To the chagrin and consternation of my boyfriend, I am enraptured by period pieces. Specifically anything British. I may just have spent two hours in ecstasy at a Live Free or Die Hard screening, but a good bodice-ripping adaptation of Austen or Bronte also has the ability to put a sparkle in my eye and spring in my step. Due to the fact that Hollywood has pretty much given up on any original screenplays, there's a new slew of period adaptations, biopics, remakes, etc. etc. Perhaps the granddaddy of them all is Jane Austen's masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. There's the quintessential BBC version, starring that hunka hunka burnin love Colin Firth, the uneven but satisfying Keira Knightly version, the modernized (and adapted) Bridget Jones' Diary, a new fictionalized biopic of Austen's life Becoming Jane, set to open this year, and an adaptation of The Jane Austen Book Club.And then there's the one I just saw: the Bollywood version, called Bride and Prejudice. When I rented it I imagined a whirl of colors and high-pitched singing, of romance and dancing. I expected a true Indian musical, surreal, fascinating and incomprehensible.
Here's the problem: they made it too white.
First of all, all the dialogue and most of the songs were in English, not Hindi as is customary. The "Darcy" of the piece was actually an American. The songs were tempered, not just by the language, but the style as well. The Western elements were too obvious, completely overshadowing the Indian film making elements. One also seemed to forget that Pride and Prejudice is at its heart a comedy, and the preaching focus on neo-imperialism, corporations and Western intolerance (though completely true) was simply annoying. In the end, there was a lack of spectacle. A lack of heart and joy. Even performances by the resplendent Aishwarya Rai (the queen of Bollywood) and the uber-yummy Naveen Andrews of Lost fame couldn't salvage the film from the overgrowth of Caucasian sensibility. Pride and Prejudice would have transferred beautifully to the Bollywood style, if the producers hadn't been so keen on making it "accessible" to an American audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment