“Calcutta changed my world”

Claire McCarthy draws up a complex portrait of Calcutta in her debut feature film, writes Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi

“You’d never survive a day in the slums of Calcutta.” This rather random taunt from their mother sent Sydney director Claire McCarthy and her younger sister to the streets of Calcutta in 2003. And it was here that the first ideas for her debut feature film, The Waiting City, germinated.

The city is not only the primary location of the film—making it the first Aussie feature shot entirely in India—but also plays a major role driving and transforming the lives of the two protagonists. An Australian couple, Ben (Joel Edgerton) and Fiona (Radha Mitchell), arrive in Calcutta to collect their adopted baby. Delays with the adoption agency mean that must wait there for days and succumb to the chaos and magic of the city that drives them to confront deeply buried differences as well as their core belief systems.

The ways in which the city transforms the couple is quite close to McCarthy’s own experience. “Calcutta opened my eyes to a lot of things, partially also because of the volunteer work we did with Mother Teresa’s sisters,” she recollects. “That experience cracks you open. You meet people you would never otherwise meet and see things you would never otherwise see. Calcutta changed my world.”

During that first visit, McCarthy made a documentary film about her and her sister’s experience with the Missionaries of Charity sisters and the way that the experience transformed them. “There were so many contradictions in the work we were doing. There was always a great paradox—with great sadness and poverty, there was also great beauty. We saw life and death so openly,” she says.

During this time, McCarthy also became privy to the highly emotional process of adoption and started interviewing couples who had adopted children. “I started to collate those interviews and find threads in those stories. This film is an intersection between truth and fiction.”

To maintain what McCarthy calls the “poetic realism” of the film, she used many non-actors as well as real locations. The film starts off in the generic looking airport and a five star hotel. However, as Fiona and Ben travel around the city and to its rural outskirts to understand the place from which their adopted daughter, Lakshmi comes, the drama and chaos of the city unfolds. “Claire is just so ballsy to even have the idea to come to Calcutta and shoot in the train station, and shoot in the street, take over the airport,” Radha Mitchell says in an interview for the production notes.

In McCarthy’s hands, Calcutta is no mere exotic locale to tell an emotional tale on overdrive mode. Rather, the complex character of Calcutta itself unfolds—through its people, its festivals and the music.

Krishna (Samrat Chakrabarti) who acts as a guide to the couple, often unexpectedly throws up very different points of view—especially about motherhood, barren women and adoption, really galvanising Fiona to think about her own life and choices. The Durga Puja—the chaotic street processions and immersion rituals, as well as the potent imagery of the goddess herself all push Fiona to question her atheism.

The high-flying lawyer, who has driven her life by her own choices suddenly finds herself losing control, and in one scene surrenders inexplicably in front of Durga. “I was lucky enough to see a Durga Puja and was interested in the devotion that goes into the making of the Durga. It was an interesting context to push the buttons—to raise the questions in her life that had remained unanswered,” says McCarthy. “For Fiona, there’s an opening; a sense of acceptance and surrender to things she was always trying to control.”

Meanwhile, it is the local music that plays a crucial part in Ben’s transformation. Ben is a one-time musician, suffering from a creative block and works as a music producer, engineering other people’s music rather than create his own. In Calcutta, he discovers local music, which revitalises his own creative spirit. Perhaps it is this portrait of Calcutta through its musical diversity—from Tagore’s melodious songs, to the powerful voices of the Bauls, and the pulsating sounds of young local bands—that really makes The Waiting City an incredible film to watch.

It is due to McCarthy’s integrity—in using real locations, local music, earthy costumes and even a local crew—that gives this film the authenticity that many other western films about India lack. She easily admits her dependence on the local crew particularly. “The logistics of filming on location in Calcutta were extraordinary, but we had an amazing technical crew. There were some very senior crew from India who had a lot of experience. I mean you guys (India) made close to two thousand films last years, while we (Australia) made about 40! So I knew we were in good hands.”

“There is this culture of filmmaking which is really part of India already, so everybody’s very experienced,” said Radha Mitchell. “What I was really impressed by, especially with the Indian crew, was that they could just change hats, and somebody who’s an actor could also be an AD, could also help in wardrobe, everybody could do everything.”

“I love the people, I love how interested and approachable and approaching they are,” Joel Edgerton said about shooting in Calcutta. “It’s been chaotic, but it’s been an incredibly special experience. I love the way you can turn in any direction and open your eyes and see something fascinating.”