BLACK NARCISSUS
HOW THE BBC ADAP OF BLACK NARCISSUS IS GETTING THINGS IN ORDER.
Gave Gemma Arterton a multiple-choice quiz on her role in a Himalayan convent; “Nun of the above,” she said.
Based on Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 psychological melodrama Black Narcissus has long been part of the film-classic canon. Starring an unforgettable Deborah Kerr, it’s a uniquely heady brew of repressed love, simmering Gothic eroticism and the crumbling of the Christian colonial project, all brought to vivid life by Jack Cardiff’s Oscar-winning Technicolor photography.
You can understand, then, why writer Amanda Coe (The Trial Of Christine Keeler) was somewhat reticent about the prospect of a new adaptation. “My initial response was: the film’s a masterpiece, so why would you create that problem for yourself?” she recalls. “But once I’d read the book, I could see the case for it. The film was made at a different time – ethnicity wasn’t treated very respectfully – and it’s a fantastic world, so I was excited about tackling it. This version is interested in how place defines and forms you. It’s also a parable about the dangers of ‘othering’, of making oneself exalted at the expense of cultures outside. Those concerns are omnipresent.”
The BBC three-parter stars Gemma Arterton as Sister Clodagh, who’s sent by Mother Dorothea (Diana Rigg, in one of her final screen performances) to establish a convent school in the Himalayan Palace of Mopu. The palace is a former harem, gifted to the order by General Toda Rai (Kulvinder Ghir), a man desperate to erase the misdeeds of his father and the haunting tragedies that took place there. The sisters, among them Aisling Franciosi’s troubled Ruth, are largely met with indifference; then into this powder keg saunters Mr. Dean (Alessandro Nivola), a tea planter and the General’s agent, as well as local village girl Kanchi (Dipika Kunwar, in the role originally and unfortunately taken by Jean
Simmons), each a catalyst for the nuns’ descent into madness.
IN THE NAME OF GODDEN
There is some continuity with the 1947 version. Like Powell, debut director Charlotte Bruus Christensen (DoP on
A Quiet Place and Fences) filmed the interiors at Pinewood and honoured some of Cardiff’s most iconic shots. In addition, one of the ADs is Rumer Godden’s great-granddaughter, while executive producer Andrew Macdonald (Trainspotting, Devs) is the grandson of Emeric Pressburger himself.
“It was an idea that came up in a meeting with the BBC,” Macdonald explains. “I said: ‘There’s nobody else who can do that!’ It was quite tricky in terms of the family – some weren’t too keen. Rumer Godden’s family were very keen, though, because she famously hated the film. They wanted more of her story in it.”
As TF wanders around the palace set at Pinewood, the décor and detail offer
a telling contrast between the ascetic lives of the nuns and the dangerous, loaded opulence of their surroundings. A former bathhouse is being used as a laundry: basic rope beds, Bibles and a discarded wimple look especially strange in this environment of gold leaf, incense holders and some pretty fruity murals. The sense of something slightly off is palpable.
“Clodagh is really struggling,” explains Arterton. “Her true self is this wild, impulsive romantic - but she shuts down all those sides of her by joining the order, until Nepal starts to reawaken her true self. Mopu reminds her of Ireland, where she was raised, the beauty of the place gets under her skin and her control crumbles. Kanchi
‘CLODAGH IS STRUGGLING. HER TRUE SELF IS WILD, IMPULSIVE, ROMANTIC’
GEMMA ARTERTON
is a reminder of her younger self and both Ruth and Mr. Dean challenge her, so she starts to unravel.”
“Through the isolation and suppressed sexuality, as well as having all the things she’s good at taken from her, Ruth starts to feel very lost and jealous,” adds Franciosi. “In this religious order where you’re stripped of your identity for this blind faith, the psychological effects are profound. When I realised the film was so iconic and beautiful, I was a little nervous, but an actor always has choices to make.”
SHORTS NOTICE
Nivola came across the film when Martin
Scorsese suggested his wife, actorXxxx Emily Mortimer, should watch it in preparation for her part in 2010’s Shutter Island. This new interpretation presented unexplored opportunities for a character he remembered more for his outfit than his personality.
“I vaguely remembered a guy in very short shorts on a three-foot-high pony!” He laughs. “Our script grappled with the things Mr. Dean represented in the book: he was traumatised by World War 1, became disgusted with British imperialism and checked out of western society to move to a place where all these different cultures could live in harmony. The incursion of this British brand of Christianity felt in opposition to what he’d come to appreciate about the place. He’s a mirror to Clodagh, as they’ve both had their hearts broken and try to avoid it happening again, in different ways.”
While most interiors were shot at Pinewood, the series benefited hugely from a week of filming in the Himalayas. The effects of altitude sickness and the thin atmosphere were compensated by the experience of being together in the mountains, staying in a trekkers lodge and eating at “Yakdonalds”.
“It made you feel alive,” says Arterton. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, and that’s a huge part of why the nuns unravel: the godliness of the place actually makes them start to question God. When we came back to Pinewood, it was invaluable to have that in mind. It was magic.” Gabriel Tate
BLACK NARCISSUS AIRS ON BBC ONE AND IPLAYER THIS MONTH.