Posted: 03/27/2002

Monsoon Wedding

(2002)

by Parama Chaudhury

Parama is so exuberant about this one, she compares the filmmaker to Capra and Hitchcock! Sounds like it’s worth a look.

There’s an old saying that during the monsoon, it rains twice a week in Bombay: once for three days, and once for four days. There was only a drizzle - a stop-and-go one at that - when I walked to the theater yesterday, and I couldn’t help thinking about how good it would be to walk through a really good hard rain. I don’t think the New Yorkers all around me who were working themselves into a frenzy over the sprinkle would appreciate that. But I’m from the tropics, and a solid downpour is an essential part of our culture. As are weddings. Big, lavish, chaotic and tiring weddings. In Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair takes us through a wedding in the rainy season, providing many an expat with oodles of nostalgia.

The point, though, is: what about the rest? How would Joe Anybody walking into theater out of the rain react to this movie? Well, he would first think it was a little like The Father of the Bride. There’s a loquacious wedding planner, a little brother, a bride who has an extremely close relationship with her father, and impending bedlam. But if he was a bit of a discerning Joe, he would realize that this is more Altman than schmaltz (OK, so maybe Minelli’s Father of the Bride was slightly better than the recent Disney version, but this ain’t MGM either). The father of the bride, played with superb restraint by one of India’s greatest actors, Naseeruddin Shah, is the focus of most of the movie, but the little side plots that are so characteristic of Altman, actually have the pride of place. On the one hand, this movie is realistic enough to feel like a wedding video. There was someone who looked like a favorite aunt, and the bride must have been related to an old classmate of mine. But just so that you don’t overdose on nostalgia or exotic appeal, Nair throws a wrench in the works, a shocking revelation, which threatens to tear the family apart. The denoument is handled with expertise: what could have been a melodramatic free-for-all ends up being a heartbreaking but quiet moment.

What else would Joe come away with? The luscious colors, of course: the resplendent benarasi sarees, the delicate embroidery on the salwar kameezes, and the pristine white of the wedding tent which was immediately replaced with a vibrant saffron because “this is not a funeral, it’s a wedding.” He would remember the pouring rain, and the people just standing there, literally soaking it all in, and the bridal party jumping forward to greet the groom, with their brightly colored see-through umbrellas protecting their finery. India is a photographer’s dream come true: everywhere you turn either the proud beauty of a old civilization is bursting forth, or a local freak show is just getting under way. Declan Quinn’s cinematography captures the in-your-face exoticism along with the extreme contradictions of a country which is one of the world’s biggest exporters of software but where cattle amble along the streets of the great cities. Some of the editing is a bit choppy and it feels like pieces from a documentary film showing the common people in the rain and the polluted streets and the local tea vendors was inserted randomly into this narrative. When the women go shopping and the cousins share a Popsicle outside the store, the two worlds come together for a brief but delicious moment. A few more sequences like that would have made the experience all the more unforgettable.

The self-control, on the part of the director, the crew as well as most of the actors, is what makes Monsoon Wedding the Gosford Park of Bollywood movies. Altman’s objective in Gosford Park seems to be to highlight the parts of a typical mystery movie that usually gets overlooked, played down, or just plain done badly. The problem with most Bollywood movies is the plethora of stereotypes and the predictability of the invariably knotty dilemmas that arise about a quarter of the way into the movie. While Monsoon Wedding does end happily ever after and the wedding planner is a classic character in all Indian movies, Naseeruddin Shah’s character is complex enough to make us wonder about how he will deal with the pedophile in the family. Nair manages to overcome the temptation to paint a rosy - and exotic - picture of the way we were, but at the same time, presents the shocker in a reasonably muted way which fits right in with the uniquely Indian way of not being too alarmed by calamities because life’s like that. The child affected is not cherubic, but looks like your neighbor’s daughter, which makes her experience even more shocking. Her older cousin Ria’s effort to protect the girl leads to the most dramatic scene in the movie, and Shefali Shetty who plays Ria is the most dramatic presence on the screen. But Ria has become a very real person in our eyes, by the time she breaks down, and so we are astounded by her behavior, but don’t discount her story.

The most refreshing thing about Monsoon Wedding is that it does not seem to be an academic study of characters. Nair involves herself totally with her characters: she might as well have been a member of the marriage party videotaping the proceedings. The wedding planner Dubey’s budding romance with the shy maid, Alice is suitably quiet and small in scope, which complements the ostentation of the main wedding. While Dubey’s wooing seems a little over the top at times - it maybe 2002, but it’s still India and you can get fired for lighting an altar to your beloved on your employer’s lawn - Nair is not at all condescending in her approach to these two unlikely lovers. This couple falls in love because it feels like it’s time to get married, while the richer couple falls in love after being set up because the man seems decent enough and the girl has given up on her old love. This matter of fact approach to love and mating answers all those objections Westerners have about arranged marriages: all marriages are somewhat arranged and most marriages have their share of falling in love.

The fact that I enjoyed the movie has a lot to do with the fact that I love the rain, that I saw it with American friends who went to India for my wedding, and that Naseeruddin Shah is one of my favorite actors. For someone uninitiated in Bollywood movies, stepping out of the theater after the movie may feel like arriving at JFK after a month-long trip to India. A magical, but very tiring and sometimes annoying trip. But most importantly, I enjoyed Monsoon Wedding because I appreciate a director who goes all out to entertain the audience, while at the same time, being true to the characters she has created. Capra and Hitchcock were the cream of this crop, and Nair is a worthy successor.

Parama Chaudhury is a graduate student, an ex-writing instructor and a budding freelance writer, based in New York City.

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