There are many arresting moments in Monsoon Wedding, one of which comes at the very end. As the final sequence played out with characters ...
There are many arresting moments in Monsoon Wedding, one of which comes at the very end. As the final sequence played out with characters dancing raucously to Punjabi pop in the midst of a downpour and the end credits began to roll, moviegoers shuffling for the exits froze mid-step, seduced by the collage of song, text and visual.
It wasn’t over until Sukhwinder Singh finished singing the glorious Aj Mera Jee Karda. The track was intercut with images of the nuptials promised by the film’s title and cards with the names the cast and crew. Two decades after it was released in India in 2001, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding still invites us to wait until the party has well and fully ended, the last of the guests have departed, and the lights have been turned out.
Nair is a big fan of movie credits. “Every element of the frame in cinema should speak of your intention and vision,” she told Scroll.in as she revisited her most accomplished and beloved film in an interview from her home in Kampala, where she lives when she isn’t in New York or Delhi.
Monsoon Wedding won the Venice Film Festival’s highest award, the Golden Lion, in 2001 – only the second Indian movie to achieve this honour after Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito in...
