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Mychael Danna previously collaborated with
Mira Nair as the composer of the scores for Monsoon Wedding
and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love.
Click here for more...
One of America’s most popular stars,
Reese Witherspoon, unites with one of the world’s most acclaimed
directors, Mira Nair, to bring to the screen one of the greatest
female characters ever created, Rebecca (Becky) Sharp. The new film
version of the classic novel by William Makepeace Thackeray introduces
a new audience to the beautiful, funny, passionate, and calculating
Becky.
Click here for more...
The daughter of a starving English artist and
a French chorus girl, Becky is orphaned at a young age. Even as
a child, she yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright
promises. As she leaves Miss Pinkerton’s Academy at Chiswick,
Becky resolves to conquer English society by any means possible.
She deploys all of her wit, guile, and sexuality as she makes her
way up into high society during the first quarter of the 19th century.
Click here for more...
Click here...
Click here...
 
Mychael Danna previously collaborated with
Mira Nair as the composer of the scores for Monsoon Wedding
and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love.
He is recognized as one of the pioneers of combining non-Western
sound sources with orchestral and electronic minimalism in music
for films, which include Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and
Ride with the Devil, John Greyson’s Lilies, Gillies
Mackinnon’s Regeneration, Joel Schumacher’s 8MM,
James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted, Scott Hicks’
Hearts in Atlantis, Denzel Washington’s Antwone Fisher,
Jim Simpson’s The Guys, and Billy Ray’s Shattered
Glass.
Mr. Danna has enjoyed a long artistic collaboration with filmmaker
Atom Egoyan, scoring seven features, most recently Ararat. Those
scores have garnered him several Canadian film awards.
He served for five years as composer-in-residence at the McLaughlin
Planetarium in Toronto. Prior to that, he completed an undergraduate
degree in music composition at the University of Toronto, where
he was awarded the Glenn Gould Composition Scholarship.
www.vanityfairmovie.com
www.universalclassics.com
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One of America’s most popular stars, Reese
Witherspoon, unites with one of the world’s most acclaimed
directors, Mira Nair, to bring to the screen one of the greatest
female characters ever created, Rebecca (Becky) Sharp. The new film
version of the classic novel by William Makepeace Thackeray introduces
a new audience to the beautiful, funny, passionate, and calculating
Becky.
William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair –
written in serialized form in 1847 and 1848 – is often cited
as the most intelligent and amusing critique of early 19th-century
society.
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! [Vanity of Vanities!] Which of us is happy
in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?
William Makepeace Thackeray, in his novel Vanity Fair.
With these words, William Makepeace Thackeray closes Vanity Fair,
and it was these lines that in particular inspired director Mira
Nair. She states, "The reasons I wanted to make Vanity Fair
are Thackeray’s essential, and in my view spiritual, questions
– which of us has dreams, and when we achieve them, are happy?
What is contentment? What is aspiration? What is the vanity of life?
In his novel, Thackeray created a cinema verité of its day.
It was completely accurate concerning what was happening and had
happened in England, yet the questions are timeless. The extraordinarily
rich characters have resonance for all of us today, and I think
Becky is literature’s greatest female character."
"Fashions change, architecture changes, but what impels human
beings to love and to live doesn’t really change" says
Gabriel Byrne (the Marquess of Steyne) "Technologically, we
may have advanced beyond our wildest expectations but we’re
still the same sexual and social animals we’ve always been.
What Thackeray did brilliantly was to hold up a mirror to who we
are as people, not just to the society that he was writing about
then. What makes the story classic and contemporary is that he was
writing in a truthful and really profound way about the universality
of human emotion and human longing, within a social context that
will never change."
The director brings her own interpretation to the classic material.
Her Indian childhood complements Thackeray’s own (as the Englishman
had spent his early childhood in Calcutta). This fortuitous connection
is at once creative and highly personal, and the new film version
meditates on how much of domestic imperial England was informed
by the cultures across the sea.
Vanity Fair is the first major adaptation of the author’s
work since Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 feature Barry Lyndon. Faulk
and Skeet, screenwriter and associate producers admit, "Reducing
a 900-page novel to a movie script was the main challenge. But by
concentrating on the adventuresof the wonderful Becky Sharp, it
became possible. It was a long journey from inception of the project
to the final result, but if we make this great novel more familiar
to the world, it will be worth every second."
Producer Janette Day says "Vanity Fair had to be huge
and lavish and funny and moving in terms of characters and storylines
all having to interconnect and it had to have a real truth and humanity
to it.
Despite the filmmakers’ considerable commitment to the material,
the film would not have been made without the charismatic leading
lady who could bring to life one of the most well-known female characters
in English literature. Following in the footsteps of Myrna Loy and
Miriam Hopkins some seven decades prior, Reese Witherspoon came
aboard and the new movie finally had a confirmed start date.
Apart from a brief location shoot in India, Vanity Fair was
filmed in the U.K. for eleven weeks in the spring and summer of
2003, all around Southern England and briefly at Elstree Studios.
www.vanityfairmovie.com
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The daughter of a starving English artist and
a French chorus girl, Becky is orphaned at a young age. Even as
a child, she yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright
promises. As she leaves Miss Pinkerton’s Academy at Chiswick,
Becky resolves to conquer English society by any means possible.
She deploys all of her wit, guile, and sexuality as she makes her
way up into high society during the first quarter of the 19th century.
Becky’s ascension to the heights of society commences when
she gains employment as governess to the daughters of eccentric
Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins). Becky wins over the children, and
the Crawley family’s rich spinster aunt Matilda (Eileen Atkins)
as well. The rural Hampshire household comes to find her indispensable,
and Matilda comes to confide in the bright young woman. But Becky
knows that she cannot be a true part of English society until she
moves to the city. When Matilda invites her to come live in London,
Becky eagerly accepts. There, Becky is reunited with her best friend
Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), who – having grown up comfortably
– does not share Becky’s more brazen ambitions. Hewing
close to the family she already knows so well, Becky secretly marries
dashing heir Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy) – but when Matilda
discovers their union, she casts the newlyweds out. When Napoleon
invades Europe, Rawdon bravely reports to the front lines. Pregnant
Becky stands by distraught newlywed Amelia, whose own husband George
Osborne (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is also called to fight. When George
does not survive the Battle of Waterloo, Becky’s friendship
with Amelia is strained beyond repair. Becky is reunited with Rawdon
and gives birth to a boy, but, post-war, money and comforts are
sparse for the trio. More intent than ever on gaining acceptance
into London society and living well, Becky finds a patron in the
powerful Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne). Steyne’s whims
enable Becky to realize her dreams, but the ultimate cost may be
too high for her.
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1 She Walks In Beauty
Performed by Sissel
2 Exchange
3 Becky and Amelia Leave School
4 The Great Adventurer
Performed by Custer LaRue
5 Becky Arrives at Queen’s Crawley
6 Andante
7 No Lights After Eleven
8 Adagio
9 I’ve Made up My Mind
10 Ride to London
11 Becky and Rawdon Kiss
12 Sir Pitt’s Marriage Proposal
13 I Owe You Nothing
14 Piano for Amelia / Announcement of Battle
15 Time to Quit Brussels
16 Waterloo Battlefield
17 Amelia Refuses Dobbin / The Move to Mayfair
18 Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
Performed by Custer LaRue
19 Steyne the Pasha
20. El Salaam
Performed by Hakim
21 The Virtue Betrayed
22 Rawdon’s End
23 Dobbin Leaves Amelia
24 Vanity’s Conqueror
25 Gori Re
Vocals by Shankar Mahadevan
and Richa Sharma
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Becky Sharp Reese Witherspoon
Miss Matilda Crawley Eileen Atkins
Mr. Osborne Jim Broadbent
The Marquess of Steyne Gabriel Byrne
Amelia Sedley Romola Garai
Sir Pitt Crawley Bob Hoskins
William Dobbin Rhys Ifans
Lady Southdown Geraldine McEwan
Rawdon Crawley James Purefoy
George Osborne Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Mira Nair Director
Matthew Faulk & Mark Skeet Screenplay; Associate Producers
Julian Fellowes Screenplay
Mychael Danna Music
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