Casablanca, Daughters of the Dusk, Monsoon Wedding..Analytical BLOGGGYBLOG

Analytical Blog for Casablanca, Daughters of the Dusk, and Monsoon Wedding
Casablanca (1942) is a classic Hollywood film with classic film narrative because it presents a close relationship between the individual lives of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). The setting is based on the main social history that was occurring after World War II. Daughters of the Dusk has an alternative film narrative because it focuses on a large group of individuals that live their lives by traditional patterns and they’ve been living that way for so many years because it’s been the history in their family for years way back to their first ancestors. The characters all live on an island and most of the family wants to move north and leave the island to start a new life. Monsoon Wedding challenges Hollywood convention as well as Daughters of the Dusk because it is also an alternative narrative that has cultural differences since it’s a “bollywood” film.
The narrative point of view was different in all three of these movies. In Daughters of the Dusk, there were so many main characters but not all of them I fully understood. For example, I felt like the audience didn’t get a chance to be emotionally attached to a particular character because the narrative point of views kept changing from one person to the next. For instance, we see the point of view of Viola (Cheryl Lynn Bruce) in the beginning of the film when she is returning from the mainland, and right away I thought the focus was going to stay on her. Then it ended up being Yellow Mary (Barbarao)’s perspective since she was returning home in what looked like a wedding dress. We also hear the Unborn Child (Kai-Lynn Warren)’s narrative point of view when she runs through the island watching over her parents. It was interesting to see how the film jumped from one person to the next. There’s also a side love story between Iona (Bahni Turpin) and St. Julien Lastchild (M. Chochise Anderson) which seems unimportant until the very end of the film when Iona decides to stay behind on the island with him as her family moves to the mainland. I don’t see parallelism in all these combing characters except for the fact that they are all in the same family.
In Monsoon Wedding, the narrative was extremely bilingual using various subtitles to understand the Indian language. Many characters were very important to the plot. It had several parallel romantic situations between many members of the Verma family and even between their housemaid and the wedding planner. The film showed how traditional Indian weddings would occur and the many traditional engagements that occur before the wedding like woman gathering for rituals to put henna on their hands.
Both these movies challenge the conventional Hollywood films because they are not focused on one or two main characters. There are several narrations and the western style is not based on social historical events. The classical Hollywood narrative focuses more on the times between and during World War II and the alternative narrations are focused more on cultural narrations. Daughters of the Dusk and Monsoon Wedding create a visible distinction between the classical Hollywood film Casablanca. The love triangle between three characters in Casablanca form an emotional attachment to the characters especially the ending when Rick makes a decision because it was the safest way since certain historical events were taking place. Daughters of the Dusk avoids concentrating on the motivations of a single character. Monsoon Wedding lets the audience get to know certain characters, like the father of the Verma family. For example, he was very emotional when he found out about his niece being sexually abused by his in-law and was now doing the same to his youngest (daughter?) We see how much it impacted him because he makes the decision to not let his in-law take place at the wedding anymore. These films have nontraditional narratives that vary between the cultural aspects and traditions. Daughters of the Dusk was portraying an African American family lifestyle, Monsoon Wedding was portraying a lifestyle in India, and Casablanca was a typical American movie that portrayed Caucasian lifestyle during the particular time and generation.