Black Arts & Culture Feature:
“These are my children, and I will protect them even from myself if I have to,” says the father in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding.
“When the film came out, it was almost the first portrait of globalization that people outside India had seen. Now, in the time of Trump, the doors are literally closing between borders.”
—Mira Nair, Hollywood Reporter (May 3, 2017)
“It was a landmark film, both in how it presented Indian culture in India and in diaspora, and also in how well it did at the box office.”
—Sejal Shah (comment on Monsoon Wedding), This Is One Way to Dance
Everything has been planned with great care and expense, and each detail becomes significant—a sign of family devotion, of generous expense; thus, when one of the yard decorations for the Punjabi Indian wedding of Aditi and Hemant is falling apart, the bride’s anxious father, Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah), calls out in distress for the wedding planner, whom he reaches by phone. (If the decoration can fall, what else might happen with this arranged marriage, a bond of between two people and their families, a bond of law, money, and religion?) The father recommends a young man, Rahul Chadha, the Australian nephew of Lalit’s wife, as a driver to retrieve the father’s sister from the airport. Yet, Lalit reprimands Rahul—still tired from his own trip—for inattention. “Actor Shah, gentle-eyed but subtly imploding, makes this guy a believable middle-aged dad: loving, cranky and perhaps emotionally limited,” noted reviewer Carla Meyer in the San Francisco Chronicle (March 8, 2002). Meanwhile, a talk show features a discussion about tradition and modernity, freedom and censorship, and sexuality in popular culture. The host, Vikram (Sameer Arya), is a suave man with whom the show’s producer, who is the father’s engaged daughter, the adrift but amorous Aditi, has been having an affair; and Vikram and Aditi kiss. A cousin, Ria (Shefali Shetty), the beautifully fleshy young woman writer who lives with her Uncle Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah) and Aunt Pimmi (Lillete Dubey) and whose future is a subject of concern, tells Aditi (Vasundhara Das), that Ria, knowing of her affair with the television host, does not think that Aditi is ready for marriage—Ria is skeptical about the arranged marriage. Can Aditi plan a future—a marriage, a move to America—when she refuses to give up her current entanglement?
Monsoon Wedding, the film by Mira Nair, was written by Sabrina Dhawan, and has the collaboration of cinematographer Declan Quinn and production designer Stephanie Carroll, and editing by Allyson C. Johnson, with the music by composer Mychael Danna. The film, which has aspects of both drama and documentary, is colorful, but the photography is natural, warm. Nair has imagination, intellect, humor, and political sense; and her films include Salaam Bombay (1988), Mississippi Masala (1991), The Namesake (2006), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), Amelia (2009), and Queen of Katwe (2016). She is one of the most remarkable and pleasing of filmmakers.
“Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is one of those joyous films that leaps over national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature,” Roger Ebert began in his March 8, 2002 Chicago Sun-Times review. The film, which won the Golden Lion at the 2001 Venice film festival, is a delight, blending reality and romance. “This is no art film, though it is certainly artful. It’s a comedy of manners, Indian-style. The cast is exclusively Indian and the setting is Delhi, where the very middle-class Verma family live. The film is played out in English, Hindi and Punjabi, which such a family would speak. Though tradition, such as the arranged marriage of the family’s daughter, plays a large part in the film, there is modernity too,” noted Derek Thompson in the November 11, 2001 English newspaper Guardian.
In Monsoon Wedding, the plans for the great event have raised the atmosphere of chaos in the comfortable house and family. People see and stumble over each other, bringing both intimacy and conflict. The wedding planner P.K. Dubey arrives and reassures the father, Lalit, that “Your daughter is my daughter.” The professionalism of P.K. Dubey (Vijay Raaz)—his calm, his affected manner, his exaggerated reassurances—can be subverted by the passing frenzies of the event; and Dubey and the very pretty house servant Alice, will join the confusion: after she picks up some drinking glasses, they bump into each other, beginning their recognition of each other’s presence and new curiosities. (Dubey spends time on the phone with his mother, who is concerned about the stock market. His new worldliness may have affected his mother.) Dubey eats marigolds, a favorite yellow and gold flower for Indians, sometimes orange (here they look orange): a symbol of virtues, of fortune, joy, strength, and tradition.
