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Our reviewer is (almost) bowled over by Monsoon Wedding
by Joe Tarr
About three years ago, I visited some friends in India. It was my first trip overseas and, at the risk of sounding absurd, the trip was for me cinematic. It was overwhelming; it was sensory overload. Images stuck with me for months, as I struggled to sort through them all and discern a meaning where in fact there wasn't one. The things I saw left me unsettled and made me think—just the way any great movie does.
Of course, movies aren't real life, and real life isn't a movie, but I think we've been conditioned to see them as such, at least as a symbolic model for what life should be—in real life we expect to get the girl or the guy or justice or a happy ending. Or at least the assurance (and with it fear) that someone is watching.
Drawing on elements of classic Hollywood and Bollywood, Monsoon Wedding offers a dazzling picture of life in India that is touching, humorous, comforting and enlightening. Directed by Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala), the movie wrestles with real issues, but ends up being two-dimensional and melodramatic. But it is classic melodrama that Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to do well.
The movie takes place over the four days of an upper-class wedding in Delhi. It's an arranged marriage between Aditi Verma (Vasundhara Das) and Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas), a computer programmer who lives in Houston. Aditi had asked her parents to arrange the union in part because of her heartbreak over an affair with a married TV producer, who, despite his promises, hadn't left his wife. As family and friends begin arriving from all over the world for the wedding, Aditi begins to doubt her decision to marry. Especially since she hasn't quite ended the affair.
Meanwhile, Aditi's father, Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah), is collapsing under the stress of paying for and arranging the marriage, as well as his worries for his children's future.
Other subplots and romantic bungling abound: the dark childhood secret of cousin Ria (Shefali Shetty), which threatens to stop the ceremony; the suspect masculinity of Lalit's young son; the blossoming romance between wedding planner P.K. Dubey (Vijay Raaz) and the Vermas' maid, Alice (Tilotama Shome); the subtle cultural tension between the Punjabi and Hindi families that are about to be joined.
With so many storylines, none of the characters are given much space or time to develop. However, most of the characters remain sympathetic, thanks to a great ensemble cast (many of whom are related to Nair). Das and Shah are both wonderful at conveying their self-doubt and later, their convictions.
Nair weaves her characters' struggles into a larger context. The movie is about the clash of traditional and modern values, and a family trying to keep those tensions from pulling them apart. Which traditions should you hold onto and which let go?
Although there are some dramatic moments, most of the movie remains in the realm of melodrama. Little is left open-ended and all the plots and subplots are neatly wrapped up at the end (so much so that a new character is introduced during the closing credits, as another romance silently flowers within a few frames). Whatever their failings, the characters end up making the noble decisions, and we're not led to ponder whether these decisions were the right ones.
In this way, the movie itself is like most weddings—the symbolic ritual takes over the event and whatever may go comically wrong in the proceedings, the participants play their parts with infectious sentimentality (even if the marriage is obviously doomed).
Tidy resolution is not generally my idea of great film, but Nair does such a good job creating a mood, that the tidiness is forgivable. The street scenes of Old and New Delhi ground the characters in harsh surroundings, reminding us that most Indians don't live the way the Vermas do, whatever their financial struggles. There's a great scene showing a dejected Dubey returning home to his relatively meager apartment in Old Delhi, where he's berated by his mother and wanders out on their balcony to weep quietly as he watches kites flying over the city at dusk.
Metaphorical flourishes abound throughout—from the crumbling marigolds that fall on Lalit's head in the opening scene to the monsoon that finally arrives at the finish. Unlike real life, you figure out where this movie is heading pretty quick. But it's quite a feast watching it get there.
April 11, 2001 * Vol. 12, No. 15
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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