Monsoon Wedding

Synopsis: The arranged marriage of Aditi Verma (Vasundhara Das), the daughter of a middle class Indian family, and Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas), an Indian living and working in America, is set to take place in four days. Both have misgivings about the wedding - Aditi is having an affair with her married boss, and Hermant questions the traditional practise of having a wife chosen for him by his parents. Meanwhile Aditi's parents are frantically trying to organise the wedding. Her father Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah) is struggling to finance the large ceremony and has to negotiate its details with the eccentric wedding planner, P.K Dubey . Extended family begins to descend on their New Delhi home and the celebrations begin.

Essentially, Monsoon Wedding is a film about family - the frustrations and difficulties inherent in familial relationships as well as the love and joy - and this is a key part of the film's broad appeal. Lalit and Pimmi are the devoted parents stretching themselves to provide for their children, as the children juggle the demands of their culture with their own lives and desires. And like most families this one has its darker side, as a more serious subplot surfaces amidst the general humour and elation.

Mira Nair's film is a wonderful display and exploration of modern Indian life, in which a traditional culture has been heavily influenced by the West but still maintains the norms of an ingrained class system. The Verma and Rai families switch easily between the Hindi, Punjabi and English languages. They wear a mix of Western and traditional clothing, their home has Indian artefacts as well as modern appliances. While the film's main focus is this large family, it is interspersed with contrasting scenes of bustling Delhi life, where the lower classes live and work. Similarly the loud, elaborate wedding of Aditi and Hermant is compared with the simple, discreet ceremony when P.K Dubey marries.

Monsoon Wedding is charming, warm and vibrant, a film that is hard not to enjoy as everyone's falling in love and expressing their joy through music and colour. At times it is a little slow and its stories are rarely original, but the film's humour and spirit make up for these shortcomings. This family and the ensemble characters are funny, likeable and convincing, brought to vivid life by an excellent cast and the joyous conclusion argues convincingly that although suffocating at times, family, culture and tradition are ultimately positive forces.

 

 

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