Dench in "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"
Film Friday
I’m not normally a fan of movies that assemble a large cast of famous stars—too frequently one sees the cogs and wheels grinding to ensure that everyone gets equal screen time—but The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is at least entertaining. It’s a plea for multicultural sensitivity, geriatric sensitivity, and even same-sex sensitivity, and how can one not like that?
The movie stars Judi Dench, who seems to have become our current go-to actress for dignified old age—a British Katherine Hepburn as it were. In addition to such film roles as Lady Catherine de Bough, Lady Bracknell, Iris Murcoch, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, Dench of course plays Jean in the BBC/PBS family series As Times Goes By.
Several years ago I was privileged to see her play the Countess of Rousillon in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. I had taken a group of students to Stratford and, because Dench was performing, we barely managed to get standing room tickets, even though I booked them the moment the tickets went on line. The play was undoubtedly selected to allow Dench to play the role that George Bernard Shaw once described as “the most beautiful old woman’s part ever written.” Rousillon is the sympathetic mother of an unsympathetic son and allies herself with the heroine who wants (inexplicably) to marry him.
To this day I remember a moment where the countess dismisses her execrable son from her presence. I have no idea how Dench managed to pack so much power into a simple little gesture, but I can still see it in my mind.
In Marigold Hotel, Dench plays Evelyn, a recent widow who learns that her husband has left their finances in a mess. Feeling that moving in with her son would just be surrendering to a long slide into death, she determines to take control of her life, learns how to use a computer, and moves to India. In other words, Dench must play a woman who is at first flustered and lost but learns that she has resilience. By the end, she is riding around on the back of a motor scooter. Maybe that balance is what draws us to Dench—she seems as though she could be plain old us and then she turns out to be a daring adventurer.
We are attracted to stars because, like actual stars, they allow us to imagine transcending our earth-bound existences. Dench inspires us to imagine living out our twilight years with color and vibrancy.
