Tweet
An exotic shift in power
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, directed by John Madden
Reviewed by Dinesh Sharma
The movie Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, principally concerned with the outsourcing of elderly care from England to India, could not have been released at a better time as the eurozone faces a major crisis due to the ballooning social and economic costs.
The light-hearted drama from John Madden, Oscar-winning director of Shakespeare in Love, has been playing to packed houses in the United States and crossed the US$100 million mark at box offices worldwide. It gives its audiences a window into life in the eurozone, where English pensioners outsource their retirement from London to Jaipur. The setting and plot might as well have revolved around any other European city outsourcing old-age homes to a cheaper but economically growing nation.
In the movie, a disparate group of elderly Europeans face not just retirement but the loss of spousal partners, the collapse of the housing market, the loss of savings, and increasing pressures of globalization. They abandon their homeland and literally move back in time to a former Asian colony that is now bustling with youthful energy and economic growth.
They find a luxury resort for "the elderly and beautiful", which falls short of the romantic idyll promised on its attractive website and promotional materials, but they are impressed by their optimistic and entrepreneurial manager, who convinces them to stay on. That role is played by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame). The sojourners embark on a new adventure in the twilight of their life, while finding warmth in the people and places of an Indian summer.
The movie follows a long line of blockbuster British cinematic productions about India: Passage to India, Heat and Dust, Jewel in the Crown, and Gandhi to name a notable few. What is different about this film is that unlike all previous films about the English in India, this film depicts the English on the receiving end of the economic balance of power. This is clearly a reflection of the world we are living in now. In this respect, this movie is similar to Slumdog Millionaire, which was also a British production but focused on the vibrancy and pitfalls of modern India.
This is also the first film that portrays Indian masculinity in a positive light, including its youthful drive in both its heterosexual and homoerotic leanings. Patel's hotel manager is characteristically youthful in his heterosexuality and wants to break all of the rules set by his domineering mother. However, the main protagonist in the film is an aging English court judge, played by Tom Wilkinson, who returns to India of his youthful years approximately 40 years later to track down his male Indian lover.
When he finally manages to locate him, the movie reaches a historical and cinematic turning point; an Englishman clearly looks into the eyes of an Indian and embraces him as a friend and soul mate.
The movie works on many levels to further the historical dialogue between the East and West, again. A new type of hyper-individualism and materialism from Europe crashes into the hospitality and family environment of the East, where the challenges of an aging society find an easy home in India, serving as a warning perhaps to Westernized or global Indians as well.
In merging the different social and cultural narratives, the movie reflects how globalization has brought diverse cultures together in time, space and distance. The character of a recently widowed English housewife, played by Judy Dench, learns to work for the first time by coaching employees at a call center on how to carry on a full conversation with customers over a long distance call. A retired housekeeper made redundant due to failing age, played by Maggie Smith, who needs a hip-replacement learns kindness and generosity from a low-caste maid dutifully devoted to her.
The subtext of all of these life narratives are the current economic challenges in the eurozone. A generation ago it was the ubiquitous Japanese tourists with their hand-held cameras that were seen at every prized destination. Now it is the Chinese tourists, with expendable cash at hand, consuming not only European culture, cuisine and fast-moving goods but also property and land.
At a 70th birthday party of a European friend in Hamburg, Germany, where time stood still amidst the centuries old relics and architecture, yet human memory refused to fade - still throbbing, pushing and moving forward into the new century - I witnessed first-hand the fading away of old Germany.
I suddenly realized I was surrounded by the last wave of the children of World War II. These were the German children, now in their 70s, whose fathers had gone missing after the war. They rebuilt the world through the Cold War, the Reunification, and now through the travails of the eurozone.
They are members of what Gunter Grass, the Nobel laureate, has called the silent generation, the footnotes of history, who have been witness to the violence of the 20th century.
No wonder the theologian sitting across from me, who lost his father when he was barely five years old during the war, was still consumed with the problem of evil in the world. He proceeded to describe to me his most important intellectual influence, Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian who developed the theory of "dialectical theology", the idea that God works in paradoxical ways through both grace and judgment.
We touched on the malaise in the eurozone, where real demographic dilemmas underlie the current crisis. There were hardly any children and members of the Gen X or Gen Y in attendance. It felt like we had stepped onto the set of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its rediscovery of love and wisdom in old-age.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_.../NF09Dj03.html
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, directed by John Madden
Reviewed by Dinesh Sharma
The movie Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, principally concerned with the outsourcing of elderly care from England to India, could not have been released at a better time as the eurozone faces a major crisis due to the ballooning social and economic costs.
