Mech
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Ending up in India
Jon Stock
Last week, at 11.15 a.m., I settled down in an empty cinema to watch a film with my wife. We felt like naughty schoolchildren bunking off school. Ah, the joys of finishing a book. When you have been tied to your desk for the past year, writing in solitary confinement, it is nice to get out and do something that normal office workers can't do. I thought we would celebrate with a daytime trip to the movies, just because we could.
There was something of that devil-may-care bravado in the characters we watched on screen. The film was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which we had been desperate to see ever since the trailers appeared. It is about a group of seven elderly Brits who decide to ‘outsource' their retirement to India, more specifically to a ramshackle hotel in Jaipur. The hotel, “so wonderful that guests will refuse to die”, is run by a young dreamer called Sonny (played by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame) and, needless to say, the place is not quite up and running when the elderly Brits arrive.
I loved this film but I know it will get a lot of stick. The critics are already divided in the UK between those who think it is cliché-ridden, sentimental drivel and others who like its good intentions but feel it falls short of being a great movie. It is not a classic, but it has got so much to commend it, not least the star-studded cast, which reads like the great and the good of British cinema. Dame Judi Dench, better known as M in the Bond movies, carries the film as a recently widowed woman who had let her husband take care of everything in their lives. She masters the ‘interweb', books herself on a flight and gets a job as a cultural adviser at a call centre in Jaipur—the first job in her life. Other cast members include Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean), Tom Wilkinson (The Full Monty), and Dame Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter series).
We went along to the cinema desperate for a slice of India on a wet Tuesday morning in Britain. Visually, the film delivered, but at times, the script lapsed into cliché. The country is described by one character as being “an assault on all the senses”. Nothing new there. Another guest explains to someone too afraid to leave the hotel that “all of life is here”. I've heard that before, too. And some of the story lines will make Indians despair. As well as running the hotel, Sonny is in love with a “modern girl” (the smouldering Tena Desae) who works at the call centre, but his mother has arranged for him to marry a girl in Delhi. The Kama Sutra gets a good look in, too, as one of the single male Brits tries to rediscover his mojo in the bedroom.
The Jaipur tourist office will be delighted—John Madden, the director, has an eye for the sumptuous—but ultimately the film is not about India. It is about seven people facing the prospect of old age and being forced to confront uncomfortable home truths. One of the hotel guests, a racist, working class woman (Maggie Smith), has come to India for a hip replacement. She leaves Britain, refusing even to be seen by an Indian doctor, but ends up bonding with an untouchable who sweeps her hotel room. Another couple finally accepts that their marriage has been a sham for many years. The husband has been too kind, too loyal” to leave her.
I have no idea whether the film will prove popular in India, but I would urge everyone to see it, as it provides many entertaining insights into what our countries think of each other, if only through the prism of a shamelessly feel-good film. Indian call centres are the bane of British people's lives. We also don't like it when Indians, not wishing to disappoint, say yes when they mean no. Your roads are terrifying, and we are not always so sure that “everything will be all right in the end”. The British are obsessed with rooms with doors, haggling, food hygiene, class and dripping taps. If there is a more serious message, it is that Britain doesn't look after its elderly, India does. By travelling to India, these seven characters discover something of what it means to grow old. As Dench's character says: “This is a new and different world. The challenge is to cope with it.”
The Week
Jon Stock
Last week, at 11.15 a.m., I settled down in an empty cinema to watch a film with my wife. We felt like naughty schoolchildren bunking off school. Ah, the joys of finishing a book. When you have been tied to your desk for the past year, writing in solitary confinement, it is nice to get out and do something that normal office workers can't do. I thought we would celebrate with a daytime trip to the movies, just because we could.
There was something of that devil-may-care bravado in the characters we watched on screen. The film was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which we had been desperate to see ever since the trailers appeared. It is about a group of seven elderly Brits who decide to ‘outsource' their retirement to India, more specifically to a ramshackle hotel in Jaipur. The hotel, “so wonderful that guests will refuse to die”, is run by a young dreamer called Sonny (played by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame) and, needless to say, the place is not quite up and running when the elderly Brits arrive.
I loved this film but I know it will get a lot of stick. The critics are already divided in the UK between those who think it is cliché-ridden, sentimental drivel and others who like its good intentions but feel it falls short of being a great movie. It is not a classic, but it has got so much to commend it, not least the star-studded cast, which reads like the great and the good of British cinema. Dame Judi Dench, better known as M in the Bond movies, carries the film as a recently widowed woman who had let her husband take care of everything in their lives. She masters the ‘interweb', books herself on a flight and gets a job as a cultural adviser at a call centre in Jaipur—the first job in her life. Other cast members include Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean), Tom Wilkinson (The Full Monty), and Dame Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter series).
We went along to the cinema desperate for a slice of India on a wet Tuesday morning in Britain. Visually, the film delivered, but at times, the script lapsed into cliché. The country is described by one character as being “an assault on all the senses”. Nothing new there. Another guest explains to someone too afraid to leave the hotel that “all of life is here”. I've heard that before, too. And some of the story lines will make Indians despair. As well as running the hotel, Sonny is in love with a “modern girl” (the smouldering Tena Desae) who works at the call centre, but his mother has arranged for him to marry a girl in Delhi. The Kama Sutra gets a good look in, too, as one of the single male Brits tries to rediscover his mojo in the bedroom.
The Jaipur tourist office will be delighted—John Madden, the director, has an eye for the sumptuous—but ultimately the film is not about India. It is about seven people facing the prospect of old age and being forced to confront uncomfortable home truths. One of the hotel guests, a racist, working class woman (Maggie Smith), has come to India for a hip replacement. She leaves Britain, refusing even to be seen by an Indian doctor, but ends up bonding with an untouchable who sweeps her hotel room. Another couple finally accepts that their marriage has been a sham for many years. The husband has been too kind, too loyal” to leave her.
I have no idea whether the film will prove popular in India, but I would urge everyone to see it, as it provides many entertaining insights into what our countries think of each other, if only through the prism of a shamelessly feel-good film. Indian call centres are the bane of British people's lives. We also don't like it when Indians, not wishing to disappoint, say yes when they mean no. Your roads are terrifying, and we are not always so sure that “everything will be all right in the end”. The British are obsessed with rooms with doors, haggling, food hygiene, class and dripping taps. If there is a more serious message, it is that Britain doesn't look after its elderly, India does. By travelling to India, these seven characters discover something of what it means to grow old. As Dench's character says: “This is a new and different world. The challenge is to cope with it.”
The Week
