A friend of mine replied to my query abt her marriage plans ( or rather her parent’s plans ! ) ’’ do u know of any indian girl aged 22 and above whose parents arent at least thinking abt her marriage ?’’ . And this despite their being settled in Darwin, Australia.
It just reaffirmed my conclusion that cricket is not the only thing Indians are obsessed with ! Marriage, especially a daughter’s, is worry..Big Time for all indian parents , whether they live in Delhi, Dubai, or Darwin !!!
( Believe me, as a single 24 yr old I know all abt it. My relatives in india are now past the ’’mildly concerned’’ stage and have entered the ’’seriously alarmed’’ stage)
Okay, okay , maybe I am exaggerating a wee bit, but then it is a lil disconcerting to be looked upon as if u were a product, nearing the end of its shelf life , so ’’Hurry up and sell !!! ’’
What im trying to say is that Mira Nair has chosen to make a film abt something that most Indians would just love to watch! .
Well, this is supposed to be a review on ’’Monsoon Wedding’’. So I better get down to it ....
The setting:
Delhi. India’s capital city has been captured on camera quite splendidly. The wedding scenes , interspersed with scenes of chaotic delhi traffic, all the crowds, the dust, heat, and pollution, almost make u feel like your right there in the city.
The Plot :
Relatives from all over the world converging at the Verma residence in Delhi for the marriage of Aditi Verma ( vasundhara das). The film follows them over the fours days leading upto the wedding
The Cast :
The Vermas are your average upper class indian family. Naseeruddin Shah as is to be expected is quite brilliant as Lalit Verma the frazzled looking, forever on the edge of his nerves, father of the bride, as is theatre artist Lillette Dubey , the anxious mom smoking cigarettes on the sly. Vasundhara Das as the bride, looks gorgeous, but I felt she could have been a lil more emotional.
Shefali Chhaya lives upto her reputation, as Riya the unmarried elder cousin. For her , the wedding proves to be a stage where she is forced to relive and confront the ghosts of her childhood...her uncle, the deceptively inane looking child molester ! There are plenty of other recognisable faces, including Neha Dubey, as the flirtatious cousin Aysha and Parveen Dabas ( the Peter England guy ) as hemant the bridegroom .
But like everyone else, even I felt the show was stolen by Vijay Raaz, who plays the cell phone toting wedding organiser P.K.Dubey, with a penchant for eating marigolds ( or was it chrysanthemums..im always a lil confused abt that !!! )!! He falls head over heels in love with the maid , Alice , and this provides for some hysterical encounters between the two.
It was quite upto my expectations. The typical large scale wedding.
All the cacophony, confusion, cash crunches, and last minute near-disasters that go hand in hand with big weddings were very much a part of Monsoon Wedding...not glossed over as is normally done in the average hindi film ( reference here to the torturous extravaganza ’ Hum aapke hain kaun).
It is quite realistically made, and is likely to strike a chord with all viewers.
Just as I can see something in common with Aditi and Riya who are not quite sure, whether an arranged marriage is worth the gamble, I can picture my dad, empathising with the father of the bride, as he relives the tensions and joys of my own elder sister’s marriage a coupla years ago !!
The hand held camera and even the songs only add to its authenticity.
All in All , a well made film and for a change, worthy of all the attention being focused on it .