Lately, Bollywood has been on the verge of impacting the American
collective consciousness. Every time an Indian-flavored film hits
theatres, Bollywood fans ask themselves, “Is this it? Is this our Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Will Bollywood finally cross over and become a part of the mainstream the way that Hong Kong action films did?”
And the answer is always no. It’s a silly question. Hong Kong action films didn’t cross over and become a part of the mainstream. Jet Li did. John Woo did. The Matrix did, and so, to a lesser extent, did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Western filmmakers will use HK elements in their action scenes, and it’s much easier to find HK films in chain video stores, but it still took an act of Quentin Tarantino to get Hero into American theatres uncut.
All of which leads me to Bride and Prejudice (2004), Gurinder Chadha’s love letter to Bollywood by way of Jane Austen. While the setting has shifted to modern-day Amritsar, the film follows the plot of the Austen novel very closely, the main difference being that Mr. Bakshi (Anupam Kher) has only four daughters: Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar), the easy going and compassionate older sister, Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), the spirited free thinker, Maya (Meghna Kothari), the humorless traditionalist, and Lucky (Peeya Rai Chowdhary), the boy crazy youngest sister. (Kitty Bennet has no counterpart, but since she really doesn’t do anything in the book, it’s a reasonable change to make while cramming a full-length novel into two-hour movie form. I’m sure she’s off somewhere having coffee with Tom Bombadil.)
Regardless, when the wealthy and highly eligible Balraj (Naveen Andrews) arrives in town (also short one sister, but she’s an even less central character than Kitty is), Mrs. Bakshi (Nadira Babbar) starts making wedding plans. Fortunately, Balraj is immediately smitten by Jaya. Sparks of a different kind fly between Lalita and Balraj’s American friend Will Darcy (Martin Henderson); he’s too proud, and she’s too quick to judge. And then . . . well, the novel is one of the great works of world literature. If you don’t already know what happens next, your High School English teacher has some explaining to do.
Movies and books are different. They tell stories in very different ways, and it’s very difficult to translate a story from one to the other. Still, Bride and Prejudice does so brilliantly. The details are different (sometimes very different) but the spirit of the novel comes shining through. And despite the shift in setting, the characters are the same people; while Mary Bennet never had the chance to perform the Cobra Dance, it’s exactly the sort of thing she would do. (And incidentally, the Cobra Dance is a moment of pure cinematic bliss, and well worth the price of admission on its own.) Bride and Prejudice is much more faithful to the spirit of the novel than, say, the Laurence Olivier version, but still fulfills my life-long dream of seeing Wickham beaten up onscreen.
Still, the film is more successful as Austen adaptation than it is as Bollywood homage. Apart from a few moments of gleeful surrealism, the musical numbers are more Broadway style than Bollywood; rather than providing a sweeping overview of emotion and a handy means to advance relationships within a short amount of screen time, they’re more like dialogue set to music. More seriously, the film refuses to sprawl. In a proper Bollywood film, each subplot would be examined in loving detail, but here the Jaya-Balraj relationship is resolved off screen. Even the Lalita-Darcy relationship is wrapped up rather abruptly. In the end, this isn’t a Bollywood movie. It’s a film made by people who clearly quite like Bollywood, and who want to share some of the things they like about Bollywood with Western audiences. The end result is a witty and entertaining film, but this is Bollywood Lite; it’s kind of like a Bollywood film, only less so. Still, it’s enough like Bollywood that people who don’t like Bollywood aren’t going to like Bride and Prejudice either.
The film may well bring the Mumbai film industry a few new fans, though it certainly hasn’t taken the world by storm. This is not the big crossover film that some fans have been waiting for.
It is an important crossover for Aishwarya, though; this is her great leap Westward, her first film in English, and the reviews so far have been . . . mixed. (The people who say she ’should stick to modeling” probably don’t know that Ash has 41 film credits on the imdb, compared to 36 for Julia Roberts (just to pick a Western actress at random.)) If I were Aishwarya, I’d probably put Raincoat in a more prominent place on my resume than Bride; she’s really not at all bad here, but this is a lighthearted and sometimes parodic romance, and so doesn’t really provide a lot of scope to display her talents. I wish her well, but this may not be the big crossover film for Aishwarya, either.
