Film Review: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Veteraned Brits go abroad, adventure and self-discover

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is the destination for a group of British retirees who leave their ordered, gray and wet England to the sweaty hotbed of India to find something of value. It’s formulaic and charmingly prophetic, and like most British comedies, boasts a strong ensemble cast that often papers the film’s clichéd cracks.

Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), we follow the lives of seven Brits, each looking to outsource their retirement for different reasons.  It’s not a consensus bucket list, more of a personal growing opportunity and something to look upon as a cultural experience that’s learned, not achieved, which is still possible for these elderly.Taken from Deborah Moggach’s book These Foolish Things, the film was adapted and penned by Ol Parker . He balances the streets of Jaipur between the peachiness of Eat Pray Love and the hostile malevolence of Slumdog Millionaire.

The travelers group together after numerous plane rides, bus trips and taxi excursions as they make their way to the hotel. Upon arrival, they quickly realize the establishment is not the picture in the brochure that inspired them. At first, the hotel exaggerates its second qualifier, completely strange and anything but the best, and so the Brits must learn to cope with door-less rooms and their feathered inhabitants.

We are introduced to Evelyn (Judi Dench) first, the story’s part-time narrator who brings an epistolary nature into the story. She recently lost her husband and now struggles to uphold the responsibilities that were foreign to her. She writes in her blog which is subsequently spoken aloud to us. It contains the same inquisitive nature, but far less ominous tone than her diary exposits in Notes on a Scandal. A frustrating phone-call at home with an out-of-country operator prompts a vocation for her in India when she becomes a teacher for the local telemarketing operations center.

A familiar face in Notes is also one of her travel companions, Douglas (Bill Nighy) along with his homesick wife Jean (Penelope Wilton). They lost a majority of their money in their daughter’s supposed fail-safe investment. Their arrival in India is an exciting change of pace for Douglas, but Jean finds its abnormalities far beyond her comfort and something that sparks an inevitable problem.

Muriel (Maggie Smith) is maybe the most bitter of the bunch, discriminatory from her opening dialogue. She learns that her replacement hip can be performed in Jaipur for a much cheaper cost and shorter wait. An ex-servant and housekeeper, her obdurate nature begins to weaken after teaching a few handy skills to another maid at the hotel. They slowly bond and Muriel, wheeling around in her temporary chair, begins to break from her shell.

Madge (Celia Imrie and Norman (Ronald Pickup) still have some youthful spry in their step, two singles on the lookout for exclusive

Judi Dench in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

love. Madge fancies herself up daily and crashes high-end British parties, more self-conscious than bold in her tries at romance. Norman however learns to play his old, scruffy self to his advantage and lands a woman equally spontaneous.

Madden captures these fleeting souls and contrasts them against the vibrant, youthful exuberance of India’s bubbling younger generation. He parallels this with careful attention, like in last year’s The Debt (which also starred Tom Wilkinson), toggling between older and younger versions of Mossad agents and their fight against the evils of both humanity and time. Wilkinson continues this role, struggling with a bad heart that carries with it forty years of shame. He plays Graham who is rather secretive about his journey to India. He takes solitary walks each day out and about in the city, searching for an old acquaintance with a mysterious history. Wilkinson conveys such wisdom in the way he talks and carries himself, often played out through cricket tips with local youngsters, hinting at the binding cultural ties that harken back to Britain’s 19^th century imperialism.

Hopeless romantic and hotel owner Sonny (Dev Patel) fulfills the kindred spirit role he played in Slumdog Millionaire, this time pining for another lover- blockaded by her status and his mother’s ill content. His architectural ambition is ill-met with his lack of financial means but it’s safe to say it boasts the cleaner living options in the neighborhood. His contentious romance is a debate that feels antiquated in the modern world, and it takes some self-reflection and a little help to nudge his mother to align with his visions.

Each character attains something, not through themselves but by seeing themselves in others. These learning curves are somewhat predictable, but nonetheless fulfilling, and while the film’s subtle hints at change and growth are evident, Evelyn reaffirms them with her dialogue. This is fine, but confines the audience much more. I find Dench’s expressions and Nighy’s perplexing looks much more engaging when left unspoken about. They each carry the film and suggest a reverence for their new quarters despite its uncouth appearance and sometimes chaotic, populous roads, further balancing the more predictable parts of the comedic genre.

Dev Patel throws away an old Indian proverb in his desperate attempt to keep his residents. “In the end everything will be all right. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.” The message is equal parts gimmicky, equal parts reality. Sometimes it’s best if we hear it again.