A young girl, cousin Aliya (Ayesha’s younger sister), about ten years old, observes others from a hiding place—Aliya says that she saw Aditi naked and almost saw Ria naked. Aliya is fascinated, obviously, about the differences among human bodies, and possibly beginning to speculate about the mystery of romance and sex. Ria says the girl is disgusting—a genuine reprimand lightly spoken. Aliya asks Ria why she is still unmarried; and asks her uncle about a word, uxorious (it means having great affection for one’s wife). The uncle thinks the word a spelling mistake—thinks it should be luxurious. More people begin to arrive: Aliya’s parents and Aliya older sister Ayesha. The young women joke together about romance, about their bodies.
The fiancé, Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas), a computer programmer who lives in America (Houston), arrives with family, his parents Mohan Rai (Roshan Seth) and Saroj Rai (Soni Razdan). The engaged couple meet—and they, Hemant and Aditi, exchange rings, and feed each other sweets, an established ritual. The photoplay’s multitude of family members, manners, and moods brought to mind the work of Robert Altman for some reviewers (Roger Ebert, Eddie Cockrell, Deborah Young), as Mira Nair has a dynamic view of both life and film art. Nair has a welcoming view, which not everyone has. (When Monsoon Wedding was translated from film to theatre Nair said, “What we are bringing to you in Monsoon Wedding, the play, opening it at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California, is a portrait of two things: an India that is complicatedly becoming a sort of real power, but also a portrait of America, since half our story is about America—an America that may not even let us in,” quoted in The Hollywood Reporter, May 3, 2017).
Lalit, the bride’s father, welcomes his handsome and wealthy brother-in-law, Tej, the husband of Lalit’s sister; and Tej, who lives in America, is thought to be a generous man, a good family member, but Ria is upset to see him. Uncle Tej kisses Ria but she looks distracted, displeased. Lalit declares that Ria, who is interested in writing, wants to study in America, and he asks Tej for advice, for help. The family sings together—everything seems friendly and warm. Uncle Tej (referred to as Teg Uncle), looking cheery, offers to fund Ria’s education in America. Ria cries—and Lalit thinks that Ria, whose mother is living on a teacher’s salary, of limited means, is missing her own father.
Dubey (Vijay Raaz), the wedding planner, eats with his workers; and the maid Alice (Tillotama Shome), a girl from Bihar, asks if he wants water from the fridge or tap. Fridge, he says, thanking her. Later, when the light goes out, both Dubey and Alice go to check the fuse box: he thinks fuses have blown, and tinkers. Rahul (Randeep Hooda) and an attractive sister, Ayesha (Neha Dubey), start a generator and power returns. Alice alerts Dubey; and Alice eats part of a marigold, as had Dubey: the marigold is seen as a love charm. Her presence is soft and sweet.
While one marriage is being prepared for, there are other relationships, other possibilities. Is Lalit’s marriage being strained by the stress of his attentions to business and wedding details, or his wife’s secret smoking? Will his daughter give up her affair? Will anything happen between Dubey and Alice? The coming marriage is just one story among others. There are street scenes of rain, people walking, riding bikes, driving, selling fruits and vegetables. The world is full.
The engaged couple, Hermant and Aditi, meet again, at the fiancé’s insistence: Hermant says that he wants to know what is on Aditi’s mind, as he has observed her close and large family, and wonders if she will miss it. He says that it is hard to remember who everyone is among all the people he is meeting.
The father, Lalit, reprimands his wife, Pimmi, for smoking in the bathroom (her habit is merely one of the family’s secrets). Pimmi decides to go shopping again—consumerism is another habit—and does so, looking at saris with other women in the family. Both parents are harried by the wedding ephemera and momentos—some of which Pimmi has been collecting since Aditi was a little child (while their son Varun, who is bored by his father’s priorities, plans a great dance as part of the wedding events).
