Monsoon Wedding- a film review
By- Meenakshi Madhur

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Director: Mira Nair Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Vasundhara Das, Shefali Shetty, Sameer Arya Vijay Raaz Tilotama Shome

Monsoon Wedding is a beautiful tapestry of several stories running in parallel during a wedding gathering of a large family in Delhi. The colors of the tapestry being the true and real colors of today's india - the good, the bad, the ugly colors and not to mention the color of loving and living life despite all odds. The context of wedding happens to be perfect for picturising the celebration of all those colors.

Mr Verma (Naseerudeen Shah) is a Delhi-ite who is frantically busy organizing the wedding of his young daughter Aditi (Vasundhara Das). The different parallel stories in the movie evolve during 5 days of the wedding ceremonies and celebrations. Each of the stories depicts real india of today and some of them have even taboo subjects like pre-marital sex and incest central to their themes. Only a master story teller like Mira Nair can knit together such difficult themes and different colors of indian life into beautiful love stories. There are in all 3 love stories. Each love story is different from the other.

The first one which is central to the movie and raison d'etre for the 'monsoon wedding' begins with the meeting of a couple (Aditi and Hemant) who have been matched for a marriage by their respective family members. Eventhough her wedding has been fixed and well on its way to happen in a few days, Aditi is still confused about her feelings for her lover whom she couldnt marry and has broken up with. She also is pre-occupied with the thoughts that her fiance'e is unaware and ignorant about the fact that she is not a virgin. Despite her sister's advice against sharing her past with her fiance'e, just a couple of days before the actual wedding ceremony is to take place Aditi shares with Hemant her past in a private meeting. It is so refreshing to see that both Aditi and Hemant have been shown to have minds of their own despite being part of and surrounded most of the times by members of close knit family where one would expect the opnions of young people getting stifled by traditional voices of the old. The reaction of both Hemant and Aditi (after she tells him all) look very credible and appear close to real life. This rather unusual meeting of them marks the beginning of the love story between the couple which comes as a pleasant surprise.

The second love story (my favourite one!) is the one that happens between the event manager Mr Dubey who is managing the wedding ceremony preparations for Mr Verma and the maid servant Alice who works at Mr Verma's house. The couple represents the working class youth of India. Through a series of comical sequences during the wedding preparations of Aditi, love blossoms between Mr Dubey and Alice which also ends up in yet another monsoon wedding.

The third one is a short and sweet one which shows how in india wedding gatherings are breeding grounds for love stories.

Then there is the story of Ria (Shefali Shetty) - the 30 something old unmarried daughter in the family who in her childhood had been a victim of incest by one of her uncles who also happens to be the most respected member of the family and is amongst the people who have gathered for the wedding celebrations. The ebbing and waning of the anger brewing inside Ria and the cunningness, the cool and the confidence of the respected uncle - all come through extremely well with minimal verbal exchage of dialogues between the two characters. In fact, the audience is told about the murky past simply through the expressions on the faces of Ria and her uncle. This story too has a dramatic happy ending with the guilty uncle getting his due in a very undramatic , unique and realistic way thereby healing the wounds on Ria's heart and mind.

Monsoon Wedding is certainly a movie watching experience not to be missed. I call it an experience because throughout the movie one gets the feeling of being part of the wedding celebration and all the events happening during the celebrations. In fact I got so involved with the love story of Mr Dubey and Alice that when their love culminates into a tying of nuptial knot in a simple ceremony, I spontaneously clapped my hands in applause and was readily joined by the strangers sitting beside my seat in the cinema hall.

The humorous footnote (at the end of the star cast listing in the movie) 'we are like that only' * - made in 30 days and 40 locations conveys the spirit of humor, pride, resourcefulness and the undying love for life that are the hallmarks of indian culture despite its flaws.

Arent we all proud to be indians ! And arent we all proud of indians like Mira Nair !

PS

*Try saying the phrase 'we are like that only' in our very own typical Indian accent with emphasis on the word 'only' to appreciate the underlying spirit of the tone !

Meenakshi Madhur
Sydney Australia
24 Dec 2001

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