A Conversation With: Costume Designer Arjun BhasinBy SUJATA ASSOMULL SIPPYPrasad NaikArjun Bhasin.

Arjun Bhasin, a Mumbai costume designer and part-time New Yorker who is famous for infusing Bollywood films with contemporary fashion through his work on “Dil Chahta Hai” and “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara,” has a very busy few months ahead of him, with three international films scheduled for release before the end of the year: “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” “Life of Pi” and “Can a Song Change Your Life?”  India Ink recently spoke with him about transitioning from Bollywood to Hollywood, and about what to expect from the coming films.

Q.

Nearly everyone in the Hindi film industry yearns to make this “crossover” from Bollywood to Hollywood. How did you manage to make this move so quietly and so successfully?

A.

I would not say I crossed over. I just do both. I started out in New York when I went to New York University film school. By the time I returned to India I had already worked on one film called “Swimfan.” [This erotic thriller was released in 2002.] To be completely honest, I actually knew nothing and did not really follow Indian cinema when I did my first Bollywood film, “Dil Chahta Hai.”

Courtesy of 20th Century FoxSuraj Sharma in a poster for the film “Life of Pi,” slated for release later this year.Q.

You seem to have done more international projects than Indian films. Why is this?

A.

I am super-picky, as I give so much time to each film. I love the whole process offilmmaking, so when I take on a project I am on the set for every scene. There are many projects I do not take simply because I do not have the time. Plus, there is so much “parallel” cinema and different types of film happening internationally. Films here take longer to finish, but it is a good time to be back in India as there is now a lot of different cinema happening here.

Q.

When you worked on “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara” and cast the Hermès Kelly as “Bagwati,” did you know you were about to create a fashion phenomenon?

A.

Zoya Akhtar [the director and screenwriter of the film] had written “Bagwati” as a character. She was a lady, a symbol of poshness, and had to have a feeling of being special. So we had to choose a bag that had these elements, and that is how we finally decided on the Hermès Kelly.

Courtesy of Excel EntertainmentFarhan Akhtar, left, Abhay Deol, center and Hrithik Roshan, right, in a still from the 2011 film “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.”Q.

Do you tend to get the more “exotic” and India-centric projects in Hollywood? Both “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “Life of Pi” do have an Eastern flavor.

A.

Yes, many India-centric projects do come my way, but that could have more do with the fact that I live here so much. Maybe if I was in New York more I would get more New York-centric films. I have brown skin, so it’s natural that I will get films more connected to brown skin. Though my first film “Swimfan” had nothing to do with India, and neither does “Can a Song Change Your Life?”

Q.

You have three big films coming up – any iconic fashion moments in these films?

A.

“Life of Pi” is very subtle. Ang Lee [the director] is a very gentle filmmaker, and it also has an academic feel. The breadth of the film is huge, as Tabu [the female lead] goes from Paris in the 1950s to Pondicherry in the 1960s, so it has beautiful backdrops and costumes. “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is interesting as it is a Pakistan-based story being made by an Indian filmmaker [Mira Nair], with an international cast. Kate Hudson is very “fashion” herself, and in this film we have broken away from the Californian blonde stereotype look she has. We have changed everything about her look and transformed her into a cerebral New York girl. I think it will surprise people. “Can a Song Change Your Life?” is the most fashionable, a contemporary film. Its look is a mix of vintage with a street. Keira Knightley [the female lead] is very hip in it. I think this is more of a fashion film.

Courtesy of Mirabai FilmsRiz Ahmed, left, and Kate Hudson in a still from the film “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”Q.

Your sister Niharika Bhasin Khan is now also a costume designer in India, and recently won a National Award for her work in the film “The Dirty Picture.” How does it feel to have your sibling work in the same field?

A.

It is amazing actually. We have very different ideologies and very different styles. I started out at a very young age, while my sister came into films with experience in other fields. I am more repressed and subtle in my approach while Niharika is wacky and out of the box. There is no conflict, as our styles are so different. We would probably never get approached for the same film!

The Mani shots: Baradwaj Rangan on his book of conversations [A shorter version of this Q&A is in the new issue of Time Out magazine]

INTRO: In Conversations with Mani Ratnam, the National Award-winning critic Baradwaj Rangan has engaged the reclusive film director in a deeply reflective series of conversations about his work. A chat with Rangan about the book.

What was your first experience of Mani Ratnam’s cinema in the 1980s?

