everything will be all right
by Douglas Messerli
Ol
Parker (screenplay, based on a novel by Deborah Moggach), John Madden
(director) The Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel / 2011, USA 2012
Madden's feel good film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, is an
affable work in which a group of aging adults suddenly are forced to come to
terms with where they are in their lives. After years of a docile life as a
housewife, Evelyn Greenslade's (Judi Dench) husband has died, and, much to her
surprise, finds there is not enough money for their debts. Selling their home,
she is forced to awaken from her kind of "sleeping beauty" life and
determine her own future. Douglas
Ainslie (Bill Nighly) and his wife Jean (Penelope Wilton) also find themselves
in the unfortunate position of not having enough savings after investing in
their daughter's failing internet company. Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith), we
discover later, has simply been let go after years of service as house-keeper
for a wealthy couple; she also needs, and cannot afford, a hip replacement.
Norman Cousins (Ronald Pickup) is an aging would-be lover, studying the Karma
Sutra and Madge Hardcastle (Celia Imrie) is a well-off woman on the search for
a man. Graham Dashwood (Tim Wilkinson),
a high court judge, suddenly resigns, deciding to retire. This unlikely group
inexplicably find themselves in Jaipur, northern India, attracted by a brochure
for a retirement hotel that looks little, in person, like the pictures
represented in the folder.
The plot is fairly predictable. Each
member of the group must come to terms with something that he or she has not
been facing or has hidden from others. Evelyn, forced to find employment, must
learn to become self-dependent and face the fact that she has, once more,
fallen in love, this time with the equally self-dependent but martially unhappy
Douglas. His wife must come to terms with her own sour personality and her
inability to face any change. Muriel must reflect upon her own bigotry and
narrowness of vision. Norman must deal with his aging body, and Madge with the
fact that she may find no one to love. Graham, soon reveals that he is gay, and
has returned to India for the first time since his youth, when he was in love
with an Indian man whose life was shamed when the two were found together.
Writer Ol Parker (basing his script on Deborah Moggach's novel) adds to
this potpourri the young Indian manager of the hotel, Sonny Kapur (Dev Patel),
a charming and well-meaning entrepreneur who unfortunately is incapable of
hotel management and, more to the point, a failure in life, refusing to even
admit his love for the beautiful Indian girl Sunaina (Tena Desae).

These various psychological and physical encounters is perhaps enough
for anyone to describe this film as highly enjoyable. Yet it is just the
clichés and even stereotypes of their confrontations that weaken the work
overall. Evelyn, perhaps the most passive of these figures for most of her
life, finds that she is remarkably resilient, able not only to cope but to
prevail over the most complex of situations, including her new job and her
budding love. She is, in short, just the kind of independent, open-minded woman
that Judi Dench loves to play. So too is Muriel the close minded, sharp tongued
figure who Maggie Smith has spent a career portraying. Of course, she gradually
comes round to liking the subcontinent and its people that she so strongly
dismissed. But it is difficult, despite her aptitude for organizing things, to
imagine, at film's end, that she has become this decaying hotel's manager,
sustaining the likeable Sonny by allowing him to radiate his faith in future
life. As he beamingly proffers early in the film: "Everything will be all
right in the end...if it's not all right then it's not the end."

With Evelyn and Muriel's help Sonny stands up to his dominant mother and
announces his love to everyone. Norman gets his woman and, for a least for a
few seconds—when Sunaina, thinking Sonny is waiting in the bed, crawls in with
her—Madge gets her heart fluttering again.
So you see, if you can't go home, at least you can start your life over.
Too bad these stage types seldom exist in "real" life and that
everyday living remains as confusing as a Jaipur street scene.
Los
Angeles, June 18, 2012
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