"Take it from me. In ten years, it’s gone. The Oscars will vanish in ten years."
Opening in limited release today is Before The Rains [watch the trailer], a strikingly beautiful Merchant Ivory film from acclaimed Indian director and truly superb cinematographer Santosh Sivan, making his English language debut. Set in 1930s British-Colonial India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement, it centers around a young man named T.K., played with a perfect subtle despair by Rahul Bose, who is serving as the right-hand man of Henry Moores (Linus Roache), a British man looking to establish a spice plantation in Kerala, requiring a new road to be cleared through the vast hills. When Moores' extramarital affair with his passionate house servant Sajani (Nandita Das) unravels to the point of tragedy, T.K. becomes torn by circumstance. Preserving the project as a boon to his people from the culture he prefers will mean compromising his own integrity to protect Moores, a man he called friend, from the threatening aftermath of his adultery.
Bose has been called the "superstar of Indian art-house cinema" by Time Magazine, and "the Sean Penn of Oriental cinema" by Maxim Italy, the latter due to his strong socio-political views and his efforts to bring about change in his home country of India. He recently sat down for a spirited, fascinating roundtable interview to talk about the film, his socio-political awakening, the problems of his country and why the Academy Awards are doomed unless something drastic happens.
A brief warning - the riots in India that spurred Bose's activism are described in disturbingly graphic detail. Be forewarned.
Let's start with the general - how would you experience of making Before The Rains?
The greatest component of this experience has been working with the director, Santosh Sivan, because he must be one of the top three or four cinematographers on the planet. Believe me, if you think you’ve seen his work in this movie, it’s nothing. This man, he can play jazz, he can play classical, he can play hip-hop – he can just do anything with that camera. He’s a magician. See The Terrorist; a big bold Bollywood film Asoka [watch the trailer] just for cinematography; any film he’s done with a gentleman called Mani Ratnam as a cinematographer. Just Google him! You’ll see he’s probably done about 50, 60 movies as a cinematographer and my god, some of it is just breathtaking. He redefined how to shoot a song in Bollywood, and then he also did The Terrorist, which has 50 words in the whole film. It’s a very art-house movie that John Malkovich presented and it won in different festivals.
So working with him was the biggest attraction and the biggest component of the experience because Santosh is a very elliptical, a very lateral director. It’s not for him, sitting and telling you what motivation you have to have or “this is what you did last and this is where you’re going next.” He cannot work with mediocre actors. Santosh can either work with complete non-actors, as he has done in the past, or with very accomplished actors. He cannot talk “actorly” language that you expect from most directors.
Working with him was sensational. Linus Roache was so unsettled the first couple of days. He was like “who is this guy? He hasn’t said anything to me and yet he says some things that I completely don’t understand. He wants me ‘like a hibiscus in full bloom.’ What is that supposed to mean?” Santosh is also terribly inarticulate. But after the second day, Linus was hooked. He said “I want to work with this man all my life.” He gives you such freedom, and yet when you need it, he’ll tell you. “You know, I don’t think this is – no, I don’t – I’m just not – maybe a little bit like, you know, a child, like you know, something like a – like a butterfly, I don’t know…” And then you get what he’s trying to say. Santosh Sivan is like a child, but he has, of course, the talent of ten men, so that was a great part of the experience.
I have shot with very fine actors in the past, and this was no exception. His crew was another experience. Santosh’s crew works at about 300 miles per hour. They’re just incredibly, electrically fast and very joyous. Everybody’s singing and everyone is rushing around the place. In 35 days of shooting, I never went back to my trailer. There was never any time. By the time you got off a shot and you took a breath, and you’re asked to get back on. He’s just incredible that way.
This is an international production, and it presents a very nuanced portrait of British colonialism in India. Is it presented any differently in Indian cinema?
Like any other country that’s been colonized, the issue will be presented in black and white when it’s fresh in the minds of filmmakers. Gradually, it will take on a more nuanced, a more balanced outlook. That’s happening with India. Did you see a film called Lagaan? How black and white is that? The colonizers are all evil. There’s definitely a progression to a more nuanced look to the colonization question, and I’m sure after this, there will be another film ten years from now.
Let’s face it, as filmmakers, we are in the post-post-colonial generation, and then we’ll be post-post-post, and who knows, there might be an Indian film where the British are the heroes and the Hindis are the villains. We can’t tell. Distance invariably gives you objectivity, and we have 50 or 60 years of distance. Another 40 or 50 years and you might have something truly representative of what it was all about. It’s still a little colored, but it’s not an emotional subject anymore.
In fact, the colonization element that still resonates deep, strong and hard in India is the “white man complex.” If you’re fair, you’re superior and if you’re darker, you’re inferior. An African-American who comes to India will be treated badly – students who come from Nigeria or Ethiopia are treated very badly in India, and they’ve been ghettoized into a small little area of Bombay. If you’re white, no matter who you are, you’re superior. That still very much exists, and that’s a legacy. That’s fresh – the largest selling cream in India is a fairness cream.
As much as the film seems to end on a note of hope, there's also this dark sense of impossibility for Sajani, and for T.K.