Dubey introduces himself to Alice, formally (Parbatlal Kanhaiyalal Dubey), giving her his card, obviously infatuated and wanting to impress. To one of his workers, Dubey recalls having organized more than 150 weddings and his own mother’s lament that he has not had a wedding of his own. Meanwhile, the bride’s father Lalit does not want a white tent, as in India it is considered a somber color, fit for funerals; but the father rejects another, trendier, suggestion. Lalit also asks for waterproofing of the tent, which was not part of the original deal and requires more money.
While the family’s women examine saris, Aditi goes for a popsicle and calls her married lover Vikram (Sameer Arya); and meanwhile her younger brother Varun (Ishaan Nair) rehearses a dance for the sangeet (pre-wedding celebration) with the flirtatious daughter and cousin Ayesha (Neha Dubey), who likes Rahul Chadha, the college student son of Shashi (Kamini Khanna) and CL Chadha (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). Varun’s interest and intensity regarding dance gets the disapproval of his suspicious father—who thinks that suggests femininity.
Alice, while cleaning, tries on jewelry—which Dubey sees through a window: she imagines what it is to be a woman of means. Another worker watching thinks Alice is stealing. She takes off the jewelry, then notices that she has been observed, judged. Dubey is angry with the misunderstanding workers (he recognized her ambition as it matches his own). Alice continues her work—and when the family’s women return, and clap and sing while getting henna designs on their hands, Alice serves them. “What strikes you immediately about Monsoon Wedding is the quickness of the comedy, the deft way Nair moves between story lines, the brilliant colors of Declan Quinn’s cinematography, and the way music is easily woven into the narrative,” wrote Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times (March 8. 2002).
Lalit plays golf with friends, ask one for a loan for the wedding, saying he will repay the next month, after a huge shipment goes to Macy’s; and the family’s women get henna hand decorations and sing. The contemplative and sensitive Ria, thought by some to be precariously adrift— unmarried, unengaged—although she is not yet thirty, sees the little girl Aliya alone with the handsome, rich Uncle Teg, and Ria is worried, suspicious, and asks Aliya about it. (Aliya had come to the kitchen for samosas, and Tej wanted to help for reach high; and he had been feeding Aliya, hand to mouth, when Ria walked in.)
At night, walking through the now quiet house, the parents Lalit and Pimmi observe the sleeping young women, and Lalit says that he sometimes feels a love that he can hardly bear; and he wants the young people to be happy. (Does he want them to be happy by his standards or theirs?) His daughter Aditi (Vasundhara Das) goes out to meet Vikram (Sameer Arya)—who picks her up in his car. They kiss. It rains—heavily. Policemen see the car; and harass them. Vikram soon takes a call from his wife, stepping away—leaving Aditi to deal with the cops alone. And, Aditi, realizing the limits of his character and care, drives away.
Workers see Dubey is dispirited. Dubey has an acquired façade, acquired through ambition, discipline, and experience, but he still has a good heart—and is easily humbled, worried: “But Raaz, the actor playing him, has an ugly-beautiful face of such emotional immediacy that even the silly scenes carry unexpected weight. Once his character falls in love, forget about it; you can’t tear your eyes away from that face,” wrote Carla Meyer in her March 8, 2002 San Francisco Chronicle review. Twenty years later, Agne Serptyte, the creator of the Asian Cinema blog, would describe filmmaker Mira Nair’s achievement, “She successfully manages to merge a complex script, dramatic events, the beauty and darkness of human nature, tradition and modernity into one, eye-pleasing, smooth, two-hour movie” (August 11, 2022).
