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feature in focus
IN THE
From Bangladesh to Brick Lane. DP Robbie Ryan on capturing the contrasts for the film version of Monica Ali’s bestseller
T
idyllic picture of Bangladesh village life for the opening scenes of Brick Lane.
In Sarah Gavron’s big screen directorial debut, adapted from Monica Ali’s bestseller, these sequences depict the blissful teenage life of Nazneen before it is touched by tragedy, and changed irrevocably by an arranged marriage to an older man living in the eponymous street in the East End of London.
“We shot that in India rather than Bangladesh,” Ryan
admits, “but it’s
such a contrast of environments that
you don’t have to
do too much with it.
Even though she’s
meant to have a
pretty depressing
life in Britain, Sarah wanted to make the
grim stuff not feel so grim.
“A lot of British films tend to be gritty and miserabilist, but what Sarah was trying to do was show that there can be beauty in both places.”
Working with the Panavision Millennium camera, Ryan shot the film on a mixture of ETERNA 250D and ETERNA 500T, which came into their own in that 10-day spell in Asia at the end of the shoot, where the colours came alive.
“The colours are fantastic,” Ryan enthuses. “The greens are just stun- ning, the vegetation’s amazing, every- thing conspires to be beautiful over there. The light is very different to how it is here. Every element of India is mind boggling for the senses; you haven’t got enough time to take it all in. I loved it. I want to go back and make a film there.”
Back in dear old Blighty, one of the challenges the production faced was avoiding the controversy Ali’s novel attracted. The more incendiary
here seems something quite aptforaDPtoshootin India during Diwali, the Festival of Light. It was at this time, a little over a year ago, that Robbie Ryan found himself capturing an
aspects of the book have been toned down considerably, so that the film is a poignant meditation on love, loyalty and finding your identity, which for some is a political journey, for others a somewhat more personal one.
For Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee), her two daughters and husband Chanu (Satish Kaushik) this quest means enthusiastically taking in the sights of their adopted home city of London. For Ryan, this meant film- ing the changing of the guard one sweltering summer Sunday outside Buckingham Palace.
“They change the guard twice a day, and people were saying it would be difficult to get close to it so we decided to go for the bit where the
guards approach the gates. It was fantastic; you can walk right beside these guys on horseback; they don’t touch you and you don’t touch them. We were all set up with a rickshaw rig get-
ting ready to go, following this Asian family beside the Queen’s guards.
“The rig is like a horse carriage, a very low and small version in which somebody pulls you along in. It’s good for quick, moving stuff. We didn’t have steadicams that day; they can take time, so we decided to go with the rickshaw. It works well because you get loads of shots.”
Filming alongside the Palace, Ryan and his crew quickly came to realise that they were causing quite a stir.
“Satish is a very famous comedy actor in India, and because a lot of the tourists who go to Buckingham Palace are Indian they were all over him. He was baking hot, sitting there with a white hankie on his head, and all these people were queuing up to get his autograph. So it was like the Queen was in Buckingham Palace, and the King was sitting outside!”
Nazneen’s journey of self discov- ery is sparked by a relationship she develops with Karim (Christopher
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