The film is a harsh indictment of the plight of women in the country. No question, she has no choice. Women have very little choice in India, and the women who do have choice have had to fight for it, and they’re always at the creamy layer of urban society. The disempowerment of women in that country is rivaled by no other country in the world. The incredible atrocities that women commit upon themselves…
You know that most women who are subject to battering by their husbands don’t even know? They’ve been raised to believe that a couple of slaps is fine. So, Sajani, what has she done wrong, after all? She’s married to a man she didn’t want to get married to, an arranged marriage. She’s unhappy with this man, she seeks love elsewhere, she finds it – or she thinks she finds it. For that, she’s going to die? For that, she has to flee for her life? She says, at one point “what choice do I have? I have no choice.” And for T.K. to be told that “either you be a slave forever if you don’t kill this man, or you kill this man and come back in pride to the village” – finally, he says “No. If I have to kill someone to get back my pride and respect, I’m not going to!” So he loses his village. It’s a very elegant way for him to hide his loss, when he does walk down with the Freedom Struggle – he can never go back to his village. Why should anyone have to make that choice? There is a hopelessness there within that hope in both those characters.
It would still happen in some Indian villages – say he’s in a staunchly Hindu village and he’s helping some poor Muslim people out. They’ll say “if you do that, we’ll have to throw you out of the village.” Even today, he would be thrown out. If you help a lower-caste person, but you’re from an upper caste, you would be thrown out from the upper caste. If you marry into a lower caste, they would kill you! Still today, if a lower caste man or woman has the audacity to marry above their caste, they are killed. That sense of despair, of hopelessness exists very much in our country.
You are known these days for your social and political activism. How did you personally relate to T.K.'s journey into political consciousness?
To put it in perspective, I was an actor from the age of 6, a professional actor from the age of 20. I discovered my socio-political consciousness only at the age of 35. I rediscovered my political consciousness and began to write and started my own nonprofit organization and working for four other nonprofit organizations, and that’s come only in the last five years. It just happens to be a very written-about part of my life, because of the amount of people in the creative arts who stick their necks out and speak up for causes are very, very few, both in this country as well as in India. Although I find a lot more people doing it for superficial value – “let’s go to Africa, we’ve got to go adopt some babies or something there!” I’m not talking about Angelina Jolie, but there are a lot of actors who will cynically get on to the trend because it increases their brand equity and makes them more substantial than they actually are.
But I don’t mix my socio-political concerns with my cinema. I’ve played a guy who kills nine people in the first fifteen minutes of the film and I never thought twice about it. It helps if the work you’re doing happens to have a socio-political message, but it certainly doesn’t define my work, because I’d be a very boring actor. It’s enough that movies have humanism. That’s it. That’s all they need to do. If they have a rich vein of humanism, it’s fine.
Therefore, I didn’t ever look at this film through the prism of my socio-political consciousness at all. For me, it was most attractive because, out of all three characters in this film – and you can count Jennifer Ehle’s as the fourth character – the only one who has a journey is mine. The rest of them stay pretty much who they are. But the journey of this man skewed towards friendship. Torn between friendship and his ideals, then finally skewed towards his ideals – that arc, I found very interesting, and it was the second most attractive reason to do the film, the first being the director. If he had offered me a piece of shit, I’d have said yes.
T.K. faces a painful dilemma in this film. Do you feel that a dilemma like this is necessary to bring about change?
Yes, there’s no question. The precursor to change is dilemma, and dilemma invariably happens when you are confronted with two equally attractive options. Should I stick by my friend who’s just robbed a bank, because he’s been my friend for 25 years, or should I report him to the police? Should I ask my girlfriend to have an abortion because it is an unwanted child, or should I respect her wishes? Anything that precedes a seismic change within you, a fundamental change, the dilemma has to happen before that. It can never be clear-cut. Otherwise, that change would have happened a long time ago. It’s the end of a process of weighing two options. Should I quit journalism and just become a filmmaker? It doesn’t happen overnight. Gradually you feel the planets have aligned and you can make the change. The only thing that sees you through the dilemma in the right way is if you have a clear idea of who you are, or at least who you want to be.
Was there a specific dilemma that sparked the awakening of your socio-political consciousness?
Yes, definitely. The riots happened in India in 2002. Riots happened in a state called Gujarat, where it was a state-sponsored pogrom against the Muslims. There was a decimation of Muslims over two days, with collusion between the police and the state. Muslims were systematically eradicated - pregnant women’s bellies were slit open, the fetuses were pulled out and dashed against the ground. Sitting political MPs – members of parliament – were pulled out because they were Muslim, their limbs were hacked off and they were made to crawl through the streets with just legs, and then they were burnt to death alive. Women were raped and then kerosene was doused on their vaginas and they were set aflame. Just unimaginable acts of cruelty. He’s still in power, that chief minister.
That’s what tipped me over the edge. You have a socio-political subconsciousness, then a socio-political consciousness, then you have socio-political activism. This moved me from consciousness to activism. From subconscious to conscious happened in 1992, when there were riots in Bombay, the city where I live. Ten years later, the Gujarat riots – I still have that chief minister to thank for tipping me over the edge, because it happened during his watch. I’m a member of a group that is trying to take him to court.
