New Delhi
If you had to choose a place for jolting a bunch of disconsolate old people into life, getting their synapses crackling, and stimulating them with vivid and intoxicating sights, where better than India?
In John Madden's new bittersweet comedy, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the eponymous hostelry is in Jaipur, Rajasthan, and it is the place to which a group of British pensioners repair after reading a brochure promising them a luxurious retirement. The ramshackle hotel is not what they expect but that is the starting point for this film, based on Deborah Moggach's novel, Foolish Things.
The premise is simple: as Britain copes with a growing number of elderly people who hate the cold and the increasing cost of living, why not 'outsource' them to sunny India where there are plenty of people to look after them for a fraction of the cost and where, with a 1.2 billion population milling around, they need never again feel lonely?
The motley crew - played by a cast including Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton - are taken aback by India, as was Madden who called his visit a 'life-changing experience'.
He loved filming in Rajasthan, with its beguiling blend of the new and the ancient. In the film too, the guests begin to settle in and make themselves at home. Almost all of them go through an emotional upheaval as they learn to adapt and embrace a different culture.
'In one way the film is an adult fairy tale. And I don't apologise for placing these characters in such a strange environment where people are allowed to behave in the way that they do. It's like the forest in As You Like It,' Madden says.
The theme of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is refreshing - old age in a youth-obsessed society. Each member of the group is isolated, disappointed or desperate through infirmity, bereavement, financial insecurity or marital unhappiness.
At one point, the hotel manager, played by Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire), says 'the English hate the old'. Madden puts it differently. The English are 'famously not good at dealing with old people', he says. 'We marginalise them - they are problems when they reach a certain point.'
For Indian viewers too, the film will strike a chord. Although the elderly enjoy more care and respect than in the West, society is changing. Nuclear families struggle to look after elderly parents. Nursing homes are mushrooming, so that there may be only a small window of opportunity for 'outsourcing' the West's elderly to India before the homes are filled up by battalions of unwanted Indian pensioners.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens on May 17
