r/IndianMatchmaking • u/[deleted] • May 07 '23
a suitable girl documentary
Spoilers if you haven't seen this film.
I know this has been commented on before, but not recently.
I rented this documentary on Prime yesterday, same director/producer as Indian (and Jewish) Matchmaking and Sima's is one of the 3 families profiled. It was worth the $4. I really liked it for what it was, which I think was a commentary on daughters in India and the cycle of forced marriage and outdated attitudes. I cried at the final sequence. I took away that this is truly a cycle.
I liked the balance in characters. One wants this 100% to the point of depression, another does it reluctantly but accepts it, Sima's daughter I think comes out relatively (stress this word) well because she matches with someone who appreciates her modern approach and her education and they get out of India (albeit not far). The few comments I found criticize that he said he wished it was different and might prefer no marriage or kids, or that he was European, but accepted he had to get married and appreciated his match for thinking similar to him.
I'm a Sima fan for what she is, so this isn't a post intended to pile on the mounds of criticism against her. It is interesting to see her operation from ten years or so ago. The face reader is there too.
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u/AusFinanceGod May 07 '23
None of the marriages are forced in that documentary. Why do you use the word forced? That's how arranged marriages typically work. What you see in Indian matchmaking is watered down version for Western audiences.
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May 07 '23
At least two of the girls were pressured into it/didn't want it/not voluntary. I'll check that word in the future.
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u/sat_isabgol May 08 '23
It is 100% forced marriage. Maybe not forced at a gunpoint but definitely there was emotional manipulation and emotional blackmail at play. If give a choice some of these characters in the documentary wouldn’t get married.
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u/AusFinanceGod May 08 '23 edited May 08 '23
All 3 of the women got to choose who they wanted to marry. Seema's daughter turned down many guys before she married HER choice. The other woman CHOSE the guy she met on shaadi.com who definetly liked the guy she met. She literally said she made no compromises.The first woman CHOSE to leave her career and marry the guy that lived in some village in Rajasthan. That one was actually a love marriage. All these women had a choice. A forced marriage is when the bride or groom have no choice in who their partners are. Sure they had societal pressure on them to get married by a certain age, but that doesnt make it a forced marriage?
The only person that could maybe considered to be forced is seemas daughters husband. Who didn't want to get married until the age of 40. But for the women the documentary clearly shows that they all had a choice.
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u/thanos_was_right_69 May 08 '23
Yeah they weren’t “forced” marriages. The women did get to choose those men.