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March 06, 2005

Bride and Prejudice

OK, I'm going to try a new feature at Tedlog: brief movie reviews. I just saw Bride and Prejudice, the new crossover Bollywood musical by the director of Bend It Like Beckham. It's not as perfect as the last film, but it's a lot of fun. I'm a big fan of Bollywood in theory, but I still haven't seen too many of the movies. I love musicals, and I love the idea of an alternate filmgoing universe in which audiences have no problem with characters who periodically break into song. Hollywood today is so embarassed by musicals, it feels compelled to cloak them in the trappings of "realism." So the musical breaks in Chicago, for example, have to be explicitly framed as "fantasy" numbers. It really bums me out that most of my students find classic musicals almost unwatchable. They just can't suspend disbelief when characters they're supposed to care about stop everything to sing, then go back to the story like nothing strange just happened. At the same time, of course, we think nothing of it when a modern action movie pauses every ten minutes for the equivalent moment of nonnarrative spectacle - a chase, explosion, or shootout, known by some screenwriters as the "action beat" or "whammy."

So, I'm really thrilled to see the Bollywood sensibility spill over to movies like Moulin Rouge. And I'm psyched to see Bollywood itself build more of a US cult. That cult has its roots in the "desi" community of the Indian diaspora, of course, but hopefully it's starting to spread to hipsters of all ethnic backgrounds. I wouldn't be surprised to see Bollywood become the next version of Hong Kong action movies, anime, and Japanese horror - an import that grows an influential American cult, slowly seeping into the American mainstream via emigres, appropriation, and crossover hits. I'm not sure if romance movies so old-fashioned they don't even allow kissing will ever get to be as cool as Chow Yun Fat diving to the ground while shooting with two guns at once. But wouldn't it be cool if they were?

As for the movie at hand, Bride and Prejudice certainly wasn't as much of a knockout as what I take to be the Bollywood gold standard, Lagaan. (Although for all I know, cognezenti find it overrated, and there are 50 much better movies I just haven't seen yet.) But it's got charm, energy, and fun to spare. It probably helped that I don't know the plot's source material, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, any better than I know Bollywood. Both sides of the hybrid were equally exotic to me. (I only knew Darcy was supposed to be the catch because of the references to the character in Briget Jones's Diary.)

The director has said she liked the idea of transplanting Austen to India because of some of the parallels she found between the two societies - arranged marriages, closely knit families, long-time traditions and hierarchies being challenged by modernity. That all works smoothly, although I didn't find the juxtaposition as productive as, say, Emma becoming Clueless.

The film tried to make some political points about feminism and cultural imperialism. But compared to Bend It Like Beckham, which explored the impact of assimilation on the second generation so elegantly - celebrating the kids' new independence while remaining sympathetic to the parents' goals to retain the important parts of the old culture - the issues are raised much more bluntly here. The romantic leads have several arguments about cultural imperialism that seem way too on-the-nose, and are left surprisingly unresolved. (He, the American scion of a hotel dynasty - Darcy as Paris Hilton? - wants to buy a hotel in Goa and turn it into a five-star resort, so visitors can see India without getting their shoes dirty. She, a proud native of India, tells him that he just wants to turn India into a giant Disneyland - India without the Indians. He retorts that it's useful economic investment. She asks, but who gets the money? The question is dropped, but later we learn that his family has failed to buy the hotel, on his recommendation - she changed his mind. What's weird is that no alternative is broached. Couldn't they imagine a more equitable investment strategy, rather than no investment at all? Couldn't he come up with a structure ensuring local control, a democratic workplace, and culturally sensitive interaction with the community? Wouldn't that be better than punting altogether? It's a weird moral for a film that elsewhere celebrates hybridity so enthusiastically.)

Other weird aspects of the film's politics appear to be holdovers from Austen. Early on, it seems to our heroine that Darcy, the rich guy, is a jerk, while another character, the son of Darcy's nanny, is the real mensch. Later, it turns out that she judged them too quickly. The moral seems to be that just because you're poor it doesn't mean you can't be a cad, and just because you're rich it doesn't mean you can't be a great guy. Which is true enough, but not really the most hard-hitting stance one could take in a film which implicitly addresses the global inequalities between north and south.

Likewise, several dark-skinned servant characters are seen only briefly in the movie, never granted any subjectivity, and even used for brief laughs at their own expense. Again, I'm sure Austen didn't do any better on that score, but it made me long for the democratic vision of a film like Gosford Park, where everybody on screen counts.

If this isn't a perfect movie, it's still a pretty great one. How can you not like a movie with a love song on the beach featuring singing lifeguards, surfers, and a gospel choir? (Come to think of it, From Justin to Kelly probably had a scene like that too. Maybe I should go ahead and rent it . . . ) Another song blends effortlessly from mariachi music to bhangra to Hollywood shlock. If the film doesn't always work through its egalitarian impulses, its heart is definitely in the right place.

Tentative DTMTBD rating: 2 - Much better than Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's dead. (For more on the DTMTBD rating system, click here.)

Posted by tedf at March 6, 2005 12:36 AM

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