Shekhar Kapur Interview: Director of Elizabeth & Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Shekhar Kapur keeps movie lovers on our toes, as one of the most eclectic film directors working in cinema today. He's at home in his native Indian film capital Bollywood, making superhero movies like Mr. India, or crafting Academy Award winning European and Hollywood fare like Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age with Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush. Kapur effortlessly switches gears between making acclaimed historical dramas, to writing science fiction, like his next movie - a sci-fi drama called Paani - exploring futuristic battles over fresh water rights on Earth.

During my Skype chat with Shekhar Kapur, we discussed how James Cameron used technology to make Avatar a transformational motion picture, how much he loves science fiction, the instructional way he used comic books as a boy to absorb literature, and how it influenced him to become both a comic book company founder, and a comic book writer himself as an adult.

Can you remember watching your first movie as a child and what that meant to you?

The first movie I ever watched was Tarzan. I remember being kind of awestruck about not only what was happening to me, but I was completely awestruck about what was happening to everyone around me. It was the idea that something happening on screen could affect me emotionally, and transport me to another world. That was fascinating to me. It was a fascination to be completely transported to another world. It's what's been fascinating me about film ever since. In fact, you know right up to Avatar now, that's really what film does, it transports you to a different world. It makes you live in that different world, and believe in that world. You start to relate to it yourself and find yourself in a different world. That was fascinating.

It's the total overall experience, not just one thing about it.

Yes, completely... completely.

Were you encouraged to pursue your dreams in the arts? Did you have discouragement from family, friends or get any criticism?

Well, I went on to become an accountant. Middle class Indian boys must either become accountants, lawyers, doctors or now computer engineers. So I went off to London to be an accountant. In the USA it would be called a CPA, in the UK it's a chartered accountant. I started off by being a chartered accountant. I completed my degree, then came back home to India. I came home to see my father shaving. He saw me in the mirror and said, "What the hell are you doing here?" I said I'm back here. I'm going to give up accounting, and turn to movies. I was 24 or 25 at that time. My dad just looked at me, and then the whole family got together wondering if I had a heartbreak. I told them it was just what I wanted to do. The next day I took a train to Mumbai, which was where all the movies were made. I did consider pursuing that in London, but somehow I thought I needed a complete break, so I came back to India to do it.

Right. Sort of a true disconnect from that and going back to your roots?

Yes, completely.

You've said how much you enjoy comic books. What are some of your favorite titles and why?

I got to know literature through comic books as a kid. I was a big fan of Captain Marvel and at that time Superman, or even Archie, any comic book. I would devour them all. There was another thing. My father tried very hard to get me to read the classics, and I would not. I have since discovered I probably have ADD or something, a reason or an excuse as to why I don't read, but I could not finish a novel. So what he started to do... he gave me, remember there was a comic book series called Classics Illustrated?

Yes, I had many myself!

Yes. I was inundated with classics through them. It did encourage me to tell stories through pictures. That's what it really did. It was a first fascination with comic books that made me want to go into the visual arts, to tell stories through pictures. I still do that. I still write comic books because of that.

Yes, you still do write your own comic books to this day?

Yes, I do. I was a founder of a company called Virgin Comic Books. I'm no longer involved with that company now, but I wrote three comic books for them... (unintelligible)... a version... It's like taking the Bible and projecting it into the future like 300 years from now. The story of the bible is retold with the same characters, but in science fiction. It's actually fascinating. How would you tell the Bible in science fiction? It'd be interesting. You'd probably get assassinated! But that's not the point. The point would be to try to do that.

Right. It would be controversial, but what an epic thing to do.

Yes, because that's one thing that's always going to be true. Whenever we find a god, we will crucify him, because we can not handle a god that lives... because a god that lives actually mirrors ourselves, and that's impossible. We give them sainthood by killing them off. So a god that is dead and has gone into sainthood, and has become mythology is easier to handle.

There's huge buzz on Avatar and how it changes movies, or movie making. What does Avatar mean to you - if anything - in terms of cinema evolution. In a broader sense, what does the rise of 3D and other technology mean to you as a filmmaker? Is it just a big epic movie?

No. I think it's much more than just a big epic movie. The biggest criticism of Avatar has been that it's predictable... that the script is predictable. However, film criticism has come to a point where you don't have a choice. If it's not predictable, most critics will say, 'We didn't get it. Nobody got it. It's a silly film.'

Too esoteric?

Right. Too esoteric. If it is predictable, they'll say it's predictable. In fact, we will not relate to storytelling unless it's predictable. Ultimately every story that we tell only has 2 to 3 possible endings. If you go beyond those endings, we don't consider it a story, because all stories are moral tales. You can't have the story of the princess and the frog, and in the end have the frog not turn into the princess and it happily croaked and went away forever. You don't have a story. You essentially say, "What's the story?" You're saying what's the moral of the story, what's the core conflict? It's how you do it... how surprising you make the ending. So, I don't buy that criticism of Avatar. Yes, it's a little predictable. Within that predictability, the ideas that are there, and the way it's done, and the beauty of the film. The beauty is not unnecessary beauty. It's not like Hitchcock having a beautiful girl with her cleavage because it's cinematic, because it's a sensual medium, and you wouldn't probably care if the woman wasn't beautiful or a star. But the beauty of Avatar isn't trivial. It's so necessary to making that utopia in the story. I think that Avatar is a beautiful film! That's part of cinema. It makes you recognize a sense of beauty. It made me yearn for that sense of beauty. Therefore it's a very successful film. If a film can make you yearn, it's going beyond just telling the story.

What about the tech ofAvatar - the3D digital breakthroughs James Cameron made with the film making process?

Avatar is really the first big film that didn't use 3D as a trick. Normally 3D is used to come out of the screen towards you, what James Cameron did with Avatar, he brought you into the screen. He did the complete opposite of what most people do with 3D. If you go to see most 3D movies, all the kids go, You get scared... it's all like a big joy ride.

It's ultimately sort of gimmicky - just very tricky?

Gimmicky and tricky, interesting, everybody loves it. However with Avatar, I think there was only one shot in the whole film where something seemed to come out of the screen at you. Most of the whole film was inviting you into the screen. What Cameron did with his 3D, he encouraged us and invited us to come into this Utopian world to live within a Utopian world. In that he was very successful, and 3D really really helped in that. He opened a door for us and we went in. So once again, I'm reasserting what I said earlier, yes of course the story was a little predictable, but he made you want to live in that world. I've tried to watch Avatar in 2D, it's just not the same experience. I haven't seen the other big hit 3D movie, Alice In Wonderland, from Tim Burton's. Let's see if that's as successful.

Can you talk about Larklight? Is it still a go are you still attached to the project?

No. I'm not attached to Larklight anymore.

So the Larklight project just fell through?

A lot of times you keep working at it... the script. Then you're busy elsewhere. You keep working on the script where everybody will say yes to it. If it doesn't then it kind of just disappears, because everybody else gets interested in other things.

Why sci-fi? What basically attracts you to science fiction?

In sci-fi you create a world that you can imagine, and you explore a philosophy. It's the most philosophical storytelling medium there is in ways. By exploring the future, you project the present.When I was doing Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), and everybody wanted to replicate history. I called everyone together and said, "Imagine we're not doing history, imagine we're doing science fiction. Now design the film. Now write the story." I think you can do the same with history, provided you do not take the written history as an absolute, because even written history is an interpreted history. It's just that someone wrote it, and therefore it became absolute.

Shekhar Kapur is finishing his screenplay for Paani. He starts filming the sci-fi drama/musical in October 2010.