Click to play videoWhen one takes Sir Ben Kinglsey's name in India, the first thing that flashes across peoples' eyes is the image of him as Gandhi, in the film of the same name. That is the power of the actor's cinema. Sir Ben Kinglsey is in the country attending the International Film Festival of India in Goa, and met with CNN-IBN Chief Entertainment Correspondent Rohit Khilnani to talk about his work, Indian cinema and his upcoming projects.
CNN-IBN: Before we talk movies, we would like to know - is India treating you well and are you having a good time?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I have never been to Goa before. As you know, it only achieved independence in 1960 or 1961 from the Portuguese. The people there are very welcoming and there is a lovely warmth which makes things run - not quite smoothly - but enjoyably.
CNN-IBN: How has the festival been so far? Fruitful?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I hope so, but we have to wait and see. Fruitful in the sense that one of my missions here in India is to raise funding for my own project - or projects if that is possible. And whilst I have had some interesting conversations and meetings, one always has to wait a little while and see if it will really kind of bear fruit, so I am a little bit guarded about saying whether it was successful, but I was able to conduct a press conference yesterday (Tuesday) and I was pleased at the level of questions and the level of interest. Also, I did a master class this morning (Wednesday) where I had a moderator and I answered questions - mostly from actors and directors and I was very pleased with that too. There was a curiosity about the acting process rather than a curiosity about my personal life or extraneous things that simply just stop me talking. But questions about career, building a character, my aspirations about the future they were very good. So that is the positive side.
CNN-IBN: Sir, after Gandhi, what has your relationship with India been like?
Sir Ben Kingsley: It's been unrealistic as I have visited - unfortunately - as a tourist and I am not good at being on holiday. I have to participate. It is no good people thinking that I have to be somewhere and relax. It's impossible. The only way I can really fully enjoy myself and be fully alive is either on a film set or in my own home. Because I am not a tourist here and I am here as an actor among filmmakers, producers and investors, I feel, after filming Gandhi and premiering the film in India - which was very, very exciting - I feel since then this is the first time that I am here and it reminds me what it felt like to be a worker. I have come back as a worker and not as a tourist and that feels good. The interim visits have always been somehow dissatisfying simply because I missed the energy and adrenaline and focus of working.
CNN-IBN: Sir, at that rate do you ever go for holidays? Do you ever take time off?
Sir Ben Kingsley: No. I don't really go for holidays. I find that if and when I am traveling, if I have a purpose and a goal and I can participate, then I can enjoy it more. I can't just go and sit and stare at the scene. That doesn't work for me.
CNN-IBN: You have done a body of work and you are still continuing to do a lot of good work, but Gandhi was a character that stuck by you. Are you proud of it or have you moved on?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I think that if I were to be in a car in London and pass some people in a restaurant and if they were to say to me 'see that man there, that is the man who played Gandhi', then I'd be heartbroken. Heartbroken. Thank God it was me and not somebody else. It was me and it's a miracle.
CNN-IBN: Sir, we are going to discuss Teen Patti now. You have done that film with Mr Amitabh Bachchan. How has the experience been with him first of all?
Sir Ben Kingsley: The experience with him was very good. I have noticed that he is quite generous to people who work for him and around him. He was very disciplined on the sets and responded well to the circumstances under which we were filming. We did a very huge amount of work in a very short space of time. I don't know whether that is normal for Indian filmmaking but I would say that in a very short space of time, we probably did 10 days of work. I haven't seen the film yet so I would say that my final judgement of the working relationship between us would have to be then. On the floor working with him and chatting with him was very fine.
CNN-IBN: What was your reason in taking up this project when it was offered to you?
Sir Ben Kingsley: That's a good question. I think that the conditions under which I was asked to work were in a sense difficult, but then in another sense favourable. And the producers and directors did not want me for weeks and weeks and weeks. It was a very compressed space of time, it was filmed in the UK - there were only two main locations, one in London and one in Cambridge - the logistics were well-organised by the British co-producers. When I finally got the script, I liked it. It was nicely written. I liked the character - it is very intelligent, quirky, eccentric. And I like the way that my character - in a sense - in the film is a listener to somebody emptying their soul. He is in a sense one of the main narrators of the film and the bringer in a sense of forgiveness in that he listens to a man in turmoil and says to him ultimately that you are going to have to forgive yourself. And because I could find that line in the film, it made it possible for me to do it. If I could not have found that line through the film, I could not have done it.
But I actually then realised that I was actually playing the listener. I haven't seen the film yet so I might just be completely wrong. But I get the impression reading the script that it is not just some little appearance thrown into the corner of a film, it's actually the role of a listener-narrator that goes all the way through the film and that appealed to me to. In other words, you film in a very shot space of time and then you get a piece of elastic and you stretch it and stretch it and stretch it until it snaps - hopefully it doesn't - and you allow it to occupy the whole film. So that was appealing as well.
CNN-IBN: We hear that the crew was female dominated including your producer and your director.
