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At the
Movies Games of love
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
The most colorful and entertaining
movie invitation in recent months is to New Delhi to attend Monsoon
Wedding. The marriage at the center of its story is an arranged one, with
the groom, Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas), coming all the way from Houston, and the
bride, Aditi (Vasundhara Das), carrying on with a TV talk-show host until the
eve of the nuptials. Director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay)
successfully juggles her exotic materials to create a brashly comic
celebration.
Sabrina Dhawans humorous screenplay begins with a focus on
two testy males -- Aditis father, Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah), a
distracted upper-middle-class merchant who is worried that he cant pay
for the wedding, and the bossy, working-class wedding planner, P.K. Dubey
(Vijay Raaz), who eats marigolds like candy while completing arrangements for
the outdoor party -- which doesnt include waterproofing for the tent. The
success of the wedding -- and the movie -- is shown by the way it ultimately
humanizes and ennobles these men in a delightfully humorous way.
Lalit, despite his strong sense of family unity, acts with courage
and dignity in asking a wealthy relative and former benefactor, Tej Puri (Rajat
Kapoor), to leave the party after the latter has shown unwanted attention to a
young niece. Dubey, after going home to hear his mother brag that her stocks
are rising and complain that she doesnt have a daughter-in-law (and hence
cant become a grandmother), returns to the party to woo Lalits
charming family maid Alice (Tilotama Shome) with an enormous, heart-shaped
display of marigolds.
In between, a brisk pace has been maintained in the days between
the betrothal and the wedding, with the help of lots of contagious music by
Mychael Danna. There are more characters and subplots than you can follow, but
director Nair, who studied at Delhi University and is now teaching film at
Columbia University, keeps a keen eye out for the complex ways in which
contemporary India is struggling to balance Western attractions with
traditional values. She includes both charming age-old wedding customs and a
traditional womens song about the delights of marriage, and a TV talk
show that features a middle-aged woman who demonstrates her vulgar voice-overs
for porn movies.
The main storyline follows a predictable arc. Aditi wisely seeks
out Hemant and tells him the truth about her prior relationship; though shaken,
after looking for a moment into her huge, tearful blue eyes, its clear
that hes not flying back to Houston without her.
Even if Monsoon Wedding leaves you uncertain about
Indias success in digesting modernism, you can hardly fail to enjoy its
lighthearted tour of Delhi and its vital inhabitants; you might even develop a
taste for marigolds.
I thought The Rookie would
only work with baseball fans, but the audience I saw it with -- more little
girls than boys -- cheered loud and long at its conclusion. An upbeat Walt
Disney movie thats not afraid of sentimentality, its based on the
true-life story of Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid), a high school chemistry teacher
and baseball coach in Big Lake, Texas, who at age 38 still dreams of pitching
in the big leagues. The Rookie assures us we should follow our
dream, whatever our age. I was all set to dig my old glove out of a trunk and
offer my services to the Mets bullpen when my wife reminded me that,
unlike Jim, I dont have a 98-mile-an-hour fastball.
The Rookie isnt really a good movie; it
takes too long to get started. It even uses a mythical bit about two nuns
looking for oil who strew rose petals on the West Texas plains to open and
close its story in mystery. Switch to Morris difficult childhood with a
stern navy recruiter father who tells his son, There are more important
things than baseball. But the film hits its stride when some of
Jims mediocre high school players see their coach practice his pitching.
The deal is that if the team gets their act together and wins the district
championship, Jim is to go for a professional tryout.
When the guys at the barbershop get together and pour hair on the
ground to discourage the deer and some green begins to shoot up, Big Lake
starts overachieving.
Jims wife Lorri (Rachel Griffiths) is skeptical at first
about her husbands ambition. When he goes for the tryout, he has to take
along not only his cute son Hunter (Angus T. Jones) but also the baby, whose
diaper needs changing by the time he finishes his practice throws. After Jim
gets a chance to pitch in the minors, however, Lorrie shows a supportive
independence: Remember: Im a Texas woman, and I dont need any
man to help me manage.
