director's first choice for Becky, says Nair was "born to direct" and that she was "in awe" of her. "We shot in India for three days, and she had 300 extras, two elephants, four camels, and she was directing in Hindi and in English, and she did it without breaking a sweat."

Nair is currently developing an adaptation of The Namesake, the Jhumpa Lahiri best seller about a family's move from Calcutta to Boston, and she will direct Homebody/Kabul, Tony Kushner's play about a woman who goes to Taliban-era Afghanistan seeking her mother, for HBO.

Days on Nair's set, populated by longtime collaborators, begin with group yoga, which is followed by a healthy dose of ribbing by the director. "I directed Gabriel Byrne entirely in a Ugandan accent," she says proudly. How will her move into more mainstream films affect this familial way of working? Nair isn't too apprehensive. "When I have passion for something," she says, "I'm a weirdly kind of fearless person."