After reading The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I went to see
the movie. Both were interesting. Having read them close together, I was very
aware of the differences. Book to film is
something I always find fun to analyze. I
immediately liked the beginning of the film better than Deborah Moggach’s book,
although she’s a great writer and I love her stuff. The book started with a fairly long
exposition of the troubles a daughter and son-in-law were having with her
randy, flatulent, belching, selfish old dad, who in the film became a still
randy old man but someone in search of love and companionship and a fairly
attractive human being, very vulnerable.
The beginning of the film? Well,
think Canterbury Tales. Each character
is introduced before they begin their journey together (not the flight to India
but the journey in the hotel toward whatever peace or pain they are going to
find in their final years). Although
Chaucer’s pilgrims went on pilgrimage to holy shrines for expiation of sin (as
well as a nice road trip, different food, and good company), the main sin of
the pilgrims here and the reason for their residence at the Marigold was
financial improvidence or other problems that left them unable to afford
England. The movie is billed as dealing
with the trials of old age but I think it’s more about how we allow or forbid
cultures to change us, whether the cultures are foreign countries or different
micro-cultures we encounter as we travel through life in our own
countries. I loved a sentence that was
repeated several times during the movie, especially by the endearing, ever
optimistic young proprietor of the Marigold:
Everything will be all right in the end and if it’s not all right, it’s
not the end yet. I can live with that.
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