Pride and Prejudice – What I Think!!!

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Her Bollywood productions made her a successful director and a stack of money, but Gurinder Chadha has surpassed her self this time. As always she has bridged a broken connection between her English and Indian roots. This week we are reviewing ‘Bride and Prejudice.’ Chadha takes a quintessentially English novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and using Bollywood themes and styles, changes it to suit her multicultural audience.

The film ‘Bride and Prejudice’ evolves around a solid storyline by Jane Austen. Lalita Bakhshi (Ashwaria Rai) is a sensible female living in the central crust of India with her three sisters and both parents. William Darcy (Martin Henderson) is an American citizen who sees India as a backward nation. Lalita sees him a selfish, conceited and arrogant. (Of course she later realizes how prejudiced she has been.)Another man steps into Lalita’s life, Johnny Wickham (Daniel Gillies) blinds Lalita into rejecting Darcy. The plot is set around the similarities and differences of the characters. Compared to Pride and Prejudice the western themed plot, ‘Bride and Prejudice’ is a vibrant version full of dance and colours.

The bollywood cinematic conventions apply to ‘Bride and Prejudice’; Chadha uses the world as a stage, taking the audience with the characters international destinations. Chadha by freewill creates an artificial production to create humour amongst her audience; she is aware of this artitifice and uses it purposely, of example of this is the song and dance routine. Song and dance plays a major role in Bollywood; the audience is aware of the parody and is keen to watch it. Realism is not a Bollywood technique. Throughout the film, a variety of the scenes, are purposely facetious. For example, before the musical scene ‘No life without Wife,’ Kholi, (Nitin Ganatra) Lolita’s distant relative proposes to Lolita, the following song, is a parody of a scene in the Hollywood scene, ‘Grease.’ The song has a small clip in which Lalita is massaging Kholi’s foot in front of a backdrop with a heading ‘Kholiwood’ which is a pastiche of ‘Hollywood’ because he lives in America. The director plays with the 3rd wall, dancing around the fact that the production is an unrealistic theme. The film uses cliché and parody whilst using the actors to dance on a deserted beach in front of a beautiful sunset. The actors and actresses are dressed in colourful and vibrant costumes such as saris and dresses, blinding the eyes of the audience.-Moreover, towards the end of the film, Will Darcy and Johnny Wickham fight in a South bank cinema, playing a Bollywood film. The director creates an image that is proving a definite artificial purpose. The film playing in the cinema at that time; has two men fighting, (by true coincidence -of course) William and Johnny fight using the same moves. This makes the sincere mood of the scene evaporates; much of the audience do not see this scene the way they would if it were directed by a Westerner. As always this Bollywood film ends ‘happily ever after’ in which Lalita and Darcy celebrate a traditional Indian wedding on elephants! At the same time, Jay and Belraj were being wed; it begins with love, ends with love and stays as a romantic film. For many, Bollywood conventions, are an improvement, they transform the story into a vibrant and comical production. To others Bollywood changes the view people see of realism. The scenes are complete with hyperbole and irony.

So you see, ‘Bride and Prejudice’ may be different from the other films you’ve seen (or maybe not). Personally, it’s a production that you can see over and over again, I know that as a critic, I need to be objective, but Chadha achieves her goal to entertain her multicultural audience. Unlike many directors, Chadha has definitely bridged a broken connection between her Indian and English roots. Satisfying both regular Bollywood viewers and those who are beginning to be interested; Chadha’s films attract more people even those who cannot understand the language! (Subtitles still exist you know.)

However, other critics feel (not me) that the film is melodramatic. They do not see that hyperbole and exaggeration is a bollywood technique that has now become a convention. The story is romantic, but as the same time refers to imperialism, racial prejudice and stereo typing in life. Both Chadha and Austen used the media available to them to reflect the situations in their society and time.

Chadha, born in the late 20th century, started her industry in the early 21st century; she used the film industry because it was the most popular to her society. Because of the sexist behaviour that existed within her society, Chadha chose to use Austen’s novel, she felt that her society should realize that the conventions that exist in India in the 21st century applied to Britain in the 18th century. Austen however born in the late 18th century and began her trade in the very late 18th century and very early 19th. She chose to write a novel because the film industry had not begun, and people would read a book in their spare time. Both women, even though existed at different time eras, suffered the same stereotypical and sexist behaviour from both men and foreigners.