Is Bride & Prejudice Bollywood enough?

Bollywood cinema is about upholding societal status quo, not about subverting norms, writes Saibal Chatterjee.

The publicists of Bride & Prejudice do not tire of telling the world that Gurinder Chadha's new film is "Bollywood-meets-Hollywood in a perfect match" fare. But the director herself seems to be unwittingly at odds with that assertion. "Bride & Prejudice is a British film with a nod to popular Hindi cinema," she insists. So, does that make the Aishwarya Rai-starrer Bollywood enough?

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I guess not. Bride & Prejudice, of course, has an array of Indian characters - those living in India, some residing in the UK, others denizens of the US. The film also has several song-and-dance routines, including one on the streets of Amritsar that has virtually the whole town joining in. Moreover, the female protagonist of the film, Lalita Bakshi, is every inch an Indian. But being Indian in today's cross-cultural context is not necessarily being merely Bollywood.

Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding and Chadha's own Bend It Like Beckham, both great global success stories, did borrow some elements from Bollywood masala movies, but they remained firmly rooted in an international sensibility. That indeed was the reason why they travelled so well across borders. It would really be in the best interests of Bride & Prejudice if it were not too overtly an imitation of a Bollywood blockbuster.

Gurinder Chadha feels that Bride and Prejudice is well removed from Bollywood potboilers.

Chadha, on her part, feels that her new film is well removed from Bollywood potboilers. She would, she ways, love to watch Bride & Prejudice at a public screening in the very Mumbai movie hall where she remembers watching

Raja Hindustani

some years ago. "I make films about Indians living in the UK. It would be wonderful to know how Indians here react to the humour and drama in my new film," she says.

"For all its apparent Bollywood trappings, Bride & Prejudice is designed essentially as a foreign film," she asserts. "Yes, in a sense, it is an attempt to make the Bollywood idiom accessible to the rest of the world." But the film, she adds, is a tribute as much to Bollywood as it is to all the Hollywood musicals that she grew up watching.

Bride & Prejudice has the scale, colour, flamboyance and energy of a Bollywood blockbuster minus the gratuitous narrative meanderings that it often falls prey to, she explains. "I have tightened up the drama keeping the sensibilities of global audiences in mind," she says.

But Gurinder is quick to point out that her new film is more than just a straightforward entertainer. "It is almost subversive, even perhaps political, in the way it tackles the interface between a sharp-witted Indian girl and a wealthy American man. The film questions the position of the US of A in the world," she points out.

"This," she asserts, "is the first time ever that moviegoers across the world will encounter a character like Lalita Bakshi (the Indianised avatar of Jane Austen's feisty, independent-minded Elizabeth Bennett). Hailing from rural Amritsar, she is an Indian woman with a mind of her own, cool, confident and assertive. Her exchanges with Darcy (played by Henderson) are full of quickfire animosity."

The world of Jane Austen, Gurinder feels, is not too different from contemporary India. "Back then, a woman's status depended squarely on who she married and her wealth. The conflict between Lizzie Bennett and Will Darcy stemmed from the class divide. In my adaptation, we have made it a sort of political debate," she adds.

Although Gurinder admits that she did set out to make a Bollywood-style movie - the choice of Anu Malik (music), Saroj Khan (choreography) and Santosh Sivan (cinematography) is evidence of that - she was always going to "tailor it for an international audience". "I represent a world where different cultures collide and I can never make a full-on Bollywood film with the skill of a Karan Johar," she says.

She is, therefore, a tad surprised that her friends in Bollywood - the likes of Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra, for whom she recently organized a special preview in Mumbai - feel that Bride & Prejudice is a typical Hindi film. "If anything," Gurinder says, "my film is a homage to Hindi cinema of the 1960s and `70s. As a case in point, Bride & Prejudice has an item number, but it is more a Helen-like song than anything else."

Expectedly, it is her "mixed heritage" that makes Gurinder what she is. "I watched the Hindi films that came to Dominion Cinema in Southall. I saw movies like Guide, Haathi Mere Saathi, Bobby, Jugnu and Purab Aur Paschim. Further away, a movie hall that screened the latest Hollywood releases. I watched those as well just as avidly. And on television, I saw a wide array of gritty, realistic British films - Lindsay Anderson, the early Ken Loach, among others. I grew up on an eclectic mix of films and that is reflected in my work," Gurinder says.

What separates her from contemporary Bollywood in spirit is the role that she envisages for herself as a filmmaker. "As a director you have to have a position which the audience can take away with them," she ruminates. "You have to be able influence the way people think."

That is certainly not how Bollywood thinks. Mumbai's masala filmmakers believe in giving the audience what it wants, and not what they want to give the audience. In essence, Bollywood cinema is about upholding the societal status quo, not about subverting accepted norms or behaviour. Bride & Prejudice may fall just a touch short of that definition. Just as well.