Monthly Archives: October 2004
Bride & Prejudice – a review
Gurinder Chadha has all the characters from ‘Pride and Prejudice’ . She has tried to indianise everything. So Elizabeth Bennet becomes Lalita Bakshi. Her elder sister Jane becomes Jaya (pronounced as Joya by her love interest), Mr. Bingley, the love interest of Joya becomes Balraj, Liddie (one of the younger sisters) becomes Lakhi, Mary (yet another younger sister) becomes Maya. Lalita’s best friend becomes Chandra Lamba from Charlotte Lucas and last but not the least, the sloppy, weird relative trying to woo Lalita metmorphoses (into an ugly creature nonetheless) from Mr.Collins to Mr. Kohli.
The first scene shows Aishwarya Rai trying to sit pretty on a tractor. Typical case of the beauty and the beast. Here one should note that the sister no. 2 in “Pride and Prejudice” (Elizabeth) is a trifle less good looking than the others (if I remember correctly), but clearly here, the situation is quite different. Gradually the story moves towards the great indian wedding taking place where Lalita and her sisters happen to meet the best man (Balraj) and his phoren friend, Darcy. Of course how can one forget Balraj’s sister who generally behaves like a “cunt” in Balraj’s own description of her. The story has Lalita disliking Darcy right from the beginning because he seems to prefer “high standards”. Meanwhile she falls for another firang she happens to meet in Goa – Wickham, who happens to know Darcy & tells her stuff about him, which makes her dislike him further. Equally or rather more infatuated with Wickham is Lakhi, who’s just a desperate teen out to impress guys. Jaya and Balraj are getting closer to each other in every way imaginable. No, the movie is all prim-and-propah!! Forget any intimate scenes, one doesnt even get a glance at the actual colors of the swimsuits these ladies wear. I am surprised we didnt have the typical bollywood scene of two flowers touching each other to signify that love is blooming. In between the comical character of the plot, Kohli, arrives and is all set to woo Lalita with his sloppy ways, only to be rejected by Lalita but accepted instantly by Chandra, Lalita’s friend, as a ticket to a better life. Here I must mention that Sonali Kulkarni as Chandra, looks quite horrible in indian attire that this movie made her wear. One is finally relieved when she starts wearing westerns in firang land.
In all this while, Lalita has begun to like Darcy but later realises that Darcy for some reason dissuaded Balraj from his Joya. Wickham kinda lures Lakhi into eloping with him and Darcy helps Lalita get her back. This gets him not only brownie points but he also scores a hit. In the end we see Darcy/Balraj getting married to their Indian sweethearts.
The indianness factor figures high on Gurinders list, but it keeps clashing with the fact that this is supposed to be an international movie and the soundtrack is completely in English. Not even a single Hindi/Punjabi song. Moreover the songs sound weird (at least to my accustomed ears) on hearing english lyrics being mouthed on familiar hindi tunes. The background score mostly seems to include only professional western classical singers and their voices just do not gel with most of the indian faces in the movie especially so in “A Marriage has come to town”. Though “No life without wife” and “Show them the way” are still tolerable. Ashanti’s stint in Goa is also not impressive, where she struggles to blurt some heavily accented Hindi in her otherwise English song. Maybe the international junta would have a different take on the musical score. I dont know if there’s an english musical score in “Balle balle, Amritsar to LA” – the hindi version of the movie. It would sound quite drastic to have proper English songs in a hindi dubbed version!
Though the movie does have the masala from typical bollywood movies, Ash’s acting is nothing great. In fact it looks quite artificial. The expressions she makes are not spontaneous. I didn’t go there expecting another spontaneous and very natural Jess Bhambhra from “Bend it like Beckham” but this cold, unnatural, non-spontaneous act wasn’t expected either. She was better in “Taal” and “Hum dil de chuke sanam”. The humour is also a little lacking in this movie considering that it’s a Gurinder Chadha movie. The scenes with Kohli are replete with slapstick comedy, but that’s that – it’s slapstick. The nagin dance by Lalita’s sister, takes everyone by surprise, the audience in the movie itself as well as that in the hall. Overall a masala movie but I would have rather waited for it to be shown on cable than especially checking it out.
Bauji
It was my paternal grandfather’s birthday on 27th September. He was born in Afghanistan. Lived like a pathan, went through a whole lot of experiences in life. This included the partitiion trauma and his father (my great grandfather) being murdered during that phase. He left all that was his, in what is now called Pakistan. Everyone still talks of the palatial marble and glass house that they had just got constructed barely in May’47 and partition happened in August just when the house had become a landmark for locals. After getting his family to Delhi, he restarted life from a bare scratch. He started a poultry farm. My dad remembers an abundance of poultry products and milk during those times. My grandfather was on duty with the police when Gandhiji was murdered by Nathuram Godse. But I don’t know why I never discussed this historical incident with him. He was a very powerful man. Even when he would be really ill, his lungs would somehow find the strength to bellow. He would always raise his voice against injustice. No wonder we are still fighting the cases against poultry farm land encroachment by the government. Bauji is what we addressed him as. I remember how I used to trudge along with him as a kid, to get his urdu paper. He used to read and write Urdu (and not punjabi, even though we are punjabis) and of course English and Hindi. But his main love continued to be Urdu. All his diaries, personal or with various important notes are in Urdu.
In old age, ppl go through a sort of reversal of life. A lot of it resembles childhood. They become dependent on others. Their reasoning is still stuck in their own times and thus they fidget at almost everything. They also get pleased easily and with some small insignificant things too. My grandfather had this habit of “rewarding” whosoever made him happy. He used to give us some cash as a token. But this used to happen very rarely. I remember wishing that he would have a real long life and live to see his greatgrandchildren (through me). Although he had seen several through other cousins. But that wish of mine can never be granted. He left us 2 years ago.. just 2 years short of his 100th birthday.
Announcing…
… another blog of mine that I, after a lot of interesting blog plans, finally succeeded in creating :-). Need to brush up the looks a little but specifically this new blog is meant for interesting trivia that I come across. That may include total timepass stuff too. So visitors, may I please request you to get your hands together and no, don’t clap, just click.