It was with this rather generic (and morbid) romance called Idhayakoyil, which was about a singer who pines for a lost love. Even Mani Ratnam agrees it’s his worst film. But in the sense of an actual Mani Ratnam movie, in his voice, it was Mouna Raagam.

What did he mean to you as a viewer? Did his films play a part in honing your critical sensibilities?

I think every film you see plays a part in honing “critical sensibilities”, if you want to use so lofty a phrase. There are two types of viewers, those who see a film and forget about it and get on with their lives, and those who carry it home and have it gnawing away at them for various reasons. For me, the real excitement of Mani Ratnam’s early cinema was in finding a voice so close and so much in sync with my own experiences as someone brought up in Madras.

You mention in your Intro that at some point – around the time he made Roja – the “Madras Movie” phase of Ratnam’s career ended and something very different began. Can you elaborate on this?

This was where he stopped making specifically Madras-oriented movies

and moved on to bigger themes, and a more national platform. We tend to slot filmmakers, especially when they do one particular thing so well, and when they try something different, we resist it at first – especially if we are very close to what they did earlier. Some of that is what happened to me (and I suspect to a lot of others) when Roja happened. But this is also when he began to genuinely experiment within the mainstream format. Earlier, the subjects were new and the filmmaking was dazzling, but you wouldn’t call those films experimental films exactly, because they spoke directly to the audience. You laughed, you cried – that sort of thing. But with Iruvar or Dil Se, for instance, there’s a lot of innovation, whether it’s in the way the scenes are structured or the songs are employed. It’s very difficult to push the envelope while still being rooted in the mainstream, and his films in the post-Roja phase  stand out in this regard. They’re almost always interesting films, even if your emotional response to them varied according to your mileage.

How do you feel about his Hindi films vis-a-vis his earlier work?

I’m closer, certainly, to his Tamil work, because that kind of whiplash-smart sensibility no one else had (or has) in their cinema. In Tamil cinema, they depict modern women, for instance, as dressed in the most outlandish Western outfits and so forth. But Mani Ratnam’s cinema had these very ordinary, salwar kameez- and sari-clad women, who were modern in their outlook, in the way they spoke, in the way they dealt with things. He showed that the traditional girl from Madras was not somebody with a ton of jasmine flowers in her well-oiled hair, but someone who was modern in subtle (and not just superficial) ways. This is just one aspect, but I could go on. But I am also a huge fan of, say, Dil Se, which I feel is one of his most underrated works. That stretch in that barren landscape where nothing happens except Shah Rukh and Manisha just talking and getting to know each other is a brilliant bit of mood and dialogue in a mainstream film.

There has been a narrative about Ratnam’s art becoming somewhat “compromised” by commercial dictates after he became a giant. Do you feel there is something to this?

Actually no, because he has always been a commercial filmmaker. It’s not as if he was making Pather Panchali and suddenly woke up one morning and made Guru, so there’s no question of a “compromise” as far as the filmmaking is concerned. But that said, I think people feel this way because of two things. One, they grew up with a certain kind of Mani Ratnam movie and store that away as a nostalgic reference, so they want him to keep making the same kind of films, the kind that

feels like home to them. Two, people have very strange and strong ideas about how such a subject should be made this way only and how songs and dances should not be there and so on.

It’s not as if I feel that every single film of his is a masterpiece. But every single one is certainly a commercial venture, targeted at a large audience, and if you have a problem with the tropes of that kind of cinema, then you shouldn’t be watching his films. Because if you feel Raavan is compromised because of commercial dictates, then you could say Anjali is too, because that’s the story of a differently abled child, and it has all these huge production numbers. It’s his way of telling a story, and that’s never changed. Yes, some films may work and some films may not, but it’s not because of these “commercial dictates”, which has always been a part of his DNA.

He has a reputation for being reticent and not very interview-friendly. How did you get him to participate in such an extended series of conversations?

When I met him first about the book, I just wanted to tell him I was doing a series of essays about his films. But he surprised me by saying: “You like cinema. I like cinema. Let’s just talk and see what happens.” So I guess at some level he wasn’t averse to talking. But still, the first few sessions weren’t easy, because I’m not the most open and friendly of people either. (Which probably explains why I’m able to speak more easily to people on my blog, rather than face-to-face.) The early chapters in the book are somewhat stiff and formal, you’ll see, because my questions were to the point and his responses too were straightforward. But gradually we became comfortable with what we were doing, and the tone of the book broadened. There were times I’d joke with him. There were times he’d get combative. So the book is as much a record of how such a series of conversations unfolded in real time as it is about what we talked about.

