FILM
REVIEW An
exotic shift in power Best
Exotic Marigold Hotel, directed by John
Madden, 2011. 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.
Dinesh Sharma is the author of
Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The
Making of a Global President, which was rated
as the Top 10 Black history books for 2012. His
next book Psychoanalysis, Culture and Religion
is due to be published by Oxford Press.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
