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Arranged and Nina's Heavenly Delights
Sep. 17th, 2011 12:52 pmArranged and Nina's Heavenly Delights are not, on the surface, similar. The first film is the story of a friendship between two deeply religious woman, one an Orthodox Jew and the other Muslim, while the second tells the tale of Nina's burgeoning romance with her female coworker at her family's Indian restaurant.
But in fact the movies are quite similar. Both, despite premises that promise fascinating stories in settings and among people far removed from everyday Hollywood fare, are absolutely bland, and for the same reason: the filmmakers in both cases seem terrified of conflict.
In Arranged, this is because conflict would seem to undermine the message. The filmmakers seem to want to say something uplifting about interfaith friendship and understanding across boundaries, and apparently felt that the movie would fall apart like a house of cards if our heroines were ever anything but perfectly amicable to each other.
But - can't the filmmakers see? - effortlessly achieving amicability makes the movie utterly hollow! With no conflict to overcome, the movie can't say any of the things it so clearly wants to say about surmounting religious differences, because there's nothing to surmount.
Moreover, their constant amiability makes for a damn boring friendship - hardly a friendship at all, really. They seem more like friendly acquaintances than friends: not close enough to tease each other, not caring enough about each other to get irritated.
But at least Arranged is just trying to sell us the heroines' friendship. Nina's Heavenly Delights wants us to buy that Nina and her coworker, a girl so sweet yet so featureless that I can't recall her name, are soul mates (or at least decent dating material), never mind they can't muster so much as a montage of cliche bonding scenes.
Okay, there's a scene where Nina and her soon-to-be paramour cook together, but it's totally businesslike. No banter. No "let me show you how to hold that knife, which will incidentally force me to press myself against you and caress your strong yet delicate hands in close-up." The filmmakers don't even take the opportunity to have them feed each other!
And, as if their utter failure to portray a compelling romance wasn't enough, the macguffin plot is boring too! Nina's restaurant needs to defeat her jilted fiance's restaurant at a city-wide best-Indian-restaurant competition. The potential for drama! It crackles!
Except not. The filmmakers, instinctively shying away from anything that might be interesting, make the ex-fiance totally boring and inoffensive. It seems (although, frustratingly, the filmmakers can't bear to spell this out) that Nina jilted him because, well, he's male, and she's just not into guys.
Which is fair enough! That's a great reason not to get married! But it would be so much more satisfying, story-wise, if he were a jackass and we could hoot and cheer as Nina and her beloved trounce him. As it is, it just seems like rubbing it in. Jilted - defeated in an (inexplicably televised) cooking contest (by his ex-fiancee and her new lover!) - what can he suffer next?
Possibly they'll force him to watch Arranged and Nina's Heavenly Delights, double feature. The boredom might just kill him.
But in fact the movies are quite similar. Both, despite premises that promise fascinating stories in settings and among people far removed from everyday Hollywood fare, are absolutely bland, and for the same reason: the filmmakers in both cases seem terrified of conflict.
In Arranged, this is because conflict would seem to undermine the message. The filmmakers seem to want to say something uplifting about interfaith friendship and understanding across boundaries, and apparently felt that the movie would fall apart like a house of cards if our heroines were ever anything but perfectly amicable to each other.
But - can't the filmmakers see? - effortlessly achieving amicability makes the movie utterly hollow! With no conflict to overcome, the movie can't say any of the things it so clearly wants to say about surmounting religious differences, because there's nothing to surmount.
Moreover, their constant amiability makes for a damn boring friendship - hardly a friendship at all, really. They seem more like friendly acquaintances than friends: not close enough to tease each other, not caring enough about each other to get irritated.
But at least Arranged is just trying to sell us the heroines' friendship. Nina's Heavenly Delights wants us to buy that Nina and her coworker, a girl so sweet yet so featureless that I can't recall her name, are soul mates (or at least decent dating material), never mind they can't muster so much as a montage of cliche bonding scenes.
Okay, there's a scene where Nina and her soon-to-be paramour cook together, but it's totally businesslike. No banter. No "let me show you how to hold that knife, which will incidentally force me to press myself against you and caress your strong yet delicate hands in close-up." The filmmakers don't even take the opportunity to have them feed each other!
And, as if their utter failure to portray a compelling romance wasn't enough, the macguffin plot is boring too! Nina's restaurant needs to defeat her jilted fiance's restaurant at a city-wide best-Indian-restaurant competition. The potential for drama! It crackles!
Except not. The filmmakers, instinctively shying away from anything that might be interesting, make the ex-fiance totally boring and inoffensive. It seems (although, frustratingly, the filmmakers can't bear to spell this out) that Nina jilted him because, well, he's male, and she's just not into guys.
Which is fair enough! That's a great reason not to get married! But it would be so much more satisfying, story-wise, if he were a jackass and we could hoot and cheer as Nina and her beloved trounce him. As it is, it just seems like rubbing it in. Jilted - defeated in an (inexplicably televised) cooking contest (by his ex-fiancee and her new lover!) - what can he suffer next?
Possibly they'll force him to watch Arranged and Nina's Heavenly Delights, double feature. The boredom might just kill him.
