Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: A doddering step back to the future

The passage to India continues. First they came as young sahibs in _sola topi_s who wanted to make their mark in the days of the Raj and win the Jewel in the Crown. Then they came as the middle-aged men and women looking for a way out of a mid life crisis. Saving lepers was a handy way to do that. Now it’s time for the geriatric brigade to invade India. The success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has Hollywood sitting up and paying attention reports the New York Times. A movie that costs $10 million and rakes in almost $100 million and counting will always do that. Stephen Gilula, a president at Fox Searchlight told the Times, “There’s a big audience, and not just an older one, that is hungry for something that isn’t fantasy.” [caption id=“attachment_321312” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Judi Dench and Dev Patel in a scene from the film. Image courtesy: Fox Searchlight Pictures”]  [/caption] If only that were true.  A group of retirees leave  dreary gray England and retirement parties with “crap cheese, crap wine” and “beige bloody bungalows” to find luck and happiness in sunny Jaipur. Now if that’s not a feel-good fantasy I don’t know what is. The senior  citizens don’t even get jet lag. The Avengers puts its heroes in tights and has them flying around to clearly signal that it has no pretensions to reality. Marigold Hotel dresses its midsummer nights daydreams in cotton kurtas and summery hats but it’s a fantasy no less. And at a damn good exchange rate given how the rupee is doing these days. I am glad that a film starring  silver-haired 70-year-olds has struck box office gold. I love my Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and Billy Nighy. But I am surprised the film has not pissed off more people in India. What happened to all those people screaming “poverty porn” when Slumdog Millionaire became such a runaway success? Perhaps the scones and crumpets accents all lulled them into a beatific siesta. But at least Slumdog for all its over-the-top storyline and its well worn filmi tropes was about Indian characters in India. There was not a whiny white sahib in sight. Marigold Hotel takes us right back to the days when India was just an exotic backdrop for a little self-discovery. There is one difference. Elizabeth Gilbert came solo in Eat Pray Love. Here they just come by the busload. The idea of outsourcing old age to India is rife with wicked possibility. It could take on the stereotypes about how Indians revere their elders. It could turn the whole hullabaloo about outsourcing on its head. It could be a comic take on the irony of these old Brits coming to India for their old age, while young Indians move to Delhi, Bombay, Houston, London leaving their graying parents behind in cities like Jaipur. But all this film and its characters are really concerned about is finding love, mostly with each other. They might as well have all signed up for a dating service in Derbyshire or gone on a Club Med cruise of the Caribbean. Exotic Marigold Hotel is pleasant enough to watch. The old thespians do their masterpiece theatre with aplomb. But it’s a giant doddering step backwards. Yes, we know India is “a riot of noise and colour.” We don’t need to see that elephant ambling down the street. We don’t need the curry joke delivered in Dev Patel’s faux Indian accent. And we certainly don’t need yet another take on love marriage versus arranged marriage. Someone send a memo out please: you really cannot make up for all those years of colonialism by playing Cupid to young lovelorn Indians. Judi Dench’s character says at one point “There’s no past you can bring back by longing for it.” Too bad the film didn’t take her advice to heart. Yes, there are some nods to the fact that it is the 21st century now – we do use mobile phones  - but all the genteel acting can’t disguise the film’s tired old liver spots. At the end of the movie (SPOILER ALERT) you realise why the film strikes such a chord abroad. The Marigold Hotel which was falling apart in the good-intentioned but bumbling hands of its Indian owner  is  saved (surprise surprise) by the crotchety no-nonsense old English marm. And once she’s in charge of the books it finally becomes the sparkling jewel in the crown it was meant to be. Now that’s not too shabby a message for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year, is it?