LIFE & TIMES: Grace of Monaco, Guru and The Wolf of Wall Street.

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

Cinema has since time immemorial been obsessed with one subject or another, one genre or another. There was a period in Hollywood when I saw a series of war films, like Battle of the Bulge, Von Ryan’s Express, Where Eagles Dare and so on. Then there were movies on the Nazi atrocities, then there were period pieces. On Shakespeare’s plays, on horror, on murder mysteries …

It is now time for biopics. We saw one on Tamil Nadu’s Silk Smitha, essayed with panache by Vidya Balan. The film went overboard though. It presented a rather lopsided image of Smitha, a soft porn star, but importantly a victim of circumstance, a victim of male insensitiveness. 

We saw Mani Ratnam’s Guru on the life, times and struggle of Dhirubhai Ambani – who rose from the streets to many, many floors above them. Of course, Ratnam did not admit that this was a biopic, but those who saw Guru could just not miss the striking similarity between the real and the reels.

I am now told that the stage is all set for another biopic, this time on Shakeela – considered by some as Smitha’s successor. Shakeela told the media recently:

“Those who read my autobiography in Malayalam felt that it gave a truthful account of my life. My friends suggested that I make a move out of it as not many will have the time and patience to read a book. I’ve acted in all the four south Indian industries, and have done films in the north as well. So, I thought it would be apt to make the movie in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi.”

The yet-to-be-titled project will be directed by debutant Babu K Thirumalai. He averred that they would be shooting the film with a different cast in each of the five languages. “Like how Vidya Balan played Silk Smitha in Bollywood, we are looking at top-rung heroines for our movie as well. Shakeela will be present with us throughout the shooting, and give her inputs. An official announcement will be made in a couple of weeks.”

It appears that outside the country too, there is a biopic wave. We just saw The Wolf of Wall Street, based on the story of an American stockbroker, Jordon Ross Belfort. Fascinatingly narrated, the movie told us how Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) rose and fell – right into prison, where he stayed for 22 months, charged with financial fraud.

In May, Cannes will open with Grace of Monaco, on the painful transition of Hollywood star Grace Kelly from being a darling of the masses to a sedate homemaker in the palace of Monaco as the wife of Prince Rainier III. Two more gripping biopics have just come. One is on the celebrated French fashion designer, Yves Saint Laurent – who was well known for his stylish clothes as he was for his range of incredible perfumes. At the centre of this film, Yves Saint Laurent, is the relationship that the gay designer shared with his business partner, Pierre Berge. He once said, “You have the talent, and I will take care of the rest.” The chord was struck and a wonderful relationship began.

While Saint Laurent was regarded as one of the greatest names in fashion history, Berge was the numbers man – quite akin to Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. Merchant was the business genius (who could, I am told, get men to work for free with a sumptuous meal he prepared) and Ivory was the creative guy, and together they made some marvellous cinema. Merchant did try stepping behind the camera, but what he made disappointed many of us. And after he died a few years ago, Ivory looks all lost. Some partnerships are the very lifeline of creativity.

Laurent is credited with pulling couture out of the ashes in the 1960s, and also with giving a respectable stamp to pret-a-porter. He gave women their first tuxedo suit, and was known for using non-white models. Laurent began his career by becoming the assistant to Christian Dior, another great Parisian fashionista, later taking over the empire after Dior died. It was later that Berge and Laurent created their own brand and firm, Yves Saint Laurent. Whose perfumes are as mesmeric as the clothes they design.

Directed by Jalil Lespert, the movie begins with Laurent’s death in 2008 and travels on a flashback mode with the young man leaving the land of his birth, Algeria, to arrive in Paris. Berge is still alive, and he co-operated with Lespert, parting with Laurent’s original sketches and even his glasses. The film has a glamorous look with Paris’ ancient bridges over the Seine bathed in moonlight — and whole city looking so ethereal.

Ralph Fiennes’ biopic on Charles Dickens, titled The Invisible Woman, is another work.  Fiennes himself acts as Dickens. Like any writer, Dickens was a lonely man — whose engagement with actors was about the only social interaction of his. Described by one critic as the rock of the Victorian era, he was more popular than the Queen of England, and his books were the pinnacle of that age.

Nelly was Dickens’ muse. Her gushing admiration for him first attracted Dickens to her, and he began a secret love affair with her, fully aware of what that relationship with an underage girl could lead to. Based on Claire Tomalin’s 1990 biography of the same name, The Invisible Woman has Felicity Jones essaying Nelly.

* Gautaman Bhaskaran has been writing on Indian and world cinema for over three decades, and may be e-mailed at gautamanb@hotmail.com)