Aditi tells Ria that she is going to be honest with her fiancé about her affair (she does not want to begin a new life with a betrayal or a lie). The couple meet, and their rapport is easy. He, Hemant, takes her to a little outdoor café he likes. She tells him—he is disappointed, but mostly polite despite his anger. Her fiancé Hemant appreciates Aditi’s honesty—lets her decide whether to go through with the marriage. He thinks all marriage is a risk; and says he thinks they can be happy. The family gathers.
What kind of guidance does a child need, and how much independence? The father, Lalit, may be pleased with his daughter’s progress but not with his son: he has an argument with his son Varun (Ishaan Nair) about the boy’s singing and dancing (and the boy has told someone that he wants to be a chef); and Lalit wants Varun to watch less television, to toughen up, and possibly go to boarding school. The mother, Pimmi, has reservations about boarding school.
Dubey’s workers apologize to Alice—a lovely gesture of respect and regret. Reconciliations of different kinds seem in the air. The night before the wedding day, and the engagement of Hemant and Aditi is still on. The flirtatious girl, Ayesha (Neha Dubey), dances—dances alone—as Varun refuses to dance after the argument with his father, but first Lalit and Pimmi and then a handsome man, and then Rahul and others join her. The engaged couple kiss. Dubey makes a heart of marigolds—and proposes marriage to Alice.
Ria hears Aliya’s comment about how old people kiss—and sees Uncle Tej leave with her, and Ria reveals her secret, Tej’s abuse of Ria when she herself was young. (Uncle Tej denies the accusation.) The past is clashing with the present, the repressed with modern honesty. Lalit is surprised, sad; and his pain brings him closer to his wife. “India’s stressful poise between orthodoxy and innovation (listen for the clash of peacock calls and cell-phone ringtones) leads to a devastating family fracture that is only half healed by the celebrations at the end,” noted New Yorker reviewer Anthony Lane, years after the film’s original release, July 10, 2020.
One story among others: there is a bustling scene of streets, of traffic; other distractions and obligations. Lalit finds Ria the next day—and asks her to come home. The family photographs are taken–but the father Lalit asks Uncle Teg to go. Two weddings take place, one large (Hemant and Aditi), one small (Dubey and Alice). Hemant has a groom’s procession, arriving on a horse; and, of course, the bride is beautiful. It rains, torrential rain (the monsoon that follows summer)—and a long-awaited young man arrives, Umang (Jas Arora), and exchanges glances with Ria. The rain further washes away formality and pretense. Everybody dances.
II.
Marriage is an ancient bond, a social contract, usually confirmed by law, religion, and custom, bringing together individuals to form a family, a foundation for growth and prospering—children, wealth, well-being. Different cultures have different customs; and there are various forms of marriage, including polyandry and polygamy, as well as monogamy. (Some marriages have been limited, or forbidden, by caste, class, and color.) There are usually agreements to be made, legal documents to sign, a public ceremony, an exchange of rings and gifts, a consignment or sharing of property, as well as feasting and dancing. There are many films that feature births, education, work, marriages, the bringing forth of the next generation, aging, illness, and funerals—the recognizable cycle of life in a given society. Expectations for marriage have changed with critiques of social roles and new opportunities for participation in work and upward mobility. (Birth control and genetic testing also alleviate certain worries about parentage.) Films about the emotional, financial, and legal entanglements, family, friendship, and romantic love include:
The Accidental Husband (2008) by Griffin Dunne, is a story in which adversaries become linked, starring Uma Thurman as Emma and Colin Firth as Emma’s fiancé Richard, a bond that is checked when her adversary, Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Richard, enters the picture.
Ali’s Wedding (2017) written by Osamah Sami, an Australian performer and writer who was born in Iran to Iraqi parents, and directed by Jeffrey Walker, focuses on cultural tradition challenged by personal conscience and choice, in a film featuring a Muslim’s man’s plans to marry: his family has picked a girl for him, although Ali (Osamah Sami) is drawn to someone else.
