For everyone, who has had unresolved issues with their fathers, Indian-German filmmaker Anand Tucker has a perfect Father's Day gift, albeit an emotionally charged one. His new film When Did You Last See Your Father? is a blessing of a film -- a heart wrenching tale about a man coping with his father's terminal illness, while coming to terms with his difficult teenage and adult years, aggravated by an overbearing parent.
"Of course everyone gets pissed off at their dads and at some stage want to kill them," says Tucker, son of a Gujarati father. He laughs and yet appears regretful. "Isn't that a prerequisite of being a human being? It is hardwired into your DNA that you have to hate your dad and then you spend the rest of your life missing him and regretting it."
Father, is based on the bestselling 1993 memoir by the British author Blake Morrison. The book won the J.R. Ackerley Prize and the Esquire/Vovlo/Waterstone's Non-Fiction Book Award and gave inspiration to a whole generation of confessional memoirs.
Tucker's film is also based on a tightly written script by David Nicholls (Simpatico film script of Sam Shepard's play). The film stars Colin Firth in the quietly played role of Blake Morrison. Oscar nominated character actor Jim Broadbent plays his sometimes crude, loud and philandering father, Arthur. And Juliet Stevenson (Bend it Like Beckham) gives a career defining performance in the role of Arthur's neglected and yet strong willed wife, Kim.
After playing at major film festivals, including Toronto and Telluride, Father opened this past Friday in New York City. Based on the positive reviews, the film could become the discerning audiences alternative to a chockfull season of summer films with super heroes, grown men chasing crystal skulls and adult women gossiping about ways to find a perfect man.
The New York Times called the film, "a smartly played story, enlivened by drama and spiked with passion, the very thing that thinking audiences pine for. "And The Village Voice called the film a "minor pleasure of a drama the kind of superior middlebrow filmmaking at which the Brits excel."
Tucker was born as Anand Thakkar in Thailand. His father was an employee of Lufthansa Airlines, when he met his German mother. The family later moved to England and at some stage the last name was changed to Tucker. His parents still live in England and Tucker has hard memories of growing up in that household.
"Having a German mother and an Indian dad and is as complicated as it gets," Tucker says. "I kid you not. This is what it is like on my dinner table. My mother would say things like, 'Thank God you do not have too much of your father's Indian overemotional brain because that is the problem with Indians' and my father would nod."
The 45 year old filmmaker, whose repertoire includes Shopgirl with Steve Martin and Claire Danes and Hillary and Jackie, is a delightful conversationalist and very animated. The director is married to filmmaker Sharon Maguire (Bridget Jones's Diary) and has a four and a half year old son with her. But he is not embarrassed talking about other personal life details, including the fact that he has been in therapy for 15 years.
"The thing with Indian fathers is -- and that's not a criticism -- but my father comes from an older generation," he says. "He comes from a society where the family is the most important thing and the individual does not matter within the family. The father is the patriarch and you do what the dad says. That's how it is there. In the west, it is all about individual and the self. So my dad had a hard time with what I wanted to do -- which was becoming a terrible pop star and a terrible actor. And he was right, by the way."
"In terms of identifying with Arthur Morrison, who was an old world father from the 1950s, I got that," Tucker adds. "Someone who is overbearing and cannot see his son as something other than himself. That's the key. It is the inability to see that your son is not you. Maybe that is quite a universal thing, but I think in this generation we are all trying to be best friends of our kids. We just want them to like us and it gets a lot more complicated. I just want my son to be my friend. When we have a fight, I really get upset. And that's no way to be a parent."
Before directing Father, Tucker spent couple of years developing The Golden Compass -- the big Hollywood children's fantasy film starring Nicole Kidman. Tucker left the project after creative differences with the studio. His other films have remained small personal stories, successes in art house theaters and film festivals.
"Careers are a weird thing," he says. "I love people, and the human conditions and relationships. That's what turns me on. I can sit with people and I want to know about their love lives. I am a terrible gossip [he laughs-out loud]. My own life has been a car crash of a disaster in terms of my relationships with women and more. I am always trying to figure out how it works so. I guess I have been lucky in some ways. Every film I have made, I have been able to put my heart into it. Although someday I would like to make a movie with guns, explosions and girls with big breasts."
His favorite films are Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love and Billy Wilder's The Apartment, which he describes as "grownup, sexy, hard, touching, beautiful and real."
"I also love films like Iron Man or Superbad, which should have won the best screenplay Oscar," he adds. "But I remember The Piano when it came out. I started weeping like a baby, uncontrollably and thinking cinema can do this to you. That movie for me is when cinema becomes art and I do not think we should be ashamed sometimes to acknowledge that cinema can aspire to be art."