Why did you choose to write the book in the Q&A format? And what were the challenges in doing it this way?

I wrestled for a while with other options, but I settled on this format because he’s never talked at this length to anyone before, and it made sense to honour his participation in this project. It’s a terrible thing for a writer to do a book this way, because you have to suppress your writerly vanity and constantly remind yourself that this is not about your writing skills but about the back-and-forth of the conversation. But that said, I do feel that conversational books (as opposed to mere Q and A's; and I hope readers will come away with the impression of having read a series of conversations and not just a set of questions

and answers) come with their own set of challenges. The preparatory work is no different from any other type of non-fiction: you still have to do your research, come up with a list of things the book is going to be about, formulate those into questions, be prepared for accidental discoveries, and so forth. But there’s the problem of catching someone in a mood to answer your questions even when they may not be the most flattering. It’s easy to write a book about someone by talking to those around him and putting facts together, but when you’re talking to the person himself, you have to balance your job as a journalist (i.e. getting the hard facts) and your job as a facilitator (i.e. creating an ambience that makes it comfortable for so reticent a creator to open up, even when your questions are somewhat less-than-complimentary about his work).

Where this type of book becomes easier is in the end, because once you’ve transcribed your recordings, you’re almost there. Though even afterwards, I moved things around, grouping different subjects under different films while still maintaining that “real time” sense. And I removed every trace of incidental emotion. You won’t find a sentence ending with "(he laughs)", for instance. Because I thought the reader should come to their own conclusions about the tone in which the answer was given, which, in some sense, empowers the reader as a “critic”. I wanted them to read into these conversations without me guiding their emotional responses from the sidelines with the writer’s equivalent of a music track.

One of the most enjoyable things about this book is that one gets a sense of Ratnam becoming more comfortable with you over time, and it turning into a conversation between equals. But essentially, the relationship between a director and a critic tends to be fraught and uneasy. At one point, when you make an observation about two songs coming very close together in Guru, Ratnam snarkily says “I think you watch films with a stop-watch”. Was there a certain edge to the discussions throughout? Did this ever impede your interaction?

I’m happy you got “snark” out of this, because someone else told me they found this a joke, as if he was ribbing me. Yes, that kind of emotional graph was built gradually over time. At first, I was a little intimidated, not just because this man was a god to a lot of us way back when, but also because of the fact that I am a critic, and I didn’t want him to think that I was criticizing him so much as asking him why he did this or that. But you can never keep your personal feelings away from art – which is what makes discussions about it so fascinating – and there were times, like when we discussed Roja, where that “edge” did creep in. But by that time, I wasn’t intimidated, and even he –

despite his annoyance with certain things I was asking – had come to know that my questions weren’t accusations so much as coming to grips with certain choices in his films.

You have discussed the making of his films, but also conducted subtextual analysis and made connections between movies that might not, on the face of it, have very much in common. Your own criticism is characterised by indepth, deeply analytical and personal engagement with films – focussing on the tales rather than on the tellers. How did he respond to this?

He is not someone who’s comfortable with subtextual analysis, and I’ve seen (rather, read about) this with many filmmakers. But then, when he discusses some films, you’ll see that he has been thinking far beyond the text, or the image on screen. Different people have different attitudes about how far beneath the surface you dig for meaning (and in my opinion and experience, this is something at a completely subconscious level; I have no control over it), but again, I think he got to know this about me and I got to know that he’s not a fan of what he calls “intellectualisation”, so that was some place we agreed to disagree. Though if you read the conversations carefully you may find that there’s a lot of subtext here too. I think it’s more interesting when two people from slightly differing schools of thought talk about things, otherwise it’s like being in an echo chamber, and there’s no “edge”, as you call it.

In your view, what is Ratnam’s abiding legacy – what is his place in the history of Indian cinema?

He’s still making films, so I don’t know that we should hang an “abiding legacy” on him yet. As for his place in Indian cinema, he is easily one of the most important mainstream filmmakers. You may not have liked this film of his or that one, but no one can deny each one of them has been made to challenge himself and, in some ways, his audience. He’s never made a lazy film in his career. There’s always something exciting, something intriguing in the way he tells his stories. Today, in the multiplex era, we have people making ultra-edgy films for niche audiences, and there is something almost absurdly touching about a single man’s belief that he can carry along huge masses of viewers with spectacle, style and substance.

