The Greatest Trick

At the start of this review, let me just say that I am an expert neither on Jane Austen (I’ve never actually read Pride and Prejudice, but I have read Emma and Northanger Abbey, which I very much enjoyed) nor Bollywood, having only seen 3 or 4 films that you could put into this category. This film, which transposes the plot of P&P to an Indian (well, international) setting and adds songs and lots of colour, is fairly successful with the plot but less so, to my mind, with the Bollywood genre.

Lalita (played by Aishwarya Rai, one of Bollywood’s biggest stars) is the 2nd of four daughters in the Bakshi family, and knows what she wants in a husband. Hang on… is there anyone who doesn’t know the plot of this film? The BBC version was so feted, and then there’s been another film recently, I feel it’s a bit pointless explaining what happens. Anyway, the whole arranged-marriage thing works very well in the Indian setting, as it’s still a feature of the culture, and the issue is regularly highlighted in the very few Bollywood movies I’ve seen - with the general consensus being that one aims for love in a marriage, of course. Darcy is an American businessman with no knowledge of any culture outside the States - he is, of course, a cad and a bounder (but then not really!), but according to Heidi not quite as attractive as he should be for this role. The character of Mrs Bakshi is very much seared onto your brain after watching the film - continually trying to maneuver her daughters into marriages that benefit her ambitions - and her husband’s understated, but equally strong, love for his children is lovely to watch too. And the 4 daughters are fun to watch, and look like a family. Oh, and special mention should go to Nitin Ganatra as Mr Kohli - the rich Indian working and living in America who Mrs Bakshi sees as a perfect match for Lalita - who steals every scene he’s in.

While the Indian setting is a good one in which to update the story (because, actually, not much updating work needs doing - e.g. the dances featured in the book, where key plot events occur, can be used here just as effectively, as people dance together regularly in Bollywood films), what we felt didn’t work so well was mixing the Indian setting with the demands of English-speaking audiences. English lyrics in Bollywood songs just sounded wrong to us - they’re fine when you read them as subtitles on the screen, and they don’t need to rhyme. In fact, I’ve said before that I find them rather beautiful on the whole, as to me they read like the Psalms or Song of Songs. But forcing an English rhyme scheme onto an Indian musical structure made the lyrics sound, well, wet and lame. I understand that Gurinda Chadha, the director, wanted to movie to have as wide an appeal as possible, and that after the success of Bend It Like Beckham, she wanted to expose as wide an audience as she could to Bollywood movie-making, and that is to be applauded - there is a moral, visual and aural purity about the Indian films we’ve seen so far that makes them absolutely delightful to watch, and more people should know that! But I think that in this instance, using English actually weakened the Indian-culture elements of the film, and that is a real shame - especially as the movie has a lot to say about opening one’s eyes to other cultures and all they have to offer.

So lots of fun, lots of colour and a well-played central romance, but if you want a really good introduction to Bollywood, try Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Lagaan - both fantastic examples of the genre.