Irving M. Levin Directing Award: An Afternoon with Mira Nair: Monsoon Wedding

Mira Nair returned to Delhi to shoot this exuberant extended-family celebration in a brisk, budget-constrained 30 days, and her deft dive into organized chaos won the Golden Lion at Venice. An affectionate salute to her fellow Punjabis (“the party animals of India,” says the director), the film depicts the five raucous days leading up to the arranged marriage of traditional-yet-modern Aditi (played by pop star Vasundhara Das). Aditi harbors a flickering hope that her lover will leave his wife, one of many undercurrents complicating the proceedings. A tentative attraction between the wedding planner and a household servant offers a touching study in yearning, while Aditi’s parents’ passionless, comfortable-shoe relationship moves to another, deeper level. Nair displays a mastery of tonal control, playing off the energetic comedy with dashes of farce, Bollywood and magic realism that flow into expressions of pure, profound love. Declan Quinn’s marvelously observant handheld camera captures every detail of this upper-middle-class family’s embrace of tradition amid an unavoidably Americanized culture, and individualism despite the burden of familial expectations. The deliciously eclectic score by Academy Award-winning composer Mychael Danna (Life of Pi) is, to borrow a phrase, note perfect. Did we mention that Monsoon Wedding is colorful? It contains 50 shades of red, exactly and approximately. —Michael Fox

FILM DETAILS
Country(ies): India/USA
Language(s): Hindi, Punjabi, English
Year: 2001
Running time: 180
Director(s): Mira Nair
Producer(s): Caroline Baron, Mira Nair
Writer(s): Sabrina Dhawan
Cinematographer(s): Declan Quinn
Editor(s): Allyson C. Johnson
Music: Mychael Danna
With: Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Shefali Shetty, Vasundhara Das