The venerable Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is finally back on screen this Friday

with "Seven Psychopaths," a darkly hilarious follow-up to his Oscar-nominated

screenwriting and directing debut, "In Bruges."

Like "In Bruges," "Seven Psychopaths" is laced with zany developments, memorable

one-liners and a whole lot of violence. What's different this time is that the locale has

shifted from Europe to the U.S., and that it finds McDonagh working with his biggest

ensemble yet on screen. In "Seven Psychopaths," Colin Farrell plays Marty, a writer

suffering from a major case of writer's block, attempting to complete a screenplay, titled,

you guessed it, "Seven Psychopaths." Two pals, Billy (Sam Rockwell) and Hans

(Christopher Walken), try to help, but Marty finds himself in a tailspin after inadvertently

pissing off a local mobster (Woody Harrelson) when Hans steals his beloved Shih Tzu.

Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko, Gabourey Sidibe, Michael Pitt and Tom Waits round out

the cast.

"It's less a love letter to the writing process than a satire of those obsessed with it," Eric

Kohn said of the film in his review out of Toronto, where it world premiered. "Even if

McDonagh doesn't mean to imply that writing is a psychopathic behavior, the proof is in

the gory pudding."

READ MORE: Toronto 2012: Martin McDonagh's 'Seven Psychopaths' Is a

Gloriously Absurd Satire of the Writing Process

McDonagh sat down with Indiewire in Toronto to discuss his second film outing, working

with the legendary Walken, and why he gives his female characters a hard time.

Just to get it out of the way: Colin Farrell's character shares the same name as

you and he's a writer. Coincidence?

His attitudes towards filmmaking, we share... you know, wanting to do something that's

not just glorifying violence. I was just thinking, "Let's just screw with people's heads a

little bit." It's a fun thing to play around with.

Lately, you seem fascinated with the States. Both this and your latest play, "A

Behanding in Spokane," are set in America. Why the change of scenery?

I've always been writing things set here, they just haven't been quite good enough or

didn't get through or I was working on other stuff. But most certainly in cinema, most of

my favorite films have been American. Probably playwrights too. I was a Mamet fan...

Sam Shepard. As soon as I came to New York with my first play, it just went so well and

every year since it's been fantastic. So I've always had a bit of a love affair with America.

I'm intrigued by the darker aspects too as probably the film showed.

"I've never, luckily, had to play the Hollywood game."

The film revels in the not-so-lovely parts of Hollywood. Did you set out to skewer

that world?

Not so much. I mean, it skewers a type of filmmaking, but maybe not. I've never, luckily,

had to play the Hollywood game. I've never had to do meetings, or be there, or live

there. So I don't have any disdain. As I said, I'm not snooty about American films. I look

at them as they're my first love. Everything from Peckinpah, Malick to Scorsese, De Niro,

and back to Orson Wells. So no, I guess it skewers just a type of filmmaking, but not all

American.

What's your stance on violence in film? The film has some fun with the argument

by being unabashedly violent, while at the same time having the characters

comment on the gruesome acts as they unfold.

I love violence. I mean, I love good films that happen to have violence in them. I would

never really seek out violence for the sake of it. The greatest editing ever was in "The

Wild Bunch" I think. Even something like "The Night of the Hunter" is quite a violent, dark

film. It's classy and it's smart.

Unlike the film's you're referencing, "Seven Psycopaths" is a comedy.

There are killings in the film, but I see it as a big comedy. It's just taking the piss out of

both sides of the argument. You know, this loving, peacenik Marty is just as ridiculous in

some ways as Billy, but I hope by the end with Hans' final story, that Marty's viewpoint

has won out; that there can be peace and love in the world.

It's important to note that "Seven Psycopaths" does feature more women than

your debut. Still though, you give them a pretty short shrift in the film. How did

you land actresses like Gabourey Sidibe, Abbie Cornish and Olga Kurlylenko, for

such small parts?

Gaby was always one scene, so she knew what she was getting into and I think she

knocked it out of the park. She's lovely. Olga and Abbie only had one more scene each

and that was cut, which is a bit of a shame.

