Monsoon Wedding | Review

This family portrait has smart dramatic undercurrents and comedic undertones.

Arranged marriages-apparently there are still some crackpot parental institutions that think that pairing off their young is the best solution for a successful life. Most Westerners, whom now have a marriage success rate well below the 50%, are the ones that would definitely cry foul at such an idea, but of course getting married in a drive-thru in Vegas in a shot-gun wedding mode makes about as much sense as celebrity boxing matches. Mira Nair’s newest feature doesn’t spend much time elaborating on this question, but rather she examines family values and a nation’s cultural and social values through the pretext of the family gathering for the ceremonial wedding. What transpires on the celluloid is a clash between what the young refer to as modern and what the old refer to as traditional, and to a further extent this is about a traditional India versus the fast-food MTV Western influence.

Winner of the 2001 Golden Lion award at Venice Film festival; Monsoon Wedding is about the nightmarish planning of a wedding stress and the tension that comes along when extended family members join into the confusion. At the centre of it all is the patriarch- the closest thing to a protagonist in this film- a father played by veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah (Such a Long Journey) who is pretty much at the end of his rope and must deal with the financial burdens of such a costly affair and the responsibilities of raising his and his deceased brother’s children. In the mix, there are daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, servants and events planner manager as in the cell phone friendly Dubey played by Vijay Raaz. There is a charm with this Dubey character, his marigold eating and his I’ve-fallen-in-love beating heart rubs off in the right kind of way. The cast pretty much covers all generations found in a common family and Nair brilliantly allows for their dialogue to overlap one another- such as what real families do all the time. The grain of salt comes from the fact that both languages of New Delhi, India of English and Hindu are spoken during these moments.

Nair’s focal point is the family home and as a viewer you get the sense of being there-close to the characters as we find them in their moments of tension, of fear, of isolation and of solace and she uses a particularly effective fly on the wall-like camera view which gets the viewer in and close, often sacrificing the quality of the image for a range of camera angles that bring you closer to sights and sound of this family in crisis. True to the form of Bollywood films, there are dance and song numbers, but Nair doesn’t go all out with the traditional elaborate dance sequences, but rather for a toned-down family gathering sing along, where one person sings a verse and everyone gets into it- this is one of the factors that show the special bonds between the characters. The subplots- the different character predicaments show the strengthening of bonds between family members and the flourishing and the deterioration of relationships. The profoundness of the Monsoon Wedding is allowing the viewer to get close and have the same intuition that not all is pink and rosy. The family trauma- a turning point in the film is from a cinema standpoint dealt with a confident maturity showing the father doing what he knows best is a strong and poignant scene, that simply resonates. You’ll find yourself attached to all the characters, and one of the winning formulas in making a successful film is the director’s ability of making the audience care about the outcome of the characters.

Rating 4 stars