The light-hearted drama from John Madden, Oscar-winning director of Shakespeare in Love, has been playing to packed houses in the United States and crossed the US$100 million mark at box offices worldwide. It gives its audiences a window into life in the eurozone, where English pensioners outsource their retirement from London to Jaipur. The setting and plot might as well have revolved around any other European city outsourcing old-age homes to a cheaper but economically growing nation.
In the movie, a disparate group of elderly Europeans face not just retirement but the loss of spousal partners, the collapse of the housing market, the loss of savings, and increasing pressures of globalization. They abandon their homeland and literally move back in time to a former Asian colony that is now bustling with youthful energy and economic growth.
They find a luxury resort for "the elderly and beautiful", which falls short of the romantic idyll promised on its attractive website and promotional materials, but they are impressed by their optimistic and entrepreneurial manager, who convinces them to stay on. That role is played by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame). The sojourners embark on a new adventure in the twilight of their life, while finding warmth in the people and places of an Indian summer.
The movie follows a long line of blockbuster British cinematic productions about India: Passage to India, Heat and Dust, Jewel in the Crown, and Gandhi to name a notable few. What is different about this film is that unlike all previous films about the English in India, this film depicts the English on the receiving end of the economic balance of power. This is clearly a reflection of the world we are living in now. In this respect, this movie is similar to Slumdog Millionaire, which was also a British production but focused on the vibrancy and pitfalls of modern India.
This is also the first film that portrays Indian masculinity in a positive light, including its youthful drive in both its heterosexual and homoerotic leanings. Patel's hotel manager is characteristically youthful in his heterosexuality and wants to break all of the rules set by his domineering mother. However, the main protagonist in the film is an aging English court judge, played by Tom Wilkinson, who returns to India of his youthful years approximately 40 years later to track down his male Indian lover.
When he finally manages to locate him, the movie reaches a historical and cinematic turning point; an Englishman clearly looks into the eyes of an Indian and embraces him as a friend and soul mate.
The movie works on many levels to further the historical dialogue between the East and West, again. A new type of hyper-individualism and materialism from Europe crashes into the hospitality and family environment of the East, where the challenges of an aging society find an easy home in India, serving as a warning perhaps to Westernized or global Indians as well.
In merging the different social and cultural narratives, the movie reflects how globalization has brought diverse cultures together in time, space and distance. The character of a recently widowed English housewife, played by Judy Dench, learns to work for the first time by coaching employees at a call center on how to carry on a full conversation with customers over a long distance call. A retired housekeeper made redundant due to failing age, played by Maggie Smith, who needs a hip-replacement learns kindness and generosity from a low-caste maid dutifully devoted to her.
The subtext of all of these life narratives are the current economic challenges in the eurozone. A generation ago it was the ubiquitous Japanese tourists with their hand-held cameras that were seen at every prized destination. Now it is the Chinese tourists, with expendable cash at hand, consuming not only European culture, cuisine and fast-moving goods but also property and land.
At a 70th birthday party of a European friend in Hamburg, Germany, where time stood still amidst the centuries old relics and architecture, yet human memory refused to fade - still throbbing, pushing and moving forward into the new century - I witnessed first-hand the fading away of old Germany.
I suddenly realized I was surrounded by the last wave of the children of World War II. These were the German children, now in their 70s, whose fathers had gone missing after the war. They rebuilt the world through the Cold War, the Reunification, and now through the travails of the eurozone.
They are members of what Gunter Grass, the Nobel laureate, has called the silent generation, the footnotes of history, who have been witness to the violence of the 20th century.
No wonder the theologian sitting across from me, who lost his father when he was barely five years old during the war, was still consumed with the problem of evil in the world. He proceeded to describe to me his most important intellectual influence, Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian who developed the theory of "dialectical theology", the idea that God works in paradoxical ways through both grace and judgment.
We touched on the malaise in the eurozone, where real demographic dilemmas underlie the current crisis. There were hardly any children and members of the Gen X or Gen Y in attendance. It felt like we had stepped onto the set of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its rediscovery of love and wisdom in old-age.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_.../NF09Dj03.html
Comment