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Henna
& Hip-Hop
India
hits the 21st century in Mira
Nair's technicolor culture clash.
By Sean
Axmaker
MONSOON WEDDING. Directed
by Mira Nair. Written by Sabrina Dhawan. Produced by Caroline Baron,
Mira Nair. Executive producers, Caroline Kaplan, Jonathan Sehring.
Cinematography, Declan Quinn. Production design, Stephanie Carroll.
Editor, Allyson C. Johnson. Costumes, Arjun Bhasin. Music, Mychael
Danna. Starring Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Shefali Shetty, Vijay
Raaz, Tilotama Shome, Vasundhara Das, Parvin Dabas, Kulbhushan Kharbanda,
Kamini Khanna. USA Films/IFC Productions, 2001. Rated R. 114 minutes.
 |
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The
wedding party in Monsoon Wedding is full of sparkle and
color.me,
. |
|
India's Mira Nair headed for Hollywood after her social realist
debut drama Salaam Bombay and turned out some interesting perspectives
on the cultural soup simmering in the American melting pot. The bright,
bubbly, ambitious culture clash comic drama Monsoon Wedding takes
her back home to marry her Hollywood chops with the local movie traditions.
Imagine Father of the Bride by way of Robert
Altman's A Wedding transplanted to modern Delhi, a world where
marriages are arranged by cell phone and young Indian women tenuously
strike a balance between cultural expectations and professional careers
with the help of advice from Cosmopolitan. Yet for all of its
infectious energy and passionate splashes of glowing color, the busy
spectacle, melodramatic subplots, and driving pace of Monsoon Wedding
has more in common with Hollywood's Technicolor movie fantasies than
the so-square-it's-hip Bollywood musical Nair claims to be taking
into the 21st century.
Bride-to-be Aditi (pouty, dewy-eyed Vasundhara Das)
has agreed to marry a nice Indian boy (Parvin Dabas). Torn between
fears of the future (a husband she hasn't met who has made a home
in Houston, Texas) and frustrations of the past, Adita impulsively
tries to squeeze in one last clinch with her married, TV-producer
lover, a selfish careerist who has no intention of leaving his wife.
Meanwhile father Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah) is practically
tearing out his hair as he juggles the flood of family and friends
who converge on his opulent estate home and argues over spiraling
costs with wedding contractor Dubey (Vijay Raaz), a double-talking
shyster whose big-shot facade slips away when he falls in love at
first sight with Lalit's dreamy, shrinking violet maid Alice (Tilotama
Shome).
Nair weaves a bustling set of subplots through their
stories. The most interesting involves Ria (Shefali Shetty), an older
single cousin whose repressed emotional wound is torn open when she
spies an old family friend getting uncomfortably friendly with a little
niece. The undercurrent of abuse is muted (to keep it from overwhelming
the lightweight framework around it, perhaps) but the issue builds
to the film's most moving dramatic moment. Far less serious strands
follow a westernized son from Australia whose hip-hop ways get a jolt
from a gorgeous family friend who tries to teach some local moves,
a tubby young son more interested in cooking shows and Bollywood dance
numbers than sports and schoolwork, and more. Perhaps too much more;
the sprawling extended family becomes a confusing tangle of relationships
difficult to grasp.
Blushing bride Aditi and long-suffering dad Lalit
get swamped by the livelier cast around them, in particular Vijay
Raaz's Dubey. The hustling businessman who distractedly munches on
the marigolds when he's not barking into his cell phone (in three
languages, no less) reveals his hidden loneliness and disappointment
in a delicate scene at his urban apartment home. He starts the film
as the hyena-like comic relief and ends up its most romantic figure.
Spread thin across the two hours, Nair and screenwriter
Sabrina Dhawan sacrifice depth of character for breadth of cast and
substitute busyness for complexity. The weave jumps with color, but
the designs are awfully familiar and the material threadbare. Yet
Nair shines in her confident control of the colors: the smooth, super-saturated
photography by American Declan Quinn, the jumping, high-energy music
by Mychael Danna, the vibrant art direction and costumes (and the
lovely henna web painted across the hand of the bride), the mix of
technology and tradition. Even the dance numbers worked into the film
create a portrait of another culture both foreign and familiar.
Perhaps it's not so far from the innocence of Bollywood's
simple, sprawling melodramas after all. There's more plot crammed
into this two hours than any three-hour Indian musical I've ever seen,
but even in the age of the Internet, satellite TV, and the international
export of American culture, the modern flair of Nair's characters
is just their way of preserving their heritage in the bustle of 21st
century.
Sean Axmaker writes about movies for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer and DVDs for the Internet Movie Database.
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Next week: Behind Enemy Lines, Novocaine,
Metropolis, My First Mister, and The Learning Curve.
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