And the answer is always no. It’s a silly question. Hong Kong action films didn’t cross over and become a part of the mainstream. Jet Li did. John Woo did. The Matrix did, and so, to a lesser extent, did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Western filmmakers will use HK elements in their action scenes, and it’s much easier to find HK films in chain video stores, but it still took an act of Quentin Tarantino to get Hero into American theatres uncut.
All of which leads me to Bride and Prejudice (2004), Gurinder Chadha’s love letter to Bollywood by way of Jane Austen. While the setting has shifted to modern-day Amritsar, the film follows the plot of the Austen novel very closely, the main difference being that Mr. Bakshi (Anupam Kher) has only four daughters: Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar), the easy going and compassionate older sister, Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), the spirited free thinker, Maya (Meghna Kothari), the humorless traditionalist, and Lucky (Peeya Rai Chowdhary), the boy crazy youngest sister. (Kitty Bennet has no counterpart, but since she really doesn’t do anything in the book, it’s a reasonable change to make while cramming a full-length novel into two-hour movie form. I’m sure she’s off somewhere having coffee with Tom Bombadil.)
Regardless, when the wealthy and highly eligible Balraj (Naveen Andrews) arrives in town (also short one sister, but she’s an even less central character than Kitty is), Mrs. Bakshi (Nadira Babbar) starts making wedding plans. Fortunately, Balraj is immediately smitten by Jaya. Sparks of a different kind fly between Lalita and Balraj’s American friend Will Darcy (Martin Henderson); he’s too proud, and she’s too quick to judge. And then . . . well, the novel is one of the great works of world literature. If you don’t already know what happens next, your High School English teacher has some explaining to do.
Movies and books are different. They tell stories in very different ways, and it’s very difficult to translate a story from one to the other. Still, Bride and Prejudice does so brilliantly. The details are different (sometimes very different) but the spirit of the novel comes shining through. And despite the shift in setting, the characters are the same people; while Mary Bennet never had the chance to perform the Cobra Dance, it’s exactly the sort of thing she would do. (And incidentally, the Cobra Dance is a moment of pure cinematic bliss, and well worth the price of admission on its own.) Bride and Prejudice is much more faithful to the spirit of the novel than, say, the Laurence Olivier version, but still fulfills my life-long dream of seeing Wickham beaten up onscreen.
Still, the film is more successful as Austen adaptation than it is as Bollywood homage. Apart from a few moments of gleeful surrealism, the musical numbers are more Broadway style than Bollywood; rather than providing a sweeping overview of emotion and a handy means to advance relationships within a short amount of screen time, they’re more like dialogue set to music. More seriously, the film refuses to sprawl. In a proper Bollywood film, each subplot would be examined in loving detail, but here the Jaya-Balraj relationship is resolved off screen. Even the Lalita-Darcy relationship is wrapped up rather abruptly. In the end, this isn’t a Bollywood movie. It’s a film made by people who clearly quite like Bollywood, and who want to share some of the things they like about Bollywood with Western audiences. The end result is a witty and entertaining film, but this is Bollywood Lite; it’s kind of like a Bollywood film, only less so. Still, it’s enough like Bollywood that people who don’t like Bollywood aren’t going to like Bride and Prejudice either.
The film may well bring the Mumbai film industry a few new fans, though it certainly hasn’t taken the world by storm. This is not the big crossover film that some fans have been waiting for.
It is an important crossover for Aishwarya, though; this is her great leap Westward, her first film in English, and the reviews so far have been . . . mixed. (The people who say she ’should stick to modeling” probably don’t know that Ash has 41 film credits on the imdb, compared to 36 for Julia Roberts (just to pick a Western actress at random.)) If I were Aishwarya, I’d probably put Raincoat in a more prominent place on my resume than Bride; she’s really not at all bad here, but this is a lighthearted and sometimes parodic romance, and so doesn’t really provide a lot of scope to display her talents. I wish her well, but this may not be the big crossover film for Aishwarya, either.
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