3/5

The Debt Review: The Gritty Nature of Guilt

How is justice attained properly from someone whose evil is immeasurable? This question, like many posed in The Debt, subjectively tries to pinpoint a moral restitution for certain unspeakable atrocities. The film attacks this blurry premise with a gritty ebb and flow, a suspenseful web of conflict and ethical dilemma whose darkness gets illuminated by special individual performances.

In charge of coherently putting these pieces together is director John Madden who creates a cinematic spectacle on-screen. Along with his team of writers, they remake a 2007 Israeli film but add a few layers this time. It spins an espionage thriller into the throes of a compromising love triangle while tampering with realities of truth and their timely consequences.

The film begins in Tel Aviv in 1997 where a congratulatory book release party is being held. The book tells the tale of three Mossad agents who went undercover in 1966 East Berlin to kidnap Dieter Vogel, a Nazi doctor who inhumanly performed monstrous medical experiments on the Jewish population during World War II. The undercover trio consists of a young woman Rachel Singer, her hard-nosed admirer David Peretz, and leader of the group Stephan Gold played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas, respectively. Rachel’s older self is played by Helen Mirren who mothers the book’s author, her thirty-year-old daughter Sarah, who heroically categorizes the agents’ mission. Sarah’s father is the older Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) and though he is not married to Rachel, is still a member of the Mossad. Unable to make the current reception is David (Ciarán Hinds), whose absence is illustriously explained throughout the past and late-nineties present.

The narration seamlessly fluctuates between Cold War Germany and present Israel, retelling the trio’s mission and experiences while combatting the agents’ future predicaments. The former covert mission pits the three into a small, leaky apartment, the operating grounds for which to plan the kidnap that must be initiated by a young Rachel. She visits the gynecologist, now the guise for the evil Vogel, and courageously poses as an inconceivable wife to execute their plan.

The action predictably begins to crescendo as does their emotional and ideological distances. The all or nothing operation creates a strain between Rachel and David’s love kindling and more blatantly between he and Stephan’s outlook on their covert jobs. The kidnapped Vogel’s sadistic mannerisms create a boiling chemistry of tension that when cut is spewed through each performance. Jessica Chastain, who has broken out this summer, spews a fight and fervor through her nervously brave demeanor. Her pale features illuminate her pure face (soon to be scarred as seen through her older, wrinkled cheek), caring and gentle but with an ability to kill. Worthington demonstrates his acting ability this time against real people, not Navi or Robots, and connects. His ideological persistence and dedication creates a pounding presence, providing vulnerability in his strong-minded desire for Vogel’s public humiliation. Jesper Christensen‘s manipulating presence as Dieter Vogel is also spellbinding, his words inciting inter group conflict that feeds fire to his captors’ abrasive qualities in duress.

The young and old duo of Chastain and Mirren, though lacking a similar semblance, characteristically creates continuity. Mirren stylistically continues the emotional arc of Rachel’s inner turmoil. Her strong-willed exterior masks her foreboding detached self. The book shares glory, but its authenticity ominously begins to creep away. Madden becomes masterful in his approach, toggling between old and former selves with innovative editing and resourceful uses of sound and suspense. Lingering tones from the score bleed the anxiety into the next scene, keeping the gritty nature of secrecy even in sun soaked settings.

In the book and now upcoming movie Moneyball, Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics tells his colleagues about his refusal to actually watch the games his team plays. Putting passion into the stresses of  nine innings tends to create a partial view of his players. For Beane, the best way to handle business is by taking emotion out of the equation. The Mossad agents lack this despondent yet sometimes favorable quality within their mission. The little machinations each character possesses in Berlin begin a butterfly effect, emotion-filled decisions that overcome biased barriers and infiltrate the systematic details of a plan that should be devoid of subjectivity. Madden translates these mistakes into their eventual elder state, credited and guilted into holding back their first-hand knowledge of a foiled operation.

The realism in each character’s decisions creates a dark but forgiving tone. Stephan tells Rachel under stress that sometimes the truth is a luxury, that it creates another set of problems ready to unfold at a moment’s notice. The moral ambiguity is almost overplayed, but it tries to answer its posed questions profoundly. Belief or truth? Madden crisply attacks this slight difference ending with Mirren’s Rachel, a woman still haunted by her past with enough hunger to liberate herself, one way or another.

Related articles

• ‘The Debt’: History’s Burden, And A Moral Calculus (npr.org)
• Review: The Debt (canada.com)