Monsoon Wedding Review
by Tim Wick
I'll admit that when it comes to film, the area in which I am most uneducated is the realm of foreign film. Not only are there few such films that reach our market, they have been carefully chosen to be the films most pallatable to a mass market. It's true that the Uptown and Lagoon theatres are the independant houses, but for every French film they show, there are twenty that they don't.
While I did get the chance to see (and fall in love with) "Amelie" last year, the film that beat it out for the Oscar (No Man's Land) didn't register. It may have shown but I didn't find out until it was too late. I knew enough to rent it later and found myself in complete agreement with the result I had so resolutely railed against when the Oscar telecast originally aired.
Nowhere is my ignorance more prevalant than in the thriving Indian film industry. Bollywood turns out hundreds of films a year and until I saw Monsoon Wedding, I had seen exactly zero of them. I can only hope that I will find some time to explore more films from the industry. I anxiously await the arrival of the 2001 nominee for Best Foreign Film, Lagaan
This review falls in the better late than never category as Monsoon Wedding has been showing at the Lagoon for almost three months and I have only just managed to watch it. But the category is well named because I am quite happy I found the time.
I have a soft spot for wedding comedies. There is an exuberance to them that make them so much fun they are hard to resist. People never seem happier than they are during a wedding - even if that happiness is just a facade. Movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral, My Big Fat Greek WeddingThe Father of the Bride simply appeal to me on a level that should make most readers take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Monsoon Wedding is such a film but it contains an edgier tone. There are skeletons in this families closet. While much of the film is joyful and happy, there are undercurrents that must be dealt with. The father and mother of the bride sleep in seperate beds and don't seem to have been intimate in some time. The bride has been involved in an affair she is having difficulty letting go of. The marriage is (like many marriages in India) an arranged one and the bride and groom barely know each other. Other secrets will be revealed as the film progresses but the central theme (as it really is in all such movies) is that the love of one's family is the bedrock for all happiness.
I could mangle the names of the actors in the film but the chances are you have never heard of them. This lack of familiarity is often a blessing. We don't know these people so there is no baggage carried over from other films in which we would have seen them appear. Again, I point out there was no chance I would have had that problem.
The film is a comedy and much of it is very funny. A wedding planner named Dubey is the focus of much of the comedy. He talks endlessly about how hard he is working but it would appear that his employees are doing all the working and he just eats marigolds all the time (as a side note, I need to understand the significance of marigolds in Indian culture - they were everywhere). His budding romance with a maid provides the counterpoint to the match between the children of two wealthy families. Love is present in both cases but the route to love is very different.
What most impressed me was a subplot involving the bride's cousin. We see very early in the film that a serious issue exists between her and an older family member. The film is clear about what must be going on but it does not rush the conflict or eventual resolution.
I found the cinematography distracting at times. The film used primarily hand held cameras that were constantly moving - almost caressing the characters. At times this seemed appropriate but mostly it seemed "artistic." Again, this may actually be a regular feature of Bollywood productions but I found it distracting at times when I should not have been paying attention to the camera work.
The film is clever in that the central story is not about the bride and groom but about the family that is engaged in the wedding. It is as much about the cousin, the parents, the brother and the uncle as it is about the bride and groom. The point seems to be that the bride and groom may be the most important people at the wedding, but they are not the only people there.
As an introduction to Indian film, I think I could have done far worse. Monsoon Wedding is an engaging film and seems to ease on into the conventions of Bollywood rather than dropping them into the deep end. While I don't know how much longer it will be showing at the Lagoon, it would be worth the time to see if if you can.
|
