Bollywood vs Hollywood

Thou shalt not judge a book by its cover. The major difference between Bollywood and Hollywood films lie not within the musical numbers that appear within the film to display a deeper theme but rather in the narration and the characterization of the movie in general. The narration and the characterization deviate and even challenge the "conventional" ways used by Hollywood.

For narration, the stories of Monsoon Wedding and Daughters of the Dust both make a point to not make one or two specific characters the main characters. Although in Monsoon Wedding Aditi and Hemant are supposed to be the main characters, it seems like they have the least amount of lines and that their overarching storyline almost takes a back seat to the rest of the characters. Similarly in Daughters of the Dust although the main storyline should be between Nana and the rest of her family, that storyline also takes a backseat to the rest of the characters' storylines.

In Monsoon Wedding, Aditi and Hemant are going to be in an arranged marriage but at the same time we barely see them get any screen time. There are a couple of different storylines that are juggled in this screenplay. One of the storylines was that Ria was sexually abused by her uncle and that he wants to do the same to her younger cousin Alijah. Another is how the father, Lalit, has to fund this grandiose wedding and he might not have the money to do so. This is customary in India but at the same time it is still stressful. Another is that P.K is instantly in love with Alice. The smallest storyline is Varun (the youngest son of Lalit) and how he is not as masculine as his father would like him to be.

All of these storylines are juggled and the challenge to Hollywood is that the subplots take over the actual plot and contribute that way. The challenge is to tell Hollywood to deviate from making all romantic comedies the same. Hollywood is almost boring to myself because of the fact that they all go like this: first two people meet, they flirt a little at first (they might get frisky in the process), they encounter something that separates them (such as another person), and then after a pep talk from their best friend they reunite. It's almost sickening how monotonous it all is. The challenge to Hollywood is if there are so many subplots then the narration makes the story and the characters (not the plot) make the stories all different.

The other part of Bollywood and Daughters of the Dust that is different is the way characterization works. In Daughters of the Dust, each little interaction causes individual characters to change which makes the overall story turn into another direction. In Daughters of the Dust the story goes on from conversation to conversation until finally the family decides to carry Nana's blessing off to the new land.

In Monsoon Wedding it more clearly does this by intertwining all the subplots to affect each character. Ria's conflict of being sexually abused when she was younger eventually transfers to Lalit's. He now must deal with the internal strife. The war is between having a community and having this extravagant wedding verses losing Ria forever because of something her uncle did. Eventually he changes and in the middle of the wedding he kicks out the uncle and tells him to never see his family again. The tiny subplot changes Lalit and transforms him into a man that cares more about family than for extravagance. It is something that makes the story so much more meaningful.

By using subplots to convey characterization and narration is an amazing and somehow unseen way to produce a wonderful movie. Hollywood's way of making a movie is almost invisible in terms of how they even put it together. The writing all seems the same but if subplots take over the actual storyline it might be risky but the outcome is something beautiful, where the audience cares for every single character.