Quaid is good at conveying his inner doubts, as well as the
intensity and concentration needed to be a pitcher, and The Rookie
deserves credit for giving us a look at the large baseball world underneath the
major leagues. We understand Jims feeling of strangeness among the much
younger minor league players and are amused at their initial resentment that he
is tying up the clubhouse phone with his long, regular calls home.
Needless to say, The Rookie isnt the kind of
movie that will let Jim get knocked out of the box in his major league debut at
Arlington, Texas, where even his father shows a little pride. John
Schwartzmans photography of both small-town Texas and glamorous night
baseball is a large part of the movies success, along with Quaids
non-macho, delighted grin. You and the kids can probably enjoy The
Rookie together, but I wanted more about the fine points of being a
pitcher. Didnt Jim ever throw anything but fastballs? Shouldnt he
have practiced covering first base?
For a complete change of pace, but
without the children, you might try Alronso Cuaróns Y Tu
Mamá También (And your mama, too), despite its
explicit sex and gutter language. Touted as the highest-grossing Mexican-made
film in history, it is often funny, with wicked digs at upper-class Mexican
society and something serious to say about growing up. It begins with a goodbye
sex scene between Tenoch Iturbide (Diego Luna) and his girlfriend, who is about
to leave for a vacation in Italy. Tenoch, whose father has excellent government
connections, wants her to abstain from sex while she is away, though he has no
equivalent intention for himself. Tenochs best friend, Julio Zapata (Gael
García Bernal), though less well off, has a similar farewell with his
girl, and the two teenage boys go to the pool of a swank club to masturbate in
private and plan their summer vacation. The repeated underwater scenes that
begin here and punctuate the movie suggest a deeper experience to life than
these careless youths suspect.
The movie takes off when Julio and Tenoch go to a wedding
reception attended by the Mexican President, and try to flirt with Luisa
Cortés (Maribel Verdú), a woman twice their age who has recently
arrived from Madrid and is married to a pretentious cousin of Tenochs.
Bored, she asks them what she should see; they invent a perfect beach,
Heavens Mouth, and offer to take her there. The boys are amazed when two
days later, apparently in retaliation for her husbands infidelities, she
phones to say yes. They manage to borrow a car from Julios older sister,
a leftist student at the university.
Cuarón proceeds to take us on an extended tour of modern
Mexico, both lovely and depressing, with voiceover reminders of radical class
differences and hidden clues to the more somber side of his story. Luisa plays
along with the macho posturing of her companions, but when they sneak around to
her window at a motel, hoping for a look at the forbidden, all they see is a
woman crying. She nevertheless decides to educate the boys about sex, taking
the initiative with each in turn, and mocking their premature ejaculations.
When sexual rivalry leads to hostility between them, she insists on making the
rules for the rest of the trip, and eventually, under the influence of drink,
there is a group sex scene in which the young men find themselves kissing each
other.
By chance, they stumble on the perfect beach, where a simple
fishing family will soon be forced to abandon their way of life due to the side
effects of globalization. It becomes clear that, even if sensationalism is part
of the initial appeal for many in the audience, the talented Cuarón, far
from promoting irresponsible sex, is exposing the immaturity of the boys
macho stance. He places the possibility of death starkly before us and them, a
harsh corrective to the desire for instant gratification.
Nevertheless, accepting the poet Valérys dictum that
in the representation of sex all that is not handsome is obscene,
shouldnt we at least wonder if asking gifted actors to perform sex acts
(whether or not simulated) to be photographed and projected on a screen is not
a distortion of both realism and cinematic art? Would not a more indirect,
suggestive approach, even if initially attracting smaller audiences, be more
esthetically appropriate in a film about growth in maturity? Of course, related
questions need to be asked even more in regard to violence in movies. I would
encourage adults to see Mamá, marveling at the moving
performance of Maribel Verdú as Luisa, and the wonderful rapport between
Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal as the boys, and to think out their
own answers.
Joseph Cunneen is NCRs regular movie reviewer. His
e-mail address is SCUNN24219@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, April 19,
2002
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