Bride and Prejudice
OK, so Aishwarya Rai proves that a pretty face does not always translate into good acting! 'Bride and Prejudice' (or 'Balle Balle Amritsar to LA') based on Jane Austen's classic 'Pride...' is a lousy attempt to integrate the English country side with India's bhangra-dancing country folk of Punjab. Now what's wrong with the movie? Everything! Gurinder Chhadha's film about an Amritsar-based couple trying to get their four daughters married to eligible Non-Resident Indian men, is a pathetic attempt to problematize the rigors of being a young adult woman in India.
Lalita (played by Rai) is Austen's Elizabeth - the witty, young, smart woman who thinks for herself and fills the pages of the original book with caustic and intelligent humor. Lalita engages with William Darcy (played by Martin Henderson; Fitzwilliam Darcy in the original), an American hotelier who doesn't seem to think much of India. This is something that our little Lalita can't bear. And poor Darcy is faced with an irritating and self-righteous Indian girl who doles out inane and anachronistic reverse-racist sops to his dumbstruck face. To cut a long story short he falls in love with Lalita.
Since this is not a spoiler (although I should probably just tell you what happens so everyone can save some money) I'm going to describe the flaws of the film. I think the original idea of the film was to negotiate the common terrain of the status of women in certain societies where mothers aspire to find their daughters rich husbands and therefore place them in the 'marriage market'. If the family is poor it becomes even more important to find these rich bachelors. In Austen's novel these men hailed from the English aristocracy. In Chaddha's film, they are Non-Resident Indians boasting of massive hot-tubs and houses 'near' Hollywood. Instead of being earls, and dukes they are 'green-card holders'. So is this the new Indian aristocracy - technical professionals with confused accents, a misplaced notion of their own importance in the state of the world's affairs and the lives of their wives?
What jars most in the film is the constant refrain of the traditional, simple and 'good' Indian girl (read virgin) who obviously is a much better person than the forward thinking white or expatriate girls, while in no way being lesser than them in terms of charm and intelligence. You can ignore the small fact that this good Indian girl sits around at home all day, in no way contributes to the family income and apart from making it clear that she likes working; spends her time drooling after white British and American men. There is nothing genteel about the film. It is not even remotely thought-provoking. At best, it is in parts funny (you actually thank the bad humor scenes since they detract from the bad acting and the uncalled for song and dance sequences).
The voice of reason in the film is found in the girls' father (played by Anupam Kher) who is quick to realize the shortcomings of his wife and supports Lalita's decision to not become a female ex-pat statistic. Much to my disappointment, Kher has few lines and his character is not developed to its full potential. There is no intrigue in the film, except for one of the younger sisters eloping with Johnny Wickham (Darcy's ex-stablehand) in London. Now how this girl thought she was going to live in UK without a valid visa is something that escapes me and obviously escaped the filmmakers too. Is there no such thing as a crack down on illegal immigrants?
Being an Indian woman myself I thought the movie was extremely insulting to young women. It seems that the be all and end all of Indian women is to get married to a rich man. Even if Lalita is accomplished (she can strum a few notes on the guitar) and forward-thinking, that does not translate into her independence. She still wants to get married and what's worse to white men, inspite of her sops about India having driven away the Angrez (English) away five decades ago. When Darcy protests that he is American she says its the same thing. But a casual student of history could tell you its not. What bothers me most is how the narrative of the Indian national movement is appropriated by a girl in Punjab (who does nothing but sit around at home all day) to build herself as this patriotic and feminist 'good' Indian girl, even though she has absolutely no inkling about India and its problems (she claims otherwise).
