Monsoon Wedding On DVD!

Out on DVD now is Monsoon Wedding, a marvelous film from Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay) that vividly illustrates the clash of cultures as family members from all parts of the globe gather in Delhi to celebrate the arranged marriage of Adita (Vasundhara Das) and Hermant Rai (Parvin Dabas). While the girl’s father Latit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah) stresses over the escalating costs and dizzying arrangements, Adita wonders how she’ll tell her fiance about her ongoing affair with a married TV personality. There are revelations, recriminations and surprise romances, and the film bursts with color, music, much heart and many marigolds (the Indian wedding flower). Nair brings this family vibrantly to life on screen with such passion she achieves in two hours what many novelists fail to capture in 900 pages. The Criterion disc comes with several short films by the director also.