A married couple, two men and three
other women severally take themselves away from middle-class and middle-age
struggles in England, and fly to Jaipur, India to what is touted as ‘the best
exotic Marigold Hotel for the elderly and beautiful’. The appeal is totally senescent
with the promise of a sanctuary that awaits them.
All except retired judge, Graham,
have never been to India. Life, or niche marketing, has a way of putting
together dissimilar people with common aspirations. But as shown in the photo above,
it is a case of delayed domestic flight. Not wanting to waste a moment of
their golden years, the motley crew resolutely pick up their luggage and
follow Graham to take a train and then ride a bus to Jaipur.
Mahatma Gandhi is known to insist
on travelling on train in third class. When asked why, his answer was simply
that there was no fourth class. Public transport in India - train, bus
or tuk-tuk [auto-rickshaw] - is notoriously over-crowded and over-flowing, and not for the faint-hearted. As Graham assures his fellow travellers while boarding a jam-packed public bus, “The rule in India: there’s always space!”
Mirroring their lives, the travellers
soon find that India is ‘a riot of noise and colours, an assault on
the senses. It’s like a wave - resist and you will be worn out; dive into it and
you’ll soon find your own rhythm. This is another world, the challenge is to
cope with it... not just cope, but thrive in it.’
I see that life is necessarily a cacophony of hope and despair, of love and pain, and of fear and discovery.
The 2-hour story allows each visitor to deal sufficiently with the discordance within while finding equilibrium in a culture that thrives on chaos. Some flounder as they stoically
resist India’s offer of diversity into their lives and fail to recognize the imperative
for change. Others take it all in – the dreams and disappointments, loneliness
and little pleasures of life. The survivors embrace them all!
Here's a run-through of the key characters and the issues that are especially pronounced in one's autumn years such as being single again, fear of aging, looking for new beginnings and relationships.
Tom Wilkinson is GRAHAM -
A retired judge who comes out
about his sexuality as he looks for the lover he was forced to leave 40 years ago
in Jaipur. Each day, he visits the official
records office to locate his lover. A day after they reunited and spent an
entire night catching up, he passed away quietly sitting on a swing at the
hotel.
Judi Dench plays EVELYN [my namesake]
A recent widow who has to sell
her apartment to settle her late husband’s debts. Married for 40 years, she has
never done anything on her own or even heard her own voice. She likes to write
and blogs about her life in India to keep her grown son and his family back
home informed about her going-ons in India. She is open to all that life
delivers, and upon arrival, quickly lands a job that trains young and educated
Indian telemarketers how to engage older prospects half-way round the world. From
the moment she arrives at the run-down hotel, she accepts a broken chair and
dusty bed in her room with an open mind. After all, nobody travels half way round
the world to inspect chairs and beds, but to find new life experiences.
Bill Neihy and Penelope Wilton as DOUGLAS & JEAN
Married for 39 years, are as different
as chalk and cheese, or in this case, cheese and chapatti. Douglas is hungry
for affection and affirmation from his frigidly apathetic wife who has a crush
over Graham [more because of his success as a judge]. In response, he tells her
right out that he is gay. Rejected and revolted, she packs to leave without
Douglas, but not before acknowledging the expiration of their marriage. Douglas, who has become good friends with
Evelyn, returns to the hotel to look for her to begin a new relationship.
Ronald Pickup as NORMAN
An aging and flailing don juan
who is obsessed with his virility and picks
up women with the hope of bedding them. Finally, he succeeds and finds the companionship
of an affluent and lonely white woman whom he meets at an exclusive club in
Jaipur.
Celia Imrie as MADGE
A serial bride who sees babysitting
her grandchildren as an impediment to her prospect of finding a new man, flees
to India to find a new husband. She makes clear her fears, ‘I don’t
want to be old and condescended and marginalized.’ Like Norman, she
pays a substantial subscription to access a prestigious club to meet rich men.
With less than her share of candidates then Norman, she later becomes open to
the local elite.
Maggie Smith as MURIEL
A housekeeper until she was
replaced by younger recruits and let go by the family she has served all her
life. While waiting for an operation to fix a fractured hip, she is told that
she can get it done sooner if she accepts a new programme that outsources the
procedure to India. In the process, her negative
cultural bias, assumptions and values undergo transformation, and she decides
to stay and help the fledgling hotel owner run his business.
Dev Patel as SONNY
Sonny runs the dilapidated hotel
with overpromises and under-delivery. With no funds to make the necessary repairs,
he is optimistic to the point of being unrealistic and impractical. He is quick
to override guests’ complaints and practical business advice with the ready
catchphrase, ‘Everything will be all right in the end, and if it’s not all right,
then it’s not the end!’ His youthful ways and fixation on the success
of the hotel provides contrast and comic relief to the plot that centres on a
group of elderly guests.
After the movie, a stranger turned
to me and said, ‘What a wonderful show.’ It’s as if, somehow, we have also made
the journey to India ourselves. Totally gratifying.
If you’re thinking of planning a
similar getaway, please be warned though that it’s not the Marigold Hotel in
Goa!