There was a whole strand that just kind of slowed everything down and it almost became

more of a love story about Marty and Billy, similar actually to "In Bruges," which is more

about the girlfriend relationship, but then it became, in the editing, all about Brendan

Gleeson and Colin Farrell. I had to write and tell Abbie that. She was fantastic in these

two other scenes that were quite emotional and sad, but she came to see it and she

loved it because she loves the film so much and that's kind of a testament to how cool

she is.

The reason I bring this up is there's a line about how women in films of this nature

are totally disposable.

Even looking at the script even with the other scenes cut in, it's still a film about boys

with guns and at that point in the film, all of the things that Marty didn't want to be

around. So he needed Christopher Walken's character to skewer both me, the film, and

puncture Colin's bullshit about that too.

Not every screenwriter would skewer himself in his own movie.

But, you still kind of get away with murder because you've done that.

About Walken, what's it like working with him? This marks your second time

together following "A Behanding in Spokane" on the Great White Way.

It's like a dream. Doing the play, you have an idea that maybe we should send it that

person, never dreaming they'd read it or it would get through or whatever else. Most

days on set, you'd get in the morning and you'd be talking to Chris and give him a little

bit of direction and you'd go and pinch yourself, "Oh my God Christopher Walken's in my

film!" Even now, seeing him appear in the room, he's a god, a crazy beautiful American

icon. Maybe it's because we did the play together that he kind of trusted more to just go

with the dialogue, but his cadence, his way of delivering a line is almost poetic.

Did you write for him initially?

No, it dates back around eight years, the script. So, it was written just after "In Bruges,"

but before "In Bruges" was made.

"In Bruges"

So why did you choose to make "In Bruges" first?

There was too much scope to this that as a first-time filmmaker, I don't think I would've

been able to get my head around it. The size of the cast, the flashbacks, the cinematic

aspects of it were beyond me at the time. "In Bruges" is three characters, one town; it

was almost more like three guys talking.

This was jumping around in time and backstories and stories within stories, car chases,

and gunfights. Even just looking at the two scripts before I'd made them, I knew I would

fuck this up if I did this first. But after "Bruges" was made, I felt like it's still going to be

almost beyond me, but I had to give it a go. I couldn't have given it over to someone

else. I'm happy with what's up there.

Do you see yourself writing a screenplay and actually giving it over to another

director?

I'd always have to take care of it. Like with plays even, I've never directed a play in my

life, but you've got so much control over them, like a word can't be changed without your

approval, no one can be cast without your approval either and you can always be in the

rehearsal room every single day. Whereas a screenwriter in the mix of Hollywood is like

the lowest of the low and has no power.

"I think in my heart I'll always be a writer, who happens to direct."

I thought about at one point, because I've got a backlog of two or three scripts that I

know I'll never get around to. I was thinking about going down that path, but I came to

the realization that I'm just too much of a control freak to ever see a bad version of that

film script. So I'll always stick to doing them myself, I think.

With regards to film, what are you first and foremost: a writer or a director?

I think in my heart I'll always be a writer who happens to direct. I've always been proud

of being a writer and what that entails, what it means. Directors get away with murder,

but I'm proudest of being a writer, I think. Almost the whole thing of becoming a director

was not letting someone screw up a good script. And even when I'm directing, I have to

force myself into the visual aspects of it at a later stage. The story doesn't flow in

images, it flows in characters and what they're saying and that's a whole other aspect

that I always have to learn each time.

Whereas it's so free and easy with the language and characters that most of my job with

directing is making it clear why that character's saying that at that particular time, and

giving the actors as much ammunition as they need to go off and nail it. As opposed to

trying to come up with motivations and that stuff, I'm not that kind of director. It's almost

more getting them cleanly into the words.

I still don't know what to make of Abbas Kiarostami's Japanese production, Like Someone in Love. After being very powerfully flummoxed by it in Cannes—part opacity, part deflection—I revisited it at the New York Film Festival and found no questions answered: perhaps as pleasant an experience as the initial bafflement. I still find it fascinatingly opaque—a word I return to again and again in regards to the film—and, I believe, fundamentally unresolvable. Also, it is quite permeable, which for me is a welcome shift when compared to the hermetic-feeling gamesmanship of Certified Copy (something many, like Michael Sicinski, found an incredibly positive aspect).

I had the chance to sit and talk briefly, all too briefly, with Kiarostami in New York, in a delightful conversation beautifully translated by Massoumeh Lahidji.