A group of charming, smart, and quirky friends consider love, sex, and marriage in The Best Man (1999) by Malcolm D. Lee, which centers on writer Harper (Taye Diggs) and chef Robyn (Sanaa Lathan) in Chicago and their travel to New York for the wedding of an acquaintance—the beginning of a film series; and The Best Man Holiday (2013), following Harper’s loss of employment and Robyn’s attempt to get pregnant, and the television miniseries The Best Man: The Final Chapters (2022), with the midlife relationships, frustrations, and successes of the large, loving group, were entertaining additions.
Friendship, love, and potty humor are part of the plot of Bridesmaids (2011) by Paul Feig, as Lillian (Maya Rudolph) prepares for her wedding with bridesmaids such as Annie (Kristin Wiig) and Megan (Melissa McCarthy).
In Crazy Rich Asians (2018) by Jon M. Chu, with a script by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim, based on a popular novel by Kevin Kwan, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) discovers her boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding), is very rich, when she accompanies him to his friend’s Singapore wedding—and his mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) does not think Rachel is good enough for her son, beginning a series of sabotages. Rachel goes through rigors but receives reward.
Father of the Bride (2022) by Gary Alazraki. The hard-working patriarch, an architect, Billy Herrera (Andy Garcia), of a Cuban American family, has to adapt to his wife Ingrid’s changing emotions and his daughter Sofia’s engagement to the wealthy Adan Castillo (Diego Boneta), a lawyer with social sympathies. Gloria Estefan plays his wife Ingrid, and Adria Arjona Torres is his law graduate daughter Sofia. There are concerns over timing, family temperaments, residence, work habits, and wedding expenses—and joy and warmth, too. The first Father of the Bride (1950) starred father Stanley (Spencer Tracy), mother Ellie (Joan Bennett), young bride Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) and groom Don Taylor (Buckley), with financial responsibilities on both sides an issue; and then there was a sequel, Father’s Little Dividend, with the same cast, about the coming of a grandchild. A 1991 version of the original had Steve Martin as father George Stanley and Diane Keaton as his wife Nina, with Kimberly Williams as their daughter Annie and George Newbern as her fiancé Bryan, with Martin Short as wedding coordinator Franck; and a subsequent adaptation with Martin and Keaton of Father’s Little Dividend was called Father of the Bride II (1995).
A group of acquaintances keep meeting at different social gatherings—mostly weddings—over a period of months in the funny and touching Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) by director Mike Newell. The wonderful cast has Hugh Grant as Londoner Charles and Andie MacDowell as American Carrie, and features Kristin Scott Thomas, John Hannah, and Simon Callow.
The always handsome and charming Paul Rudd is Peter Klaven, a loving and loyal catch for Rashida Jones’s Zooey in I Love You, Man (2009) by John Hamburg, but as they approach their wedding day it becomes obvious that Peter does not have male friends to invite—something they attempt to remedy by searching out various candidates, some of whom seem inappropriate, although the eccentric Jason Segel’s Sydney offers charisma, fun, and genuine response. (The reason Peter does not have friends is not specified, although it could be that he has too naturally evolved—he seems sensitive, a carrier of both masculine and feminine virtues—which can make some men uncomfortable.)
In and Out (1997) by Frank Oz presents an unusual situation, in which the celebrated student, Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon), of a small-town literature teacher, Howard (Kevin Kline), outs the teacher in public as gay, a fact that is news to all who know the teacher, including the teacher himself, who is on the verge of getting married to a woman, Emily (Joan Cusac)—a story of self-discovery and social expectations.
In Jenny’s Wedding (2015) by Mary Agnes Donoghue, a young woman, Jenny (Katherine Heigl), finally begins to admit to her conservative Ohio family that her roommate Kitty (Alexis Bledel) is her girlfriend, her lover. Acceptance is not immediate.
Different classes of money may be embodied by the pretty and privileged Sabrina Wilson (Paula Patton) and the handsome, hardworking Wall Street success Jason Taylor (Laz Alonso) in Jumping the Broom (2011) by Salim Akil, but they are more reconciled to their diverse backgrounds and qualities than their families prove to be, with Angela Bassett and Brian Holmes Mitchell as her proper parents, and Loretta Devine as the outspoken parent who reared him. Secrets carelessly revealed bring divisions that require reconciliations.
