It's Raining Culture and Marriage

I was thinking about movies that I’ve seen which directly deal with ideological issues, and I remembered watching Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding. This film illustrates the similarities and contrasts between the more traditional marriage of Aditi and Hemant, in comparison to the coupling of her maid, Alice with the wedding planner, P.K. Dubey. In the article that I linked to by Steven D. Greydanus entitled, “Monsoon Wedding (2001)”, Greydanus discusses how Nair’s film portrays the family issues that accompany the coming of marriage. Furthermore, the author notes that the family still remains the central unifying factor even in troubling times and weakening family dynamics as demonstrated in Monsoon Wedding. Greydanus further explains that the underlying message in Monsoon Wedding represents how particular moments, or scenes in the film, contribute to the overall idea that one must battle with the “traditional values” or take a risk with what they now believe to be true for the betterment of their family as whole. The author discusses the social values in Monsoon Wedding in an ideological perspective by noticing the “upscale arranged marriage of Aditi” in comparison to the “hesitant attraction between Alice…and P.K. Dubey.” For instance, Greydanus explains,

“Because Monsoon Wedding is set in contemporary New Delhi, it’s complicated
by other juxtapositions as well: East meets West, tradition jostles with
modernity, English coexists with Hindi and Punjabi.”

Although I believe that the article summarizes the themes of Monsoon Wedding well, I also think that Greydanus may have a certain degree of bias in his analysis because this article appears on the “Decent Film Guide” site which indicates that it also contains a “film appreciation, information, and criticism informed by Christian faith” aspect to it. This presents an interesting viewpoint on the film and Greydanus’s analysis.