Victory Is Mine!

I am pleased to report that on Tuesday, March 15th 2005 AD I watched the movie Bride & Prejudice.

FINALLY!

It was everything that I hoped it would be and more. It was hilarious, first of all, which leads me to my second point: it did an excellent job of conveying the spirit of Pride and Prejudice,⁰ although set in a completely different place, time, and culture.² Most of the adaptations of Pride and Prejudice to the screen have (in my humble opinion) been a bit lacking when it comes to the personalities of the Bennet family³ (or in this rendition, the Bakshi family). (Oh--and the Mr. Collins character: toatlly nailed!) The BBC miniseries comes close, but it suffers from the script's faithfulness to the book⁴; you can't convey all of the same things in the exact same ways in print and on screen. In this film, all of the characters are accurate to the original, as well as believable in and of themselves, and you get a glimpse (even if it's a cow-path touristy glimpse) of India and its culture.

I was warned about this movie. Well, make that, Bollywood movies in general, because I don't think anyone who warned me had actually seen it. There is singing. And dancing. And when you walk down the street, the shopkeepers and onlookers (and a few transvestites) might all spontaniously break out into both. A romantic walk down the beach in L.A. might take you past a gospel choir belting it out, while the surfers sway to the rhythm and the lifeguards sing along. All this is a perfectly normal occurance.

And I thouroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Not only was the choreography and music well done artistically, it was also entertaining and funny, as if they realized how rediculous it was, but didn't care, because they were enjoying it so much. It reminded me that America has lost an entire genre of movies: the musical.⁵

I love this movie. I plan on seeing it again if given the chance and buying it on DVD when it comes out.

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⁰ I here refer to the novel¹. You know, the one by Jane Austen.
¹ A novel is a book. Like with paper. And letters.
² Although one could argue that modern Indian culture is at least partially decended from that of Victorian England.
³ At least, the way I pictured it in my head.
⁴ Hence its greatest asset becomes a liability.
⁵ It has stuck around in a smaller way through theater and theater ports⁶ to cinema, but the audience is not as broad as it once was.
⁶ I realized after I typed it that this is a software term. Ask your favorite code monkey (preferably one who deals with Linux) what a port is in this specific sense. What? You don't have one on speed dial (besides me)? Okay I'll tell you: a port is the result of taking the code for your favorite program from one platform (like Red Hat 7) and getting it to compile and run on another platform (say, Win32).