The VERY Best Exotic Ellie B

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens tomorrow “in theaters nationwide.”  Which got me thinking about when I first watched – and rewatched – its predecessor when it hit theaters four years ago.  (A huge Judi Dench & Maggie Smith fan!)

 

Am still intrigued by how my experience of the film mirrored my experience of life.  Started out connecting in one way, ended up transformed in ways & by people I could never have imagined.

Evelyn (Judi Dench) & Douglas (Bill Nighy) were the characters who originally grabbed my attention.  Loved his dissolute aging rocker in Love Actually, she first caught my eye in Room With A View (also opposite Maggie Smith!) & I'm certain  Ian Fleming would be delighted with her M.  

        

Never occurred to me that the characters who’d stay with me to this very day would be Maggie Smith’s ill-tempered tetchy testy Muriel, the elderly Brit who was only there to get a cheap hip replacement, then it was home to England for her – and not fast enough – and the aptly nicknamed Sonny, Dev Patel’s character, who was always upbeat, always looking for & expecting the best.

I enjoyed the film immensely, until almost the very end.  Then I was riveted.  

 

Through most of the film, Sonny was the character I responded to the least, expected to only remember for introducing a new generation to the great John Lennon quote, Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end.   

He finally grabbed my attention when he shared with his leery mother, “I have a dream, MummyJi, a most brilliant one. To outsource old age! And it is not just for the British, there are many other countries where they don't like old people too! “    

 

But Sonny is on the verge of losing his dream – which really is a unique, potentially highly marketable view of what his hotel offers & a singular personal style that would make it a great success IF he had organizational & business skills to match his enthusiasm & vision.  

Alas, the young visionary is hapless when it comes to having the practical mechanics to make it actually happen.  His gift is seeing what a crumbling hotel could be, seeing it in his heart, in the very fiber of his being.  His dream is doomed because he lacks the balancing skills to make it so.

Crabby, constantly complaining Muriel can’t wait to shake the dust of India off her feet & return to England, even knowing there’s no one waiting there for her, nothing other than a tiny apartment & even tinier government old age pension. She loathes everything about India, as evidenced in her scathing, “And you know who'll be there, don't you? Indians! Loads of them, with brown faces and black hearts, reeking of curry! I mean you never see just one, do you? They travel in packs, makes it easier to rob you blind!”   

But although Muriel’s view of India seems darker than the brown faces & black hearts she sees all around her, it turns out that she has the life-redeeming quality of being able to see things differently.  Her attendant, a young Indian woman who becomes fed up with her charge’s constantly insults to her & everything about her culture & country, introduces Muriel to her family.  That cracks the crusty protective covering around the elderly Englishwoman’s heart, although she continues to be her cynical sharp sarcastic self with her fellow hotel residents.

There was no way that even the ever upbeat Sonny could have foreseen that Muriel would be his knight on shining armor, rescuing his dreams with the touch of exceptional organizational skills she honed working for a family that ditched her once the children had grown.  Nor could she have imagined this eternally optimistic young Indian would be her salvation.

 

At the end of the film, they are an unbeatable pair – Sonny brings the vision, Muriel the skill & experience to translate it into effective action steps; together they create a successful business.  

   

Sonny’s vision of outsourcing old age from around the world to exotic, dirt cheap India could prove a winning idea IF underpinned with an equally visionary, viable business plan.  Muriel has spent a lifetime being a priceless but unvalued go-to person for every sort of household problem – including handling her employer’s home & finances.  It was an unlikely match made in heaven (or nirvana) that completes Sonny & makes Muriel whole. 

Coming out of the cinemaplex, mused on the parallels between myself & Sonny.  Visionaries, but ungrounded in basic business practice.  Sonny needed skills he lacked – unlike his older brothers, one a successful banker in Delhi, the other making his fortune in Canada – and hadn’t the aptitude to just pick up.  His gifts – which were considerable – lay elsewhere. 

Where is my Muriel, the blessed other who will help balance my vision of engaging energizing empowering oldsters & ancients to live! live! live! as expansively as possible, to share with young-olds & old-olds, their families & friends all that I’ve read watched heard observed experienced about eldering, about "s-aging not aging"?  

 

Is she a person or a something else that will help me find the basic practical grounded business skills needed to transform?  Because, like Sonny, they are not suddenly going to miraculously be mine.  My gifts – which are considerable – are elsewhere. 

Like Sonny, I know my vision - of making aging as expansive an experience as possible for all ages, for individuals families institutions – is no pipe dream.  Yet, I’m not going to wake up one morning with a well-honed set of business skills & savvy.  

Where, what is the Muriel destined to make me the VERY Best Exotic Ellie B* possible?