Monsoon Wedding

[osprey_archer]

In every project some rain must fall, and in mine that rain was Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding.

I know. I know. The pun came into my mind and wouldn’t let me go.

Seriously, though, up until now I’ve had very good luck with all my movies for the women film directors project; I haven’t loved them all, but even in the ones I haven’t liked as much I’ve found something valuable or interesting. But I was quite disappointed with Monsoon Wedding.

I’d gotten it into my mind somewhere that Monsoon Wedding was a joyful movie (probably I’m confusing it with some other Wedding movie), which it isn’t. It never made me laugh. But it’s not really an effective drama, either. There are a lot of plotlines to keep track of, which shouldn’t be impossible: Love Actually has more plotlines, which are more diffusely connected than the ones in Monsoon Wedding, and yet they come together to make a satisfying whole.

(Mind, I have a lot of reservations about Love Actually. But they did nail the structure.)

I didn’t feel that Monsoon Wedding came together. Most of the characters felt underdeveloped and I had to try to will myself to care about them, rather than just caring naturally.

There’s a Mira Nair film series in Bloomington this spring and I’ve been considering popping down to catch one or two of them, but I don’t want to drive for two hours if it’s all going to be as disappointing as this.

Comments

[kore]

FWIW, I liked Mississippi Masala and The Namesake, altho I haven't seen most of her stuff. Might be worth seeing Vanity Fair on the big screen?

Maaaaybe you were thinking of Bride and Prejudice?

[osprey_archer]

I've already seen Bride & Prejudice, so no, I don't think it was that. Maybe it was Muriel's Wedding. They've both got wedding in the title and the first word starts with M.

[rmc28]

Muriel's Wedding is not what I would call joyful, though.

(I watched it once, over 20 years ago; I found it painful-but-worth-watching then but I'm wondering what I'd make of it now.)

[carmarthen]

Huh, I love Monsoon Wedding, but it's true that it's not a joyful story, exactly. I also liked The Namesake, which I found to be quite different, but I don't remember the structure well and I do think it had a lot of plot threads.

[osprey_archer]

I think I'll have to try at least one other Mira Nair movie; you can't really tell about a director until you've seen two or three of their movies, I think.

I was going to add "unless you really hate one of their movies," but even then - I really hated Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail, but I loved some of her other movies. So who knows. And in any case I didn't hate Monsoon Wedding, just felt tepid toward it.