March 7–14, 2002

movies

Delhi Din

Monsoon’s Wedding’s tale of culture clash mostly just makes a racket.

by Sam Adams

Monsoon Wedding

Directed by Mira Nair
A USA Films release

He knew the bride: Vasundhara Das and hubby-to-be Parvin Dabas.

Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding takes the film-festival approach to culture clash, which is to say that dilemmas are played out on the personal and romantic rather than political levels. Near the film’s opening, we sneak onto the set of the TV talk show "Delhi.com," where a series of commentators are debating the future of Indian culture. Asks one: "India is going global — does that mean we have to lose our traditions?" The question, while absurdly reductive, still has obvious relevance, but it’s worth noting that the scene is absorbed through the eyes of Aditi (Vasundhara Das), the film’s bride-to-be, who’s been having an affair with the show’s married host and has come to see if there’s any chance left for their relationship. Even when political concerns are raised, it’s only as background noise to the question of which boy ends up with which girl.

Such questions, of course, are hardly free from politics, especially given the situations Nair and first-time screenwriter Sabrina Dhawan cook up. Aditi is struggling both with her arranged marriage to Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas), who has flown in from Houston for the marriage and will take her back when he goes, and with the decision to take control of her on-again off-again affair with a married man. ("I’ve read too many magazines," she tells a friend. "I know what happens.") Her parents are in a constantly manic state, driven by the hordes of guests arriving from all over the world, as well as a shiftless contractor (Vijay Raaz) who spends more timing chasing down stock tips on his cellular phone than seeing to the details of the impending ceremony — at least until he falls suddenly for the family’s shy young maid (Tilotama Shome). On top of that, Aditi’s cousin Ria (Shefali Shetty) seems to be nursing an unspecified grudge against one of the family’s closest friends, for reasons that are telegraphed long before the film’s climactic revelations.

Monsoon Wedding tries to borrow visual energy from the so-called "Bollywood" spectacles of Indian cinema, but all Nair and cinematographer Declan Quinn manage to evoke is hubbub. Nair has nothing like Altman’s gift for zeroing in on tiny moments, snatches of overheard dialogue which sketch a whole situation in an instant, so the personality clashes never take on the status of cultural ones. Monsoon Wedding is a lively film, but it’s so eager to please that it avoids all but the most clear-cut moral stances: The idea of arranged marriage is ultimately ratified; none of the film’s romances cross racial or class lines; and what seem to be hints about one character’s possible homosexuality vanish like smoke. There’s no indication at any point that any of the characters’ problems extend beyond the domestic realm, or at least can’t be solved within it. In the film’s climactic moments, the sound of a band playing a traditional wedding song segues effortlessly (and offscreen) into a techno-style version of same, and the dancing throngs never miss a step. The transition between the two would seem to be the point, but in Nair’s cosmos, the only thing standing between generations is stubborness — if people just hang loose, everything will work itself out.