'Bride and Prejudice' is loud, raucous, boisterous, irritating, senseless, insulting and weakly scripted. If it is a satire on Indians, it fails miserably in its task. If it is an exercise in cultural translation, it needs deeper insight. Chhadha should have realized the basic idea that Austen wrote in a different time, space and narrative. 'Bride..' is an anachronistic protrayal of England in the reign of George III. The contexts are different, the people are different, the cultures are different and the times and spaces they inhabit are different. The original is witty and succeeds as a somewhat feminist take on English society. Here the aims and the ends of the film are confused with an aspiration of aping old English society. The idea behind translation of a text is not to ape it verbatim, but to choose characteristic motifs out of the original and situate them in different cultural contexts by acting on the truism that times, spaces, contexts may change; yet the nature of man transcends all of these. A case in point of Vishal Bharadwaj's film 'Maqbool' based on an Indian interpretation of 'Macbeth'. The film works because the story is not a scene by scene translation but a thematic translation. Chaddha, on the other hand needed to brainstorm her film a little more!
Lalita (played by Rai) is Austen's Elizabeth - the witty, young, smart woman who thinks for herself and fills the pages of the original book with caustic and intelligent humor. Lalita engages with William Darcy (played by Martin Henderson; Fitzwilliam Darcy in the original), an American hotelier who doesn't seem to think much of India. This is something that our little Lalita can't bear. And poor Darcy is faced with an irritating and self-righteous Indian girl who doles out inane and anachronistic reverse-racist sops to his dumbstruck face. To cut a long story short he falls in love with Lalita.
Since this is not a spoiler (although I should probably just tell you what happens so everyone can save some money) I'm going to describe the flaws of the film. I think the original idea of the film was to negotiate the common terrain of the status of women in certain societies where mothers aspire to find their daughters rich husbands and therefore place them in the 'marriage market'. If the family is poor it becomes even more important to find these rich bachelors. In Austen's novel these men hailed from the English aristocracy. In Chaddha's film, they are Non-Resident Indians boasting of massive hot-tubs and houses 'near' Hollywood. Instead of being earls, and dukes they are 'green-card holders'. So is this the new Indian aristocracy - technical professionals with confused accents, a misplaced notion of their own importance in the state of the world's affairs and the lives of their wives?
What jars most in the film is the constant refrain of the traditional, simple and 'good' Indian girl (read virgin) who obviously is a much better person than the forward thinking white or expatriate girls, while in no way being lesser than them in terms of charm and intelligence. You can ignore the small fact that this good Indian girl sits around at home all day, in no way contributes to the family income and apart from making it clear that she likes working; spends her time drooling after white British and American men. There is nothing genteel about the film. It is not even remotely thought-provoking. At best, it is in parts funny (you actually thank the bad humor scenes since they detract from the bad acting and the uncalled for song and dance sequences).
The voice of reason in the film is found in the girls' father (played by Anupam Kher) who is quick to realize the shortcomings of his wife and supports Lalita's decision to not become a female ex-pat statistic. Much to my disappointment, Kher has few lines and his character is not developed to its full potential. There is no intrigue in the film, except for one of the younger sisters eloping with Johnny Wickham (Darcy's ex-stablehand) in London. Now how this girl thought she was going to live in UK without a valid visa is something that escapes me and obviously escaped the filmmakers too. Is there no such thing as a crack down on illegal immigrants?
Being an Indian woman myself I thought the movie was extremely insulting to young women. It seems that the be all and end all of Indian women is to get married to a rich man. Even if Lalita is accomplished (she can strum a few notes on the guitar) and forward-thinking, that does not translate into her independence. She still wants to get married and what's worse to white men, inspite of her sops about India having driven away the Angrez (English) away five decades ago. When Darcy protests that he is American she says its the same thing. But a casual student of history could tell you its not. What bothers me most is how the narrative of the Indian national movement is appropriated by a girl in Punjab (who does nothing but sit around at home all day) to build herself as this patriotic and feminist 'good' Indian girl, even though she has absolutely no inkling about India and its problems (she claims otherwise).
