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With her eclectic body of work that bridges race, class, religion and sex, who else but Mira Nair could release films about an upper middle-class Punjabi wedding and a working-class pair of New Jersey barflies in the same year? With the August 2002 HBO debut of Hysterical Blindness, a bittersweet tale of single women, coming on the heels of Monsoon Wedding's theatrical success, Nair has directed stories that are literally worlds apart.
Nair, herself, is a director raised in two worlds. Born English and Hindi, in Bhubaneshwar (Orissa), India, she is the daughter of a civil servant. Educated at the Irish Catholic School in Simla, India, and at the University of New Delhi, Nair started out as an actress in Indian political theater. She crossed the pond (on a scholarship) to study at Harvard, and earned a degree in sociology. It was at Harvard that her love for directing began.
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"I stumbled into documentary filmmaking while I was there," Nair said. "At that time, Ricky Leacock taught at MIT and cinéma vérité filmmaking was in full swing. For seven years I made documentary films of my own personal tastes and ideas, influenced by Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker. Since I had to raise money to make these stories, I was forced to learn how independent movies get made. To direct Salaam Bombay (her first international narrative hit), I followed the model of my documentaries — piecemeal financing through key pre-sales that would allow me to sell the film after I had completed it. In this way, I could retain control of the creative process and the negative. That is how I still work to this day."
Nair cites cinéma vérité as the foundation of her approach to filmmaking. She calls being a "student of the world" the means of sharpening her craft and technique. "The joy of cinema, for me, comes from the inexplicability of observing real-life and transferring that to screen," Nair said. "This extends to observing other artists in other fields — still photography, for example. Josef Koudelka, Nan Golden and Bill Eggleston are all still photographers I have looked at for inspiration on style and technique before I began a film."
Hysterical Blindness is based on a best-selling novel by Laura Cahill, who adapted her book for the HBO film. The title is a medical reference that Nair visualizes in the opening scene. Debby (played by Uma Thurman) is an emotional wreck who desperately wants to find a man who will love her. In the title sequence, Debby's neuroses get the best of her at work, and a trip to the emergency room reveals she has lost her vision; then later, miraculously gains it back.
"The title sequence always sets the mood for me," Nair said, "so it is very important how the director handles it. For this film, I wanted to address the character, literally having her vision go in and out of focus, which, of course, mirrors her life. As the film goes on, I give the audience visual clues every time the bouts of blindness set in. Shooting through glass or using surfaces and textures in the bar where Debby hangs out help unbalance the frame and field of vision. I wanted the audience to be inside this feeling of hysterical blindness that overwhelms her."
Nair worked closely with her DP, Declan Quinn, in pre-production to set the film's visual tone. "We carried over the same style of handheld camerawork from Monsoon Wedding," Nair said. "The type of handheld work for Hysterical Blindness was not the usual manic, always-moving approach. It was very still and composed, yet because it is handheld, you can feel the frame is breathing. Using all handheld takes, the actors can move freely and this pulsating look makes the audience feel right there, in the moment, without getting queasy."
Production design and bright sensual colors are hallmarks of Nair's work. Yet the bleak, industrial world portrayed in Hysterical Blindness dictated a gritty look this time around.
"You cannot impose color on a story if it's not inherent to the characters," Nair said. "This is a working-class New Jersey neighborhood and I wanted to be very truthful to that reality." Nair said that her discussions with production designer Stephanie Carroll went back to the central visual motif of blindness. "We used a lot of refracting surfaces in the design that were placed in the foreground of each shot," Nair said. "We used vinyl walls for Debby's basement room, which is typical of the late '80s period. So is all the chrome and leather, the big hairstyle and heavy makeup, which I loved doing. Setting the look for a period piece, working closely with the extras on makeup and fingernail polish in the bar scenes was great fun for me."
For Hysterical Blindness, Nair was juggling multiple generations of actors and acting techniques. Gena Rowlands plays Debby's mother, Virginia, and Ben Gazzara is Rowlands' love interest, Nick. Juliette Lewis plays Debby's best friend, Beth. Despite this experienced cast, Nair did not direct the actors according to how they were trained or their specific methods.
"I always believe that actors' fragility is their power," Nair said. "It's not about different cultures or different training, so much as individual human beings. You have to know what you want as a director. Then you must create a safe place where each actor feels comfortable taking risks."
Debby's overwhelming desire to be loved is the engine that drives Hysterical Blindness. One key scene at the film's climax — where Debby begs a contractor she has met in the bar to keep dating her — is tough to watch. Nair had to determine how far she should go when it came time to shooting the scene.
"With a scene like that, you must define all the technical problems well in advance of shooting. Blocking, camera placement, lens choice, shot breakdowns, were all pre-set the day before, so on the day of the shoot the actor could sustain these intense emotions without any technical interruptions," she said.
"Also, if you are prepared technically, you don't need many takes. You just let the actor take off and you gradually keep pushing the envelope. I think we took that scene right to an emotional precipice, to where it was very hard to watch but absolutely right for Debby's situation."
Using technical preparation in advance, Nair was able to capture Debby's manic intensity in only three takes (two different focal lengths, six takes in all).
In describing the differences between directing films in India and America, Nair said, "Shooting over there is complete chaos and the director's job is measured by how well you orchestrate the chaos. The electricity of a scene comes from the chaotic nature of production in India. In America, you must create the chaos, otherwise it's all too proficient. Competence can be terribly dull at times. Chaos is how the real world operates. That is at the heart of cinéma vérité — to capture on film and shape the wonderful chaos that human beings display."
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