Random Movie #1: Monsoon Wedding

For our inaugural random movie, Becky and I ended up watching Monsoon Wedding, a 2001 Indian romantic comedy.  This selection was one that I had added to the movie pool.  I had previously viewed it in one of my film classes at ISU and thought (correctly so) that it would be one that Becky would enjoy watching.

The film follows a traditional, Punjabi Hindu family in the days immediately preceding the arranged marriage of daughter Aditi Verma with Texas Indian Hemant Rai.  But, as ever, the course of love does not run smoothly.  Increasingly anxious over the prospect of marrying a man that she has never met before (and moving halfway around the world with him), Aditi begins an affair with her married ex-boyfriend.  The mounting pressures of the wedding begin to compound with Lalit Verma's (Aditi's father) increasing financial difficulties and concerns over his son's effeminint behavior (cooking, dancing and not playing sports).  P.K. Dubey, the wedding planner, falls in love with the Verma's servant Alice, who shuns him due to an embarrassing misunderstanding.  Cousin Ayesha begins seeing a visiting Australian, Rahul, behind everybody's back.  And, on top of all of this, a dark secret from adopted daughter Ria's past threatens to break the family apart.

Monsoon Wedding is able to successfully combine the relatable humor of My Big Fat Greek Wedding with the deeply personal tragedy of The Celebration.  The film doesn't focus on any one plotline or set of characters.  Instead, director Mira Nair is able to deftly balance and develop every plot she introduces to fruition (similar to Joss Wheddon juggling an incredibly full cast of characters in The Avengers).  Aditi's anxieties over the wedding are weighed equally with her father's;  Ayesha's light-hearted secret is balanced against Ria's heart-rending one; even the romance between Aditi and Hemant does not over-shadow P.K. and Alice's own courtship.  Every story has its moment to shine.

The most impressive aspect of the film is that despite the increasingly dramatic nature of the Verma's problems, Nair avoids succumbing to histrionics.   Instead of sickeningly over-the-top drama, she offers us dramatic composure.  And, in doing so, she is able to create a complete image of the family, not just one or two individual characters or plotlines.

Monsoon Wedding is the film that My Big Fat Greek Wedding wanted to be: a sometimes-comedic, sometimes-dramatic big-picture view of a large family's wedding.  The real difference between them is that in Monsoon Wedding, family is shown to be comforting and protective rather than suffocating and often very silly.  This is an exceptionally entertaining production with an infectiously vibrant energy woven throughout the film.  Ultimately, I would rate this film an 8.5, putting it on par with Much Ado About Nothing,  Silver Linings Playbook and Persona.