Potter, who has won great acclaim for her film Rage that stars Jude Law, says her visit to the country has been great and she is overjoyed with the response her film received at its screening at the Festival a couple of days back.
“Yes, there were nerves before the screening. One gets nervous when one’s movies move from one culture to another. But I must say that I was happy to see the response the movie got. The audience picked up on every nuance of the humour in the movie, which basically goes to show that the movie has quite an international appeal,” says Potter of her movie Rage.
Rage broke many boundaries through the style in which the film was shot. A schoolboy uses his cellphone camera to shoot intimate interviews with people working at a New York fashion house and secretly posts them on the Internet. This results in a bitterly funny expose of an industry in crisis, during a week in which an accident on the runway becomes a murder investigation, and denial leads to devastation. The film stars Judi Dench, Riz Ahmed, Eddie Izzard and Jude Law who, interestingly, plays a female in the movie.
The current scenario in Bollywood is that of globalization. On one hand, you have A R Rahman creating waves in Hollywood while Akon is joining Bollywood musicians. So, does this mean that cinema all over the world could just become one big industry?
“Not yet. There is still time for it. All that is happening is great. But there is still time for the whole film-making world to be one industry. Bollywood makes more movies than Hollywood and UK put together, and there is a huge market here. But I think people want to see stories that are a reflection of their own struggles and their lives,” says Sally candidly, “And we are still in a situation where each culture, thankfully, is beautifully different than the other. But I think that it is extremely healthy to be curious and in love with something that you are not. You know, to find another culture interesting, enticing, exciting, beautiful… And I think that mutual curiosity and respect for this difference is the basis for a truly international exchange. It doesn’t mean that everything has to become the same – Bollywood, Hollywood.. a great big mixture. I think the more respect there is for difference the more, not only cinemas, but our lives too, will be enriched.”
But while Sally isn’t yet convinced about this synergy of the industries across borders, what she completely backs is Bollywood’s song-and-dance routine that has, for many years, been poked fun at by its Western counterparts.
“First and foremost, let’s not rule out the song and dance. Let’s get used to it! There’s a lot to be said for it, and a lot to be learned from it. I think, sometimes, people might stereotype the musical as being a more lightweight form of entertainment. I’ve always found that the great musicals, right from the early black-and-white work of Guru Dutt, the Kapoor dynasty and so on, are quite extraordinary at all their levels. You can take just the surface level of the music and movement and so forth, but there’s always deeper themes underneath..epic themes. And, I think, that’s a very fantastic way of making films,” signs off the director.