Sir Ben Kingsley: I have done two films recently before working with Ms (Leena) Yadav and I worked on a film about the Irish troubles in northern Ireland. That was a very male-dominated film, about an examination of male violence and a Canandian lady named Kari Skogland directed the film and seeing the film I realised that she brought the balance to the film. She made it a balanced story. Shortly before that I worked on a film with Penelope Cruz called Elegy and that was directed by a Spanish director called Isabel Coixet, who also operates the camera. This is a film that deals with male vulnerability and it could be seen from one perspective as a very male-dominated sensibility behind the film. My two previous experiences on film allow me to be very welcoming to a female presence behind the camera as I think it brings a balance to the work.
CNN-IBN: This time you have worked with Amitabh Bachchan. You have worked with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan before.
Sir Ben Kingsley: If you blink in my film with Aishwarya Rai, you will miss our wonderful moment together, when she climbs over a wall and I look at her. That's it.
CNN-IBN: Where you come from, how seriously are Hindi films, Hindi cinema, actors like Amitabh Bachchan - who are really big here - taken?
Sir Ben Kingsley: The Indian community from where I come from is considerable. It's a very family oriented community. Amitabh Bachchan is very well known among the Indian diaspora because it's a taste of home, a taste of traditional story-telling, it's an instantly recognisable hero, it probably relaxes them into thinking, 'aah, it's Mr Bachchan so we are fine, we are going to have a good two-three hours'. Now, outside of that, it's not breaking through and I think it is not breaking through because the narrative style has not adjusted or accommodated and there is an absolute preconception of Indian films that they are all Bollywood and they all have to have a song every five minutes and a dance every two minutes. I think if Indian actors can be persuaded more and more to do international films like Monsoon Wedding, possibly Slumdog Millionaire - a beautiful film - and Namesake, then those are remarkably wonderful films. They are freer of the typical family narrative style which is beautiful and serves a purpose but not travel outside the community. Everyone will think about renting Slumdog Millionaire, everyone will think about renting Monsoon Wedding and we need to encourage that crossover more and more because there is an extraordinary wealth of brilliance in India and the acting is so effortless. Indians are very comfortable acting and storytelling and very generous with their acting style. I think we are poised more and more to have more of what you would call crossover films.
CNN-IBN: Now you are venturing into something that has got to do with the Taj Mahal. At this stage what can you tell us about it?
Sir Ben Kingsley: About a week ago after a lot of hard work on my part and the part of the writer, we do have a script. So at least we have that and I like it very much. To really talk to you about it, I would need to explore the character on the film set - his manners, his dynamics, his vulnerabilities. I need to explore and show the audience where he would be hurt most and just like any great drama if history did not create Shah Jehan and Shakespeare would have done, then you know that somewhere in the story, that man is going to be hit by fate in his most vulnerable spot. I believe the script includes this vulnerability and history shows us that he was indeed hit at the worst possible place and at the worst possible time. In order to justify the existence and building of one of the epicenters of love in the world, it cannot be sentimental and it cannot be romanticised. The struggle to understand the love and the pain and grief has to be equal and equivalent to the magnificence of that building. One has to balance the other. So what we have to do is make a story and a film that makes the Taj Mahal still extraordinary, still beautiful, but at the same time understandable. I hope that the audience will say - it is so reckless of me to talk like this because it is still early days - but one hopes that the audience will say, 'well of course he would'.
CNN-IBN: Have you finalised the star cast? There are a lot of rumours floating around that you will be playing Shah Jehan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will be playing Mumtaz.
Sir Ben Kingsley: I haven't really finalised the star cast out of politeness to the rumours and the wonderful people I hope will join the venture, but the script is so new that I honestly don't know who has read it and who hasn't read it. As soon as the script was ready, I flew to Goa hoping to be able to announce it here. My wife Daniella is playing Kandahari, Shah Jehan's first Persian wife and that is because we appreciate her work in Shakespeare and she has a complete grasp of Shakespeare's work in the period and that is a piece of casting that I can announce with complete confidence and that is absolutely of no detriment whatsoever to any other potential cast members. It is just that I have now to be polite and courteous to my proposed cast and say read it first. If you love it, then we got to have a very serious conversation about you doing it.
All the rumours are well-founded in truth. We just need now to join the dots and see that they love the script.
CNN-IBN: Just to join the dots, have you offered the role to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan?
Sir Ben Kingsley: Well, there is nothing to offer. There is just an idea and the idea has been offered to her. She responded very, very enthusiastically which is terrific. Now, we hope very much that she will love the script.
CNN-IBN: The story of Taj Mahal has been told time and again and a couple of films have been made in the past on the subject. How will your film be any different and what kind of an audience are you targeting?
Sir Ben Kingsley: Well, I can't say how the film will be different because I haven't seen the other films so I can't make a comparative analysis. All I can say is what I have just said, that we have to have a cause and an effect. We have to examine the cry and the scream of pain and how it was converted into marble. That's the process we have to explore and beyond that I really don't know. It is in the lap of the gods and we will see. But I am aiming for a worldwide audience.
CNN-IBN: We wish you great luck for that, but before we take your leave, tell us are you enjoying Indian food as well?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I am. I love Indian food. I am a bit lazy at home. I tend to buy my ingredients at the lovely local store in the English countryside and sometimes I am able to get hold of spices but sometimes I just use paste. But I have always loved Indian food. It is great.
CNN-IBN: Sir Ben Kingsley thank you very much. We hope you have a great stay.
Sir Ben Kingsley: Thank you, you have been very gracious. It has been lovely to talk to you.
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