Love Actually (2003) by Richard Curtis touches on various topics as it explores love during the Christmas season, not only family and devotion, but commercialism, and betrayal, competition, fame, grief, jealousy, and work with a cast large enough to handle the themes, including Colin Firth and Hugh Grant and Chiwetel Ejiofor, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Bill Nighy, and Emma Thompson.
The late-life marriage of two men, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina), leads not to comfort and peace but instability in Love Is Strange (2014) by Ira Sachs, when the music teacher George (Molina) loses his Catholic school job when the archdiocese disapproves of the marriage, which is against church policy; and the men can no longer afford their apartment and must seek refuge with family and friends.
The great Nicole Kidman is the intelligent, talented and prickly writer Margot, who, with her son Claude (Zane Pais), visits her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) before Pauline’s marriage to the funny and loving but messy Malcolm (Zack Black) in Margot at the Wedding (2007) by Noah Baumbach.
Marry Me (2022) by Kat Coiro, with Jennifer Lopez, features the attractive and impressive Lopez—singer, actress, dancer, business woman—as a popular performer, Kat Valez, whose planned public marriage to another celebrity, Bastian (Maluma), turns into a disaster when evidence surfaces of his infidelity; and there is public humiliation and a desperate attempt to rebound, leading her into the life and arms of a concert goer, Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson), in this story of fame, glamour, scandal, opposites attracting, and love.
Mina (Sarita Choudhury) and Demetrius (Denzel Washington) are the unlikely couple in Mississippi Masala (1991) by Mira Nair, she of a Ugandan Indian family and he an African-American, and while they entrance each other, their families do not share the same affection or respect.
Muriel’s Wedding (1994) by P.J. Horgan, offers a plot in which dreams of life and love become possible realities with a move from a small town to a large city, Syndey, Australia, for politician’s daughter Muriel (Toni Collette).
Good friends do not always become lovers; and after Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) and Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney) agreed to marry each other by a certain age if still single, he becomes engaged (to Cameron Diaz’s Kimberly), and Julianne is alarmed, calculating, and subversive in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) by P.J. Hogan. The whole cast is likable and somehow Julia Roberts as Julianne manages to make undermining another woman’s wedding appear less than reprehensible. It may help that Rupert Everett is her witty friend George.
A loving young couple, of differing cultures, Lucia (America Ferrera) and Marcus (Lance Gross), find family conflict as plans for their wedding begin to take shape, largely due to their opinionated and stubborn fathers, Bradford and Miguel (Forest Whitaker, Carlos Mencia), in Our Family Wedding (2010) by Rick Famuyiwa. It is surprising to see Forest Whitaker—of Bird (1988), The Crying Game (1992) and Last King of Scotland (2006)—play such a grumpy protector, the philandering radio host father Brad, but then, he always had range.
Philadelphia Story (1940) by George Cukor is a quirky tale of love that has become a classic: privileged, smart, and temperamental Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) left her charming husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), after too many battles; and as she prepares to remarry, Dexter comes back into her life, and they are observed and distracted by prying reporter Macaulay Connor (James Stewart); and lessons are learned about faith, respect, and maturity.
Certain social engagements can be awkward if attended alone, but Alice (Maya Erskine) and Ben (Jack Quaid) agree to accompany each other to a season of weddings, amid romantic frustrations and family disappointments, in Plus One (2019) by Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer. New possibilities arise.
Business mixes with anxiety and family shenanigans when demanding editor Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) tries to fight the threat of deportation with an engagement to her clever assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) in The Proposal (2009) by Anne Fletcher.
The impulsive Kym (Anne Hathaway) is the grenade thrown into the works when she leaves a rehabilitation center to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie De Witt) to musician Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe), an otherwise sweetly eccentric communal affair, in Rachel Getting Married (2008) by Jonathan Demme.
