Movie Night: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

It’s actually been a few months since I have seen this film, but I happened to watch a trailer for it last night and it brought back memories of a truly wonderful piece of art.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is one of those exquisite films that is able to make you feel the entire gambit of emotions. It will make you laugh, and it will make you cry. It will make you feel loss and regret, but also show you hope and joy. And above all love, both young and old alike.

Starting with a stellar cast of Britain’s best actors—Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson—this gem of a movie takes us on the adventure of embarking on a new life. A group of retirees come together on the road to exotic India, where they hope to live out their golden years in the elegance of an Eastern palace. But once they arrive, they find that all is not as it initially appeared.

Each of them learns to cope (or not) in their own way, and in the process of overcoming their individual tests and trials, most of them find that this very different reality turns out to be far better than the mirage that they had originally come looking for.

My Netflix rating: 5 out of 5

I Have a Dream...

If I won the lottery, or had unlimited amounts of money, I would give most of it away.

Sure, I would use some of it to pay off my own debts and buy a nice home somewhere. Set up some investments that I could live comfortably on. But that would only use a small fraction of what I’d get from the lottery (one or two million at most). After that, I’d give money to my family and closest friends, but even that would hardly make a dent.

With the bulk of my money, I would help strangers. I would seek out people who would have their lives changed by my beneficence. But I wouldn’t chose people with families. Not that they don’t also have needs, but there are already groups out there who help them. You see all the time articles and programs about some family somewhere that is struggling with hard times, trying to make ends meet, etc.

Meanwhile, single people struggle unseen and unheard. If it’s hard for a family to get by in today’s world, it’s even harder when you are on your own. For every hard-luck family out there, you could find as many (if not more) single people who have it just as bad. People like me, who are blocked from realizing their potential because of the circumstances and burdens that have been placed on them by a cruel life. Those are the people that I would want to help.

I would love to be able to find those deserving souls and wipe the slate clean for them. Give them a fresh start. Find those people who have almost given up on their dreams because they have been crushed beneath one obstacle after another.

Even if some of those people never made anything of themselves after my help, at least I would know that I had given them a chance. Even the ones who did not learn from their earlier mistakes—who end up right back where they were before I came along—even they would still have known a short period of joy and happiness and freedom. That alone would make it worth it for me.

But think of those who would make a change in their lives, who would go on to realize their dreams… If just one of the people that I had helped went on to do something wonderful, then I would have made a difference.

That is my dream…