In advance of today’s release of AMAL, I had a chance to sit down with co-writer/director Richie Mehta and lead actor Rupinder Nagra in a Toronto Starbucks to discuss the film (here’s the LINK to the review).
CFD: Talk about the writing process. Moving from the short film to the feature film and why you decided to adapt it.
Richie: I decided to adapt it because it was based on the reaction people were giving us to the short. It was polarizing the audience either positively or negatively. And I thought that was such as interesting reaction, that the themes should be mined in more detail. We had done the short as an exercise, but having said that, everyday for the two years that my brother and I wrote the feature script we were asking ourselves, is it worth it? We’ve already done the short, and we’ve done it by only asking 18 mins of the audience. Is it vanity that we’re going to ask them for 100mins and give them the same thing, or can we give them more richness? So it was a question every day to give each scene something to hold onto.
CFD: Was there an inspiration beyond the short that was in your brain while you were writing?
Richie: All kinds. One of the biggest overarching inspirations was probably “Salaam Bombay” – a Mira Nair film, which I loved. To me it really reflected a type of movie I didn’t see enough of coming out of India. It resonated so much with me because it was my culture and it was real and I felt it there wasn’t enough of it. So I wanted to make a movie like that. There’s a couple other Indian movies, one called “Bhopal Express” which Naseeruddin Shah was in – our old man – which was really inspiring. As well as “Monsoon Wedding” which totally inspired me. But there are certain specific moments in the film where inspiration came from. There’s a lot of Stanley Kubrick, ironically in the film.
CFD: What specifically about Kubrick?
Richie: A very specific example, off the top of the my head, was the song scene, where the old man sings the song, which was very much inspired by the last scene in “Paths of Glory”.
CFD: About casting. I was pleased to see Vik Sahey in the film. I recognized him as Canadian character actor. How many Canadian actors were in the film?
Richie: Just Vic Sahey and Rupinder Nagra who played Amal. That’s it. Everyone else was Indian.
CFD: Obviously Rupinder was in the short, but how did Vic get involved?
Richie: Audition. We were so pressed for time and we basically, it was like three or four weeks before we went for pre-production in India, during the film festival in Sept 2006. I didn’t even have time to audition. We had a casting director, Millie Tom, and I asked her to get video tapes. We got 50 tapes and the first one we watched was Vic’s. It’s an interesting character, because his character veers most into clichéd territory in terms of the ‘gambling-addicted son’ of rich.
CFD: Roshan Seth was awesome. Tell me about working with him and casting him.
Richie: I had a wish list of who I’d want to work with my whole life and I thought about him a while back and said, let’s see if we can get him for this role. My brother and I started writing the character for him and what we knew about him, the way he spoke and the way he acted. When I started looking for him in India it turns out he has the same agent in London as Rupinder. It was coincidence. So through Rupinder we contacted his agent, he called me back and loved the idea. I met with him and he basically doesn’t take any work unless he loves the script. At that point the script was an early draft. And he’s worked with so many people, David Lean, Richard Attenborough, Steven Spielberg, so he was really good at story analysis and he kept poking holes in the story. So for 8 months he’d just scrutinize. I do another draft with my brother and he’d scrutinize. And this went on and on. So finally he said yes, after it got to a point, and he informed that character with a lot of his experiences. He has a love/hate relationship with India, which is completely within him and within that character. And he’s listed a story consultant on the film as well.
CFD: About the editing, I found there was a momentum which gained speed towards the end of the film. Did you have an editing philosophy during writing or in post-production?
Richie: Stuart McIntyre, the editor, and I had worked very closely together since film school. And we directed things together too. We very much have this style, where I am narrative oriented and he does the really innovative, crazy interesting stuff. So when we work together there’s a balance of instinctiveness and overarching narrative storytelling that works well for us. And he is amazing at finding the most dynamic point to cut. It would be like a jamming session when we would edit together, trial and error for 8 months. It was a long time to hone it and get it to that point. But he also with us to India, and he was editing while we were there. Not just to get a head start but mostly because I wanted him to get that stuff out of his system. I didn’t want him to edit in a certain shot in because it was exotic, but because he had lived there with to us for two months, it wouldn’t matter to him. It was just about the story, the material and moving it forward. And I think it worked.