It is an incredibly politically motivated battle, which we’re still fighting. We’ll see how that pans out. It’s always fraught with subtle and not-so-subtle danger, but it’s a very simple question of comfort and discomfort. What doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you don’t have to do anything about. But if it makes you uncomfortable, in your own best interests, you’d better do something about it. You don’t want to live life uncomfortable. There are some things if I don’t do, then I’ll be unhappy. So that’s my brownie with ice cream.
Do you have any interest in working in more commercial films, or Hollywood films?
I’ll divide that into Hollywood and Bollywood, because Bollywood is mainstream Indian cinema. There are other kinds of cinema in India, as I’m sure you know – like this one. I have done four Bollywood films, mainstream Hindi films that have all been successes – modestly-budgeted, modest successes. I do not want to increase that side of my filmography. I am doing two more. When you do a Bollywood film, it exercises acting muscles you don’t get to use in art-house cinema. It’s my Chinese food. Normally, I eat Indian food, and then once a week I have Chinese food or Japanese food or Thai food. This is my little flirtation with the other side. Every four or five films, that’s what I’ll do.
As far as Hollywood is concerned, like all actors who grew up in the 80s and 90s, I was obsessed with America and obsessed with making it in Hollywood. I have realized now that it is, like most mainstream film industries in the world, bankrupt of ideas. There are a few wonderful filmmakers in America, as there are anywhere else in the world, but the percentages are shockingly low. It would be much higher in other parts of the world and maybe lower in other parts of the world. The reason I have no interest in being part of mainstream Hollywood is because I would not want to be a part of mainstream cinema anywhere in the world, whether it’s Korea, Italy or India.
Having said that, I also do believe that the most exciting cinema today is coming out of the Philippines, out of Central America, out of Korea, some of it occasionally out of India, we’ve seen Iran, we’ve seen China, we have seen Romania, we have seen stuff coming out of what was formerly the U.S.S.R., even England, occasionally. We have a little bit of exciting stuff coming out of America. We know that the Coen Brothers are alive and kicking, and that Terrence Malick, when he wants to, can turn around and make something breathtaking, but I don’t believe The Departedis what I want to make. I don’t think that’s something I’d like to be a part of.
This is not somebody from the poor Third World railing against the big bad brother of America, but the fact remains that the psychology of wanting to be a part of Hollywood is the psychology of somebody who comes from an economically-deprived country in the 80s and 90s, who is looking at the most powerful nation on Earth. The reason I don’t want to be a part of Hollywood now is the psychology of somebody who knows better, and whose country has developed to a point where you’re getting enough satisfaction being in that country, doing its work. Also, the most powerful country isn’t the most powerful country anymore. It isn’t the most attractive country. In fact, it’s possibly, in my opinion today, one of the least attractive countries. Morally, its position has become so indefensible with the George Bush era. It will pick up again, whether you have Obama or Clinton, you’re going to be in for a really good time. History moves in cycles and this country will pick itself up and reassert itself. But reassert itself, it has to do in the new geopolitical order. There’s Brazil, Russia, India, China. It’s going to have to find its place in the new world.
It’ll happen in Hollywood, too. Right now, your Oscars, no one is watching them. The only reason you watch them is the red carpet and the glamour. How can you put the foreign films into one category? Most of the best cinema comes from outside America. If you want to have an award ceremony, you have the World Film Awards, so you can have Pedro Almodovar and Takeshi Kitano and the Romanian film and everybody jostling for Best Picture. You cannot just have English language movies, it’s a travesty.
Take it from me. In ten years, it’s gone. The Oscars will vanish in ten years, unless they completely change it around. If you give me ten years, I’m going to start the World Cinema Awards. I will get massive funding for that. It’s waiting to be done. How come no one’s doing it? Why does Innaritu have to make a film in English, for fuck’s sake? These guys can make a film in whatever language they want to, and we should celebrate that.
There’s also the fact that mainstream Hollywood has no decent roles.
Yeah, let’s get down to the reality. Even if there was a great desire on my part, how would a 5’6” brown boy get roles in Hollywood? For god’s sake, it’s not going to happen. Well, it’s going to happen – America will accept faces like mine after it’s already accepted Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker and Jamie Foxx. Clearly, there’s no question that that’s happening. When you grow wiser, you realize there’s much more to cinema. In fact, there’s much more to life than just trying to make it in the most attractive place on Earth. You have to find your own place to feel extremely comfortable in. I can be in America, but it will be like sitting in someone’s living room, whereas if I’m in India, it’s my own house, my feet are up on the table. I can be a slob if I want to. I would much rather be that, as a human being. As an artist, I’ll travel the world, but as a human being, I would much rather base myself there and do work, because it’s very important to be comfortable in your own skin. To seek validation outwards is something you do when you’re young, but then you grow out of that. “Am I going to live for others, or am I going to live for myself?” That’s just a macro-expression of the growing up that happens.