DANIEL KASMAN: I was wondering if we could start with a detail in the film I wanted to discuss. There's a moment after the old man switches off the light in the apartment where you cut to the him and the young woman the next day driving in a car. The soundtrack we hear is no longer just diegetic sound—there's a very quiet piece of what sounded liked an electronic drone or ambient music.

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI: It's interesting because yesterday evening at the screening I was telling my translator how much I liked this moment of sound, because it is not diegetic but at the same time it says something about the inner state of the characters. This is the sound of a happy morning. Of when you can feel satisfaction or happiness or something, some kind of joy on the man's face, also the way the clouds reflect on the windshield. But there is also something of the sound that carries some individual joy.

KASMAN: It strikes me as unusual if not exceptional for you to...I'm not sure how to phrase it...editorialize like that? Step into the movie and almost make a comment on the characters? Usually, my impression with your films is that kind of assessment is left up to the audience.

KIAROSTAMI: Well, I wouldn't say so. I think a good soundtrack or even good music is nothing but a way of empathy for the audience. You're not pushing; it's not advice, it's not guidance. It's just empathy. It suggests in a very smooth way that the film can say it's always “about.” I think I always do that, I always show empathy. Just giving a hint of this morning in which the surrounding sounds are there—it's not that they're not there—but you are in a kind of “numb” feeling, as if your ears were plugged because you are in your inside world rather than with your environment.

KASMAN: Moving from sound to image: in The Taste of Cherry, that movie's turn, at its end, from film to video was a kind of exclamation point or a radical shift within the film. Now with Certified Copy and this new feature, you're regularly shooting fictional features digitally. Does shooting these features on video mean something different to you now?

KIAROSTAMI: It's a good question because it makes me have to make this clear distinction between what's really essentially digital and what's not in my body of work. I think digital filmmaking is a state of mind. Even before the tools existed, it was my conception of filmmaking, I was ready for it. And then it came and it made some films possible that I wouldn't be able to make if I were still working on film, like Five [Five Dedicated to Ozu] or Ten—I wouldn't be able to make them otherwise. But at the same time I wonder, because with The Taste of Cherry, for instance it could be one or the other. Or the last two films that I made, in the way that the mise en scène and the lighting and everything's been prepared and conceived by me, they could have been perfectly made with film. So, I would make this distinction saying that there are some films that are really essentially and by definition digital, like Five or Ten or some video art that I've made that you haven't seen yet. And some others, like the last two, could have been made with film or digital cameras. Digital filmmaking is a specific way of filmmaking, in which you are free, you are totally free of every kind of constraint. Whereas when you work on a Japanese film, even if you have a digital camera—even if you have a phone, a cell phone as a camera—digital doesn't make any sense. It's the same as if working in 70mm, because the Japanese have so many principles. The frame in which you work is so rigid that the camera doesn't make the difference, it's the spirit in which you work.

KASMAN: So the milieu and traditions of the Japanese crew dramatically effected the way Like Someone in Love was made?

KIAROSTAMI: It didn't effect my film, because I have a Japanese side myself, but I wonder if it would have been possible for someone else. It wouldn’t have been easy for someone with a different state of mind. But I like discipline and I like their way of being, so I could get along with it. It's quite interesting to give you an example. For instance, when I have a Japanese photographer team coming for just one single portrait, and I'm supposed to meet them at 4 at the hotel, I come back at 2:30 and see some people, some

lights and everything in the lobby and think maybe it's for me. But now, it's an hour and a half early, so it can't be them, so I go up and rest and when I come down at 4 it is them and they've been ready for hours. So they work under such pressure, with such discipline, with so many stiff rules that while they've invented the digital tool they are not at peace enough with it to acknowledge it and take advantage of it. I think it takes many generations. Maybe after a hundred years there will be a generation that will actually take for granted the fact that it gives them some freedom. At the moment, this is not the case yet. I've never seen such hard working people ever, anywhere in the world. This freedom and lightheartedness the digital tool gives you is something they've not considered yet.

KASMAN: Would you say that's an atmosphere that effected the direction of the story?

KIAROSTAMI: No, it didn't really effect anything. They didn't change or have any direct suggestion on anything. I was the one who had to admit that things were as they were, that there was such accuracy that I had to respect it, and I did. But I was okay with it, again, because it's a part of my way of working, too.