CFD: How many shooting days and how many locations? Because it seemed like every scene there was something new we hadn’t seen before.
Richie: 45 locations and 29 shooting days.
CFD: Talk about doing that?
Richie: The unit moves in Delhi were not fun. It was also winter, which has a specific, lingering mist in the air. And the sun is low hanging, so it feels like magic hour. So the HD footage allowed us to really have a magic hour feel to it. But as consequence the sun is gone at 4:55pm. Short days. We were always under the gun. By 5:00pm the day was done. We were running and gunning. There was no leeway in the shot list. We knew exactly what we needed to get.
CD: Any happy accidents on set?
Richie: Tons. Most of the happy accidents were performances. And they weren’t really accidents, but things I didn’t anticipate. Again, when you have actors of that caliber, world class actors working with you, they do the work before they come to set. I have minimum requirement to be satisfied, and when these guys do their certain things, I just sit back and watch for the spots that don’t work. Most of the time it was two takes, maybe three and we got it.
CFD: Amal’s backstory is very important to who he is. How detailed in your mind was his backstory and the relationship with his father?
Richie: Very detailed. In fact, other drafts had completely fleshed it out and shown it. We had scenes where we saw it but it felt too contrived. But in situations like that, every main character has a very well mapped out back story. And I don’t think a film like this works if the characterization doesn’t work. We’re so close to not have three dimensionally characters because of the archetypes, so anything you can put in there to pad it, to make it real, helps. The advantage of working in that vane, melodrama, or close to melodrama, I think audiences can relate to it. Then you have them and you can take them into new directions thematically. But the disadvantage then is that you could lose them easily if doesn’t feel real. So we really fleshed a lot about Amal and his father, how he grew up. A lot of the father was based on my grandfather, my Dad’s father. And certain integrities he had and a certain strictness. He would never compromise, never waver on anything, to the point of annoyance. Because Amal can be annoying too, if he’s stubborn about something.
CFD: Do you consider Amal a religious person? Is his outlook in life, in his backstory based on religious values?
Richie: Amal doesn’t have much of a character arc in the film. He starts off good and ends up good. But there is a subtle character arc, of his belief in God and what that means. In the beginning of the film, when we meet his mother, he doesn’t want to go to the temple and he doesn’t really care. And we tried to make it that he feels his actions are completely within his control. He does what he does. And as the film moves along, and things happen beyond his control, which he can’t understand and he starts talking about his father and what his father did and how his father reacted. And people kept saying it was God’s will. And he’s like no, its’ not. By the end, I think he’s comes to the understanding that even though he may not believe in God, he understands how others do. And that’s his understanding, and that’s his journey. Maybe there’s some sort of purpose or design here, but I’m not going to change how I am.
CFD: But I think his actions are religious. He acts saintly almost. He has the qualities of all kind of religious figures.
Richie: Correct. Absolutely. By design in a way, but he doesn’t make a big deal of his stuff. He doesn’t linger with his decision. He doesn’t say, ‘I’m not going to take your three rupees because…’ He just doesn’t know. He doesn’t think about it. And even at the end when the lawyer tries to jog his memory, Amal’s like ‘I gotta go.’ He doesn’t care. So, he has a goodness, but that’s a goodness that we ascribe to him. He just doesn’t care.
CFD: What are Amal’s main conflicts? Are they internal conflicts? Is there something he’s striving for beyond what he has?
Richie: No, I think it’s what we said before. The conflict of faith. With the little girl in the hospital, they say, ‘it’s God’s will, it’s God’s will’. And he’s like ‘why does everyone say it’s God’s will? It’s not. I’ve got the money, I’ve given up the rickshaw, you’ll be fine.’ So I think his journey is that, ‘I can control my destiny by doing A, B and C.’ When in fact there are things completely out of his control. And that notion of fate or God or whatever you call it is doing everything it can to protect someone.
CFD: I hope this film is opening doors for you. Do you have any idea on what your next project will be?
Sure. Absolutely, I shot a short in India, while we were doing Amal. And that short is about is about war and chess. And I’m just now finishing the short and expanding it out as well.