In Rana’s Wedding (2003) by Hany Abu-Assad, a 17-years old Palestinian girl’s father decides to move the family to Egypt immediately, offering her, Rana, the opportunity to move or to stay and marry, leading her to find her writer-boyfriend Khalil quickly, although her father disapproves of Khalil.
The coming marriage ceremony of England’s Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip has excited all of London, as some American visitors, the dancers Tom (Fred Astaire) and Ellen Bowen (Jane Powell), can see in Royal Wedding (1951) by Stanley Donen, with the excitement and romance rubbing off on them, as they meet new people.
Love and Money might have been the title of many of Jane Austen’s books, but the thoughtful presentation of character, consciousness, and culture makes each work a meditation; and in Sense & Sensibility (1995) by Ang Lee, explorations of the story’s situations offer the opportunity to consider the relation of character to passion, and of romance and money to both, featuring Elinor Dashwood (Emma Thompson) finding a genuine rapport with Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant), who is otherwise engaged; and Kate Winslet as Marianne, contemplating potential suitors, John Willoughby (Greg Wise) and Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman), one of whom offers charm while the other offers care.
The Wedding Banquet (1993) by Ang Lee, is one of those works that are so intelligently entertaining that you do not stop to think of how wonderfully groundbreaking it is: in it, a comfortable New York male couple, Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) and boyfriend (Mitchell Lichtenstein), attempt to gratify his visiting parents with a longed-for wedding when Wai-Tung agrees to marry their tenant, green-card seeker Wei-Wei (May Chin), an artist. Unexpected seductions and confessions occur.
The buddies, Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) and John (Owen Wilson), who make money from broken marriages as divorce mediators, attend weddings to which they have not been invited (for free food and fucking) in Crashers (2005) by David Dobkin; but one, John, finds himself a real attraction in Claire (Rachel McAdams), a bridesmaid in a high profile gathering.
Israeli laws and regulations interfere with Palestinian life, particularly in Wedding in Galilee (1987) by Michel Khleifi, in which a military curfew interrupts a Palestinian wedding custom that a father, West Bank village mayor (Mohamad Ali El Akili), wants for his son (Yussef Abu Warda); and the ceremony is only allowed by the military governor if he and his staff can attend.
The Wedding Party (2016) by Kemi Adetiba is about the wedding of art gallery owner Dunni Coker (Adesua Etomi) and entrepreneur Dozie Onwuka (Banko Wellington), a Nigerian couple, and a love match that contradicts the class expectations and romantic ideas of some observers.
Jennifer Lopez has been in several romantic films, as well as challenging dramas such as Selena (1997), The Cell (2000), El Cantante (2006), Lila and Eve (2015) and Hustlers (2019); and in The Wedding Planner (2001) by Adam Shankman, she is Mary Fiore, who is saved by Steve Edison (Matthew McConaughey), a pediatrician, from a dangerous accident; yet, Steve becomes a bit dangerous to Mary (Lopez) as he emerges as a personal prospect and revealed as the fiancé of an important client, Fran Donelly (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras). Yet, the heart wants…what the eyes want.
III.
Love is a promise made to all of us—not only by parents and peers but by the larger culture’s productions in art and entertainment, and in its spiritual teachings. Will we feel it, give it, receive it? Will we invent new ways of loving? Will we make a commitment to it, as embodied in the tradition of marriage?
