An entertaining film was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, raised from complete lightweight status by the quality of the acting. It turns out to have been based on a book which recently came my way at the library.
Deborah Moggach’s novel These Foolish Things (later re-released to capitalize on the film’s success as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) is the original source of the film’s plot, but was considerably tuned up by the scriptwriter Oliver Parker, and in my opinion, vastly improved.
The novel and film fhave a similar outline: a bunch of elderly English men and women move to India to live out their retirement in a place where the elderly are respected, the British and their culture are still admired, and where they can afford to live in comfort.
Muriel Donnelly (the Maggie Smith character in the film) is one of them. She is a cranky xenophobe who lies in a UK hospital untreated for 48 hours, because she won’t “let any darkies touch her”. Her doctor is Ravi Kapoor, whose own father-in-law Norman is driving him nuts with his repulsive habits, dirty talk and inappropriate sexual behaviour.
Ravi and his cousin Sonny hatch a plan: build a retirement community for English expats in India! They fashion a brochure:
A little corner of Britain. An oasis of old-world charm in the midst of the hustle and bustle of modern Bangalore. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel combines the tranquillity of yesteryear with exciting shopping and sightseeing opportunities. Enjoy the ambience of a bygone age with the advantages of modern living!
Funny and original, so far.
The other guests include Evelyn Greenslade (played by Judi Dench), a gentle widow who suddenly discovers that her husband has left her with enormous debts, and when her retirement home closes, the only place she can afford is in India. An adventurous couple, Douglas and Jean, are next. Then there’s Madge Hardcastle, looking for an elderly maharajah to seduce. Another resident is Graham, a quiet and kind retired judge.
Of course, some changes from book to film are expected. So it is not surprising that a roomy Cantonment bungalow in Bangalore, the setting for the novel, has become a more picturesque haveli in Jaipur for the film. Graham, the retired judge, is fairly bland in the book, but has an interesting secret in the film. And one major character in the novel has been deleted entirely in the film: Dorothy Miller, a retired BBC producer whose reasons for her trip to India are mysterious, and which turn out to be completely anticlimactic. These are wise choices by the filmmakers.
The novel starts off well, with a chapter describing the lives of each of the residents in England, and showing them coming to the decision to move to Bangalore. These are realistic, touching stories (except for the revolting Norman, whose sexual and bathroom habits and erotic musings are described in much detail). Moggach writes about their lives with sympathy.
Since Hugh’s death, she simply couldn’t manage: everything seemed to break down at the same time, all the things her husband normally had fixed. How feeble she had become! It seemed to have happened overnight, that the stairs became too steep and bottle tops too stiff; suddenly, for no reason she would burst into tears.
The story continues to follow the lives of these characters in India, with brief and unappealing asides into the lives of a few Indians. Therein lies one of the problems. Very little about India or Indians is written positively, despite the fact that the elderly English are benefiting from the low costs, warm climate and plentiful labour in India. The hotel doctor is a hack, specializing in STDs. The hotel ‘nurse’ is also fake; she used to be an assistant at a foot clinic. Fernandez, the cook, is a drunkard. The shops sell ‘plastic novelties, the sort of things Norman could never imagine anyone buying’. The food is unpleasant, even though the hotel attempts to make English breakfasts and suchlike. The dining room is gloomy. The waiters are elderly and slow. The humidity is awful. Post-Its don’t stick. The English snicker at the Indian gods (‘Fancy worshipping an elephant!’). The Indians are ‘polite’, but their omnipresence (in their own country, needless to say) is ‘wearing’ to Evelyn.
Granted, this is meant to be from the point of view of the cantankerous English. And yet. The protagonists of the novel, and the characters the reader is expected to identify with, are those same English characters. This out-of-date empire style gets pretty ‘wearing’, especially for an Indian reader.
In case the point has not been made with sufficient force, the Indians have nothing good to say about India either. Dr Ravi Kapoor hates India. Minoo, the hotel manager, is a hopeless Anglophile, despite the fact that he has grown up in independent India.
Over half a century had elapsed since the British had ruled his country, but to him, the elderly English would always possess an innate superiority .
No thought is given to subtleties of community or precision of names. Ravi Kapoor’s cousin is Sonny Rahim, and no one in the novel comments on the fact that one is Hindu and one Muslim. People travel to see ‘amazing temples at a place called Halebib’, which is presumably the real-life Halebid.
The film chose to convert the middle-aged Sonny into a young, energetic third son trying to modernize his father’s hotel and create a life for himself. Great idea! Sonny in the film, played by Dev Patel, is considerably more fun and interesting than in the book. He has a young, charming love interest called Sunaina. He speaks as if he is reading an archaic and bombastic Indian newspaper, but since no other Indian in the film speaks like that, it becomes a quirk of personality rather than a stereotype.
Sonny’s girlfriend Sunaina and his mother (played by Lillete Dubey as elegant, tough, practical yet ultimately warm-hearted) are both interesting characters in their own right. Premarital sex is shocking to the mother, but seems quite common in the younger generation — a nice generational comment. Their lives and longings and problems are treated with as much affection and care as those of the English characters in the film.
And the stories of the English are also much more interesting in the film. In the book, Norman sees Indian women as simply an outlet for his eternal sexual urges, and his visit to a brothel ends abruptly and shockingly. In the film, he is an elderly roue, rather past it, looking for a last run to keep his life going — a more sympathetic and slightly pathetic character who finds some happiness in the end. Graham’s backstory is touching, and the scenes of him playing cricket with kids on the street are quite charming. Evelyn’s life in India, too, has depth, as she finds a purpose and her first job.
In contrast, there is an ambiguous tone to the novel, as if the author could not decide what kind of novel it should be. At times it is darkly ironic, as when showing the racist Muriel’s move to India. At other times it is strangely, overtly sexual; Norman’s masturbation, or the details of Evelyn’s daughter’s sex with a shady Englishman, did not seem to be either ironic or funny. India, despite the endless complaints of the English, acts as a helpful sex outlet for many characters in the book: Evelyn’s son runs away with a hotel greeter while Evelyn’s daughter-in-law spends her time imagining herself in porn sequences in Indian temples — another rather odd choice by the author. The book is fairly grim, in that no character (English or Indian) is particularly pleasant, except for the saintly Evelyn. It has a very dark view of marriage; every married person is either betrayed or miserable.
Given all this, it is fairly remarkable that the filmmakers saw its potential and converted it into a lighthearted, modern, entertaining and picturesque film.
In case it’s not obvious from the above, I’d say skip the book, enjoy the film.
a great example of when the film is better than the book