Poetry & Glitter: My Fascination with Bollywood

I'm not a Jane Austen fan, I'll freely admit to that. I find her style to be wordy and more than a little saccharine. Having said that, I suppose she could be considered the thinking person's Harlequin Romance. Or, if you prefer, the Mills & Boon of the English Romantic period of literature. In other words, I find her to be trashy romance with big words and a certain post-Shakespearean/Victorian turn of phrase.

I'm fully aware that in many ways, Austen was bit of a satirist, social commentator and forerunner to the realistic style of writing that came just after her own era. I, however, choose to completely ignore this because I feel like being obstreperous and academically bull-headed.

A few weeks ago, my friend Roxy lent me Bride & Prejudice, the major Bollywood film adaptation of Jane Austen's classic, Pride & Prejudice. I enjoyed Jane Austen in ways I never thought possible. This was a movie broad in scope and location. It went from India, to the UK, to the USA, without apology or even without any real reason. The colours were amazing throughout, the costuming was vibrant and meaningful, and the song and dance numbers were completely entertaining. Plus, the interaction between the characters was hilarious. The entire premise was shamelessly fantastical and the actors carried it all off with a certain tongue-in-cheek pseudo-seriousness that had me in stitches throughout. I have no idea if the director intended this sort of self-reflexive hilarity or not, but I suspect that she did. It was directed by Gurinder Chadha - the same woman who did Bend It Like Beckham (another one of my all time favourite movies).

And, of course, it stars Aishwarya Rai. Any movie starring a former Miss World is worthy of my attention. If you find that superficial... well... that's because it is... when did I ever purport to be anything else? Scratch my surface and underneath you'll only find more surface. I'm fat - I have a lot of surface.

So tonight I've decided to come clean. I think I'm becoming obsessed with Bollywood. This afternoon, I watched Devdas, a gorgeously melodramatic film about... erm... this guy called Devdas and his doomed love for his neighbour, Paro. The tragically impossible love affair spans years and, of course, ends in a bawl-fest inspiring death. Throw in the Bollywood version of the hooker with the heart of gold, the stern, hateful father, jealous sister-in-law, waxed mustachioed bad guys, dissolute best friend and staunch man-servant, and what you have is 100% magic.

This film had me in its clutches from the very beginning. The poorly translated captions were almost unnecessary - the characters told their story so vividly in song, dance, costume and set that verbal communication became superfluous. Having said that, there were a couple gems. Whether these were from the imprecise captions or are actually part of the script, I have no idea. Take, for example, the words of Devdas' mother when he returns home to her after studying abroad for 10 years: you left here a boy and have returned a lawyer. Seriously. You can't pay enough for dialogue this funny.

In fact, so much of the dialogue in this film was pure poetry, florid at times, but poetry nonetheless. When combined with Aishwarya Rai's hair (yes, she's in this one too), the remarkably glittery costumes and set, and the truly magnificent singing and dancing, the entire package becomes magic, pure and simple. This film took me a journey. It was a fairy tale mixed with social commentary, good old fashioned entertainment, and more tragic, tear-jerking impossibilities than a movie about kittens being beheaded and made into soup.

I've not seen a lot of Bollywood films. In fact, you could say that I'm a Bollywood novice (not a virgin though). But today I discovered something wondrous; channel K45 shows a Bollywood film every Sunday at 3:00pm. Don't call me between 3:00pm - 6:00pm on a Sunday from now on. I'll be busy.