Eye Candy of the Week: Tarsem

There is no doubt that you’ve seen his commercials.  Indian-born director Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (who often goes by just Tarsem) has directed dozens upon dozens of commercials for big-wigs like Levis, Nike, Coca-Cola, Reebok, Pepsi, Smirnoff, Mercedes Benz, Campari and Absolut Vodka, just to name a few.  Most recently, you’ve probably seen his commercial for Motorola Razr, in which the cell phones are so “sharp,” a man and a woman on a subway seductively duel, slicing eachother’s clothes.  Or perhaps you remember the savvy “chain-of-events” 1997 Levis commercial series, in which through an odd series of events, one commercial always leads into another.  But my personal favorites of the Tarsem commercial collection are his sexually shocking Campari ads.  One being “The Secret,” where the genders of a flirtatious duo are revealed as opposite as how they appear.  Another being “Scratch,” where upon discovering that the man she is with is cheating on her via the scratches on his back which match the nails of another woman, the woman reveals her own similar scratches.

But Tarsem’s work is hardly limited to commercials, as he has made more than an impression in the music video realm.  In 1991, he won ‘Best Video of the Year’ at the MTV Video Music Awards for the  R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.”  Tarsem has also directed music videos for En Vogue (“Hold On,” 1990), Dream Warriors (“My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style,” 1991), girlfriend of Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis (“Be My Baby,” 1991) and Deep Forest (“Sweet Lullaby.” 1993).

Tarsem made the leap to the big screen in 2000 with the psychological thriller The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez, Vincent D’Onofrio and Vince Vaughn, in which a child psychologist (Lopez) goes into the mind of a serial killer (D’Onofrio).  Featuring the director’s frequent art-inspired style, he notes influences for the movie from Salvador Dali.  Also typical of Tarsem’s work is narrative entanglement and surprise, with a fantastical kind of edge.  The world inside the killer’s mind is abstract and strange, at times violent and disturbing, but held together by Tarsem’s artistic sense.

The helmer’s next feature, The Fall, premiered at the Toronto Film Fest in 2006 and was released in Russia earlier this year.  The film was shot over several years in various countries such as Bali, Fiji, South Africa and Italy, while Tarsem was simultaneously shooting commericials.  The pic tells of the friendship between an injured stuntman (Lee Pace) and a little girl (angelic, Russian newcomer Catinca Untaru) with a broken collar bone in a Los Angeles hospital in 1915.  Described as a fairy-tale for adults, we are shown the abstract and mystical story that Pace unfolds to Untaru, as Tarsem brings his artistic beauty to the screen, featuring jaw-dropping scenery, a slow-motion underwater swimming elephant and a  butterfly-shaped island.  But Pace’s true motive is a bit darker, hoping to coerce the girl to steal him enough morphine so that he might kill himself.

The Fall finally opens to a limited release in the U.S. today.

Tarsem is currently directing The Unforgettable, a science fiction thriller based on a video game, which tells the tale of cop who realizes that he is not human and discovers a battle between good and evil aliens.  The director is also rumored to be directing the remake of the 1973 sci-fi/thriller/western Westworld.

Check out a relatively unknown commercial for Levi’s called “Voodoo.”  In a Tarsem commercial style, it’s a little sexy, a little fantastical and a little funny.