Year:
2001
Studio:
Universal Pictures/
Independent Film Channel
Movie:
3/5
DVD:
3/5
Teaser
Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah) is a father with a mission: to throw a
great wedding for his daughter Aditi (Vasundhara Das) and her
barely-met betrothed Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas) -- such is the way it is
in India. Unforunately, Aditi is torn between going through with the
marriage and her love for a married man.
Meanwhile the work goes on and family from all over the world is
arriving. Event Manager PK Dubey (Vijay Raaz) is falling in love with
Alice (Tilotama Shome), one of the maids. Two distant cousins are
falling in love. Ria Verma (Shefali Shetty) is dreading a
confrontration with a great family friend. It's the hustle bustle zest
for life of a Punjab Wedding.
Movie
As Director Mira Nair explains it, "Monsoon Wedding" was an experiment
for her -- could she shoot a simple movie without the big budget and
big hassles of a commercial movie? In a sense it's going back to her
roots I suppose. What she ended up with is a hectically put together
movie where every day was an unexpected challenge.
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This is a
movie with five storylines, a movie where some actors could
only be present for a few days while others never even showed up and
had to be replaced on a moment's notice. Noir wanted to show the spirit
of Punjabi culture and she does. There is so much going on. The base
culture is so alien to me yet there are so many English influences that
it half looks familiar. It's neat to see how different cultures deal
with the same issues.
Actors
One big problem I have with some foreign films is that I get people
confused. I grew up around white people so it's easy to tell them
apart. Indians and Asians all look the same. It only makes it harder
that the names all sound the same too. Not so much a comment on the
acting as on what I'm used to differentiating.
The acting seemed fine. Half the dialogue is in British English and the
other half is split up among two Indian languages. You lose some of the
acting performance when it's translated to subtitle. But I didn't see
anything bad and the actors here try to do their best just like
Hollywood actors.
DVD
There is an eight minute featurette and a commentary track by Mira
Nair. Nothing really special, though the commentary does give you an
insight into life in India.
Recommendations
For a foreign film this wasn't so bad. It's a wedding story and a look
at Indian Punjabi culture. Either that will interest you or not. That's
about as far as my recommendation goes. It'll be very hit or miss with
random viewers.
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