Monsoon Wedding Analysis
Narrative
o The film's narrative is constructed around the erection of the wedding tent by PK Dubey. o The romance entanglements of the Punjabi family is played out against this "manufactured" nuptial event. o traces five intersecting stories, each navigating through different aspects of love of during a traditional Punjabi wedding in Delhi.
In essence: o The love between a couple married for 25 years, teenage lust, the bride’s tryst with her lover the night before her arranged marriage to another man, family incest all in a middle-class Punjabi household. o the troubled dynamics between the future bride (aditi) and groom resonate in various ways in the hesitant courtship between wedding planner Dubey and the Verma family's young maid Alice (Tilotama Shome), in Lalit and Pimmi's longstanding but perhaps passionless marriage and in the slow burn attraction between Aditi's attractive young cousin Ayesha Verma (Neha Dubey) and Indian-born Australian student Rahul Chadha (Randeep Hooda) o plays out the conflict between traditional Punjabi custom and the emerging capitalist society in contemporary India, crossing boudaries of class, continent and morality o interweave the ancient and the modern, the old-fashioned and the irreverent, the innocent and the sexual in today's globalized Delhi
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the mise-en-scene
Setting
Location:
o film plays homage to the City of Delhi and depicts modern, cosmopolitan India. o Two-thirds of the film was shot in an affluent farm-house on the city's outskirts o a blend of old and new cities: exteriors of old Mughal Delhi and the gaudy charm of the wedding sari-shops of Karol Bagh juxtaposed with the chic ateliers of the city's established designer culture and its posh corporate world.
tent act as a strong symbol/motif: o When Dubey mistakenly puts up the “fashionable” white tent now used by many young couples in modern Delhi, Lalit echoes the older generation who associate white tents with death and funeral
o The film's narrative is constructed around the erection of the wedding tent by PK Dubey. o The romance entanglements of the Punjabi family is played out against this "manufactured" nuptial event. o traces five intersecting stories, each navigating through different aspects of love of during a traditional Punjabi wedding in Delhi.
In essence: o The love between a couple married for 25 years, teenage lust, the bride’s tryst with her lover the night before her arranged marriage to another man, family incest all in a middle-class Punjabi household. o the troubled dynamics between the future bride (aditi) and groom resonate in various ways in the hesitant courtship between wedding planner Dubey and the Verma family's young maid Alice (Tilotama Shome), in Lalit and Pimmi's longstanding but perhaps passionless marriage and in the slow burn attraction between Aditi's attractive young cousin Ayesha Verma (Neha Dubey) and Indian-born Australian student Rahul Chadha (Randeep Hooda) o plays out the conflict between traditional Punjabi custom and the emerging capitalist society in contemporary India, crossing boudaries of class, continent and morality o interweave the ancient and the modern, the old-fashioned and the irreverent, the innocent and the sexual in today's globalized Delhi
-----
the mise-en-scene
Setting
Location:
o film plays homage to the City of Delhi and depicts modern, cosmopolitan India. o Two-thirds of the film was shot in an affluent farm-house on the city's outskirts o a blend of old and new cities: exteriors of old Mughal Delhi and the gaudy charm of the wedding sari-shops of Karol Bagh juxtaposed with the chic ateliers of the city's established designer culture and its posh corporate world.
tent act as a strong symbol/motif: o When Dubey mistakenly puts up the “fashionable” white tent now used by many young couples in modern Delhi, Lalit echoes the older generation who associate white tents with death and funeral