“I remember it still as a bodily sensation, the visceral pull toward the screen,” wrote Sejal Shah, in the essay “Matrimonials: A Triptych” in Shah’s This Is One Way to Dance, of Mira Nair’s film Monsoon Wedding, filmed in 2001 and released in the United States in 2002, using the film as one signpost of both personal experience and a cultural change that included more South Asians in the public realm (University of Georgia Press, 2020; page 11). The immigration of South Asians to America increased after the passing of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, the lessening of quotas; but there had been little representation of Indians in popular culture. In “Matrimonials,” first drafted in 2002 and subsequently revised, Sejah Shah, the author also of How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions (West Virginia University Press, 2024), recounts the New Jersey wedding of her brother, featuring English and Gujurati talk, and the dancing of different generations to popular western music, Hindi songs, and dandiya raas—a unique sight. Other weekends spent at weddings would be celebrations not only of marriage, but of friends and cousins, of culture—recovery and reunion; and this is what Shah saw reflected in Nair’s Delhi Punjabi gathering inMonsoon Weeding. “Weddings join families and communities, spark joy, and suggest the possibility of cultures in balance with each other; a pure Indian Americanness I hadn’t experienced in any other setting,” Shah wrote (page 7); and the film “did not see itself as foreign” (page 14).
Monsoon Wedding provides an intimate view of a family, during one of its great events. We see characters in single portraits and group portraits, in repose and in response. The film is full of life—personality, activity, rituals, full of beautifully brimming life. The family home is well-decorated with modern furnishings and abstract art in the living room and more figurative work in the parent’s bedroom. The family has a comfortable life, but it is one with its own tensions—something we know from the first scene when the father is disturbed to see the yard decoration, a marigold gate—is shedding petals. Control is elusive. Public appearances matter.
As the film moves through its paces, showing us the arrival of wedding guests, the family members and friends traveling from different parts of the globe, and the bride’s compromised position (her affair), the practical wedding preparations of garments and grounds, the ambitions of the young, the expectations of the old, the confusions and misunderstandings, the conflicts and resolutions, what might have been strange becomes very familiar. A Lehigh University scholar of literature and film, Amardeep Singh, discusses Monsoon Wedding as more evidence of Mira Nair’s concern with the Indian diaspora, and her ability to draw on real world conditions and situations for imagined stories; and he argues that a key part of “that new Indian cosmopolitanism is an internationalization of values brought back from abroad by diasporic Indians” (The Films of Mira Nair, University Press of Mississippi, 2018; page 81). Amardeep Singh, who notes the variety of Nair’s films, their feminist commitments, and their broad appeal, with her ability to bring together home and abroad. Nair’s films, like those of Deepa Mehta and Gurinder Chadha, have received world-wide respect (theirs reflect a recognizably ordinary bounty and complexity). There has been more international investment in India, and the adoption by India of certain western culture and technology—and more intimate contact has meant more intimate changes. Singh also suggests that Nair is commenting on—and correcting—the Bollywood film, the blend of Bombay and Hollywood sensibilities, that presents a great deal of entertaining excess, such as the most extravagant musical numbers (he compares the very different uses of the song “Chunari Chunari” in David Dhawan’s popular film from 1999, Biwi No. 1, and Nair’s Monsoon Wedding: for one thing Nair focuses more on a woman than a man). Yet, Nair suggests that India claims its own—its appeal and power are lasting.
In Monsoon Wedding, beyond the elaborate plans for decorations and food and gifts, the arranged marriage is threatened by the bride’s incomplete commitment, her affair, but her ending that still smoldering relationship and beginning another with her future husband through her declaration of honesty, followed by his anger, understanding, and forgiveness, and her awakening to his charm, to his mind and spirit, means that the marriage will not only be an old imposed form, but a significant bond of truthful substance. Their wedding is a genuine celebration. Weddings “reminded me that there was a wider world out there—multilingual, vibrant, layered—every riotous color, each ephemeral dance,” wrote Sejal Shah (This is One Way to Dance, page 22). That is the power of art, too. (DG, 3/2025)
About the author: Daniel Garrett’s work has appeared in The African, All About Jazz, American Book Review, Art& Antiques, Black Film Review, Changing Men, Cinetext, Contact II, Film International, The Humanist, Hyphen, Illuminations, Muse Apprentice Guild, Offscreen, Option, Pop Matters, Quarterly Black Review of Books, Rain Taxi, Red River Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Wax Poetics, and World Literature Today, as well as The Compulsive Reader.
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