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Fine slice of
boisterous Punjabi
culture SO Mira Nair has done it again. After Salaam Bombay she has provided a fine slice of Indian life, rambunctious Punjabi culture, to be precise, with Delhi flavour in Monsoon Wedding which won the Golden Lion at Venice earlier this year.
From the young couple
Aditi (Vasundhara Das) and Hemant (Parvin Dabas), who are unable to
put their earlier liaisons out of the minds, especially Aditi, to the
harried parents Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah) and Pimmi Dubey (Lillete
Dubey), to the spinster cousin Ria (Shefali Shetty) who is hiding a
dark secret, and a host of elders like the exuberant Chadha (Kulbushan
Kharbanda), the suave Tej Puri (Rajat Kapoor) and the innocuous Mohan
Rai (Roshan Seth), there is an assortment of characters with a
plethora of eccentricities. And it only takes a family wedding to
bring out the worst in them. And if that isn’t enough variety, there
is wedding contractor P.K. Dubey (Vijay Raaz) and his romance with the
maid Alice (Tiltotna Shome) to provide a touch of socialism. |
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But Sabrina Dhavan’s script is adequate as it brings out the flavour of Punjabi culture in its infinite variety but may be the number of characters could have been reduced. The casting is excellent and some of the cameos are first-rate. Director Nair orchestrates the wedding party in inimitable style. The contractor Dubey makes an impressive entry but his romance is given far too much footage and the constant cuts to the simmering city could also have been reduced. They could have been part of the plot with some anecdotes taking place there. Like the bride and her lover going for a ride, but many of the city shots are inserted merely to provide dramatic relief. It is somewhere near the half-way mark that the film tends to meander but the crisis over an elderly uncle who has misbehaved in the past sets it back on the rails. The best part of the film is the various relationships that take place and even grow in those few days. As the patriarch of the family, Lalit is a well-rounded character, a happy-go-lucky Punjabi who also knows his responsibilities and has to take some unpleasant decisions. But his love for his family is undoubted even if his younger son is the cause of some concern. Shot on 16 mm, using a hand-held camera, cinematographer Declan Quinn does an excellent job weaving his way between a host of relatives and friends and director Nair gives ample evidence of the craftsperson she undoubtedly is. Her insight into the Punjabi lifestyle is impeccable and the choice of music adequate. Gori, Gori should warm the cockles of many an old heart. But more than that is the way she alternates between the various anecdotes and in the process imbues the action with the suspense that is so important to the narrative. It is sitting-on-a-powder-keg situation. Naseeruddin Shah begins by overdoing his rantings but as time goes by he really gets under the skin of the character and also handles the emotional aspect quite sensitively but Lillete Dubey as the wife is, at best, patchy. Shefali Shetty is excellent as the spinster cousin with a past to reveal and Rajat Kapoor is equally impressive as the offending relative. Vasundhara Das and Parvin Dabas are at best adequate but it is Vijay Raaz who raises most of the laughs as the contractor though I personally thought his role was overdone, though Tilotama Shome is more convincing and as the maid is good as is veteran Kulbushan Kharbanda, who like old man river, keeps rolling along and effectively too. And then the rains come, it never rains
but pours, they say, and Monsoon Wedding pours gallons and
gallons of bitter-sweet Punjabi culture. Not to be missed.
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After some lukewarm
efforts, especially Kama Sutra, Nair has come out with the
right recipe to zero in on the get-together of a typical extended
Punjabi family, and what better time is there than a wedding. "If
Monsoon Wedding can capture the masti — the singular,
life-loving spirit — of Punjabi culture then I will have done my
work," she is believed to have said. In that she has surely
succeeded.
The storyline is
slim — after all, what can you really expect from a single
wedding? Even though the director, Mira Nair, has little to build
on, she manages to keep the audience hooked throughout the film.
The scenes change swiftly, so swiftly that at times the camera
seems to wobble. Although the film narrates the story of just a
few days in three hours, the film is so racy that it keeps up the
interest levels. As the caption in the end reads: "We are
like that only: 40 locations, 30 days". How Nair manages to
fit in 40 locations in a single wedding is anybody’s guess! Of
course, it does convey the absorbing confusion of a typical Indian
wedding with its, running around, last minute shopping, spending,
etc.