KASMAN: Correct me if I'm wrong, from what I remember from your previous instances of filmmaking, when you're directing actors, say in a shot, reverse-shot sequence in a car, the actors are not talking to another another but rather are talking to you: a shot of a woman talking to an off-camera character is in fact talking to you on set.

KIAROSTAMI: Yes.

KASMAN: What is it like, now, making movies overseas where you are no longer talking to actors in your own language?

KIAROSTAMI: That was the best way for me to see them, and with this film it was a great lesson to see if what you think is your method, your way of doing things, can be changed. It's not the best way and at least not the only way. I thought I had to work like this and once it was made impossible, I let things happen differently. And they did work. I must say, the way I worked with these two actors, sitting them in front of each other, was the easiest experience I've had in actor directing in my whole career. Because I would really go and sit beforehand and give them the minimal instruction I think they needed and then...just let them do. I was like a soccer manager. There was nothing I could do while the game was going on, I was just sitting there on the bench watching them do it and maybe see them before or after but not in the middle. This minimal intervention of me as a director was really a benefit.

KASMAN: On this particular film, you directed actors differently, shooting the conversations proceeded differently?

KIAROSTAMI: Yeah, they didn't need all these tricks that I had to use in my old films, my Iranian films.

KASMAN: Nevertheless, for the majority of the conversations between characters, you are still separating the actors in their own frame, rather than letting them talk to each other in a two shot.

KIAROSTAMI: That comes from the fact that I'm loyal to reality. In reality, when you're having a one-on-one conversation you only see one person. Now, I can see the two of you [me and the translator] because I'm the third one, so of course if I have a third person I have a two shot. But if I have two people talking to each other, what you see is the person in front of you, you don't see yourself.

KASMAN: What is it like interacting with the actors when you are constructing characters who are so opaque? We are constantly having to guess who these people are, what they're thinking, what they're doing. I would think it would be difficult to evoke this from actors, that they might share a vagueness, confusion, a guessing that the audience also feels.

KIAROSTAMI: Well, you know, regardless of how the characters are, I never give any instruction, I never give them the whole script, because I know otherwise the actors will begin to anticipate, to give clues on what is coming next. So I only give them the pages they're going to act the next day. I never give them any explanations, it doesn't matters what their specificities are, they are not given any clue in general. I think there is nothing more harmful than an actor than extra information, unnecessary information.

KASMAN: Speaking of necessary and unnecessary information, I'd love you to talk about the opening sequence, which struck me so strongly in Cannes and struck me again when I saw it here. It really is one of the most beguiling, mysterious opening series of shots I've seen. Because of the angle you've chosen, because of the sound design, because of the blocking, I'm not clear what I should be looking at or what I should be listening to, but I'm constantly looking and listening. There's this feeling of disorientation and curiosity that I think sustains itself through the whole film, but is most strong and poignant in this opening.

KIAROSTAMI: With both the opening and the ending sequences, through even after the writing process and all the way through shooting the film I was really wondering if they were appropriate. “Appropriate” means not that they're not only good—because I was sure they were a good way, in my taste, of opening the film—but “appropriate” means if it's acceptable for the audience. Something not too unusual for people to get it or to follow. Openings are difficult, you can tell from novels: if you go and check people's libraries you can see plenty of books whose first ten pages have been read and the rest are brand new and untouched. So openings are difficult, very often people leave after the beginning because they are disconcerted and they can't get into it. I finally decided to stick to it, although I knew it could be difficult and some people like you could appreciate it and consider it a good way to start the film, some others might feel uncomfortable for the whole film because of the way it started. But again, I knew it was faithful to reality—the story had already started. When you overhear a conversation in a cafe, things have started before you hear them, and you aren't sure where you're going and you still have to

catch up with reality, and that's how I wanted the spectator to feel. Even for the mise en scène of that sequence, I knew that the more it goes, the more I don't like cuts, I don't like edited sequences in which the camera goes and finds the person, the person who the character is supposed to talk to. They must come to the camera, the camera is not supposed to go and find them. So I decided to have this [empty] chair and have the pimp's jacket on the chair so we'd know this is the chair where people would come. And the people would come one after another to have a conversation with the main character. All these aspects I was conscious of, I knew it was maybe a bit disconcerting; again, it's unusual. But I find it right for a conversation and a story that had started before us. When you are overhearing, when you are being indiscreet, you cannot ask people to come and explain to you. You are putting the parts together to see what's happening. ■