'Bride and Prejudice' is loud, raucous, boisterous, irritating, senseless, insulting and weakly scripted. If it is a satire on Indians, it fails miserably in its task. If it is an exercise in cultural translation, it needs deeper insight. Chhadha should have realized the basic idea that Austen wrote in a different time, space and narrative. 'Bride..' is an anachronistic protrayal of England in the reign of George III. The contexts are different, the people are different, the cultures are different and the times and spaces they inhabit are different. The original is witty and succeeds as a somewhat feminist take on English society. Here the aims and the ends of the film are confused with an aspiration of aping old English society. The idea behind translation of a text is not to ape it verbatim, but to choose characteristic motifs out of the original and situate them in different cultural contexts by acting on the truism that times, spaces, contexts may change; yet the nature of man transcends all of these. A case in point of Vishal Bharadwaj's film 'Maqbool' based on an Indian interpretation of 'Macbeth'. The film works because the story is not a scene by scene translation but a thematic translation. Chaddha, on the other hand needed to brainstorm her film a little more!
posted by Vasundhara at 11:56 AM
3 Comments:
Maine to logon ko pehle hi mana kiya tha dekhne ke liye....log mante hi nahin...aur baad main pachtate hain...all my friends saw B&P, and some like it too...ah but they liked K3G too, so i dont really complain...
muh ki baat cheen li, with your comments about the movie and GC. Never saw the movie, but i am sure your analysis was accurate. B it like Beckham was enough preview to her directorial skills...
I liked your review of the movie bride and prejudice, however many of the opinions put forward seemed to be too harsh. first, i understand everybody has the right to their own opinions and i am just voicing mine. so i hope i am not sounding indignant or belligerent. when i first saw the movie, even i felt the same remorse that you have conveyed through your review. however, back home i tried to fit the the jigsaw puzzles and voila, i did see some connection to reality. ok, people might disagree, but i have a point. statistics have constantly shown us the percentage of women in india who are considered nothing but a source of burden who needs to be bundled off to the "right man". in this case, the right man would be a rich, successful and preferably a non-resident indian, a term made popular thanx to the dollops of karan johar movies that the indian audiences have been treated to. let's face it. most of us dream of coming to the united states. correct me if i am wrong. only people choose different ways of doing it. girls like you and me are few and far in between. most girls just dream of tying the nuptial knot and flying away to resurrect their destiny. i know that the movie does tend to confirm or create sereotypes. but unfortunately many such stereotypical images are infact a reflection of the relaity of the lives of a vast majority of girls in india and other patriarchal societies. my point is, should we deny it or should we try to forge a collective movement to contain such stereotypes only in movies and create a society where women are liberated and have a right to make their own choices. my usage of words probably are not as eloquent as yours, however i hope you understand the context of what i am trying to convey through this piece.
I liked your review of the movie bride and prejudice, however many of the opinions put forward seemed to be too harsh. first, i understand everybody has the right to their own opinions and i am just voicing mine. so i hope i am not sounding indignant or belligerent. when i first saw the movie, even i felt the same remorse that you have conveyed through your review. however, back home i tried to fit the the jigsaw puzzles and voila, i did see some connection to reality. ok, people might disagree, but i have a point. statistics have constantly shown us the percentage of women in india who are considered nothing but a source of burden who needs to be bundled off to the "right man". in this case, the right man would be a rich, successful and preferably a non-resident indian, a term made popular thanx to the dollops of karan johar movies that the indian audiences have been treated to. let's face it. most of us dream of coming to the united states. correct me if i am wrong. only people choose different ways of doing it. girls like you and me are few and far in between. most girls just dream of tying the nuptial knot and flying away to resurrect their destiny. i know that the movie does tend to confirm or create sereotypes. but unfortunately many such stereotypical images are infact a reflection of the relaity of the lives of a vast majority of girls in india and other patriarchal societies. my point is, should we deny it or should we try to forge a collective movement to contain such stereotypes only in movies and create a society where women are liberated and have a right to make their own choices. my usage of words probably are not as eloquent as yours, however i hope you understand the context of what i am trying to convey through this piece.
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