In Mad Men, a show that knew the value of mining the past, our favourite corporate man Don Draper says: ”Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.” Not to wilfully mix my entertainment favourites, but is there anything more apt than that to describe the allure of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the sequel to Mamma Mia, based solely on Abba songs?
Growing up in 1970s India wasn’t easy. There we were grappling with whispers in school buses of not speaking too loudly during the Emergency because the government wanted us to talk less, work more. There was the angry young man Amitabh Bachchan slaying every notion of good and evil we’d ever had, by smuggling, sitting up in bed with Parveen Babi, trying to demolish his father’s business empire, and even berating god. And there was the black and white wasteland of television leavened only by the promise of Chitrahaar on Wednesdays.
But there was always Dave Lee Travis on BBC World Service airing your favourite music provided the radio was aimed in the correct direction to catch the signal. And there was always someone who taped your favourite songs on audio cassettes much before the idea of playlists was born. Abba, the Swedish band with its unpronounceable names (identifying all four names correctly once helped me propel our team to an inter-school quiz victory), its velvet jumpsuits and its bubblegum lyrics, was my guilty pleasure. Even as my way cooler older brother rubbished Abba and tried to uplift my listening taste by making me listen to Cream and Led Zeppelin, I remained stubbornly middle of the road, dancing in private to ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘Mamma Mia’. We didn’t get to see too many of their music videos – remember colour television came to us mortals in India only with the Asian Games in 1982 – but we did know they loved to dress like mobile versions of Studio 54.
Remember this was also the era before Hindi music became cool to listen to, so every dance party usually began and ended with Abba, until of course Michael Jackson descended on the world with ‘Thriller‘ and nothing was ever the same again. So there we were mooning over Fernando, traipsing along to ‘Money, Money, Money‘ and jumping up and down to ‘Super Trouper‘, imagining life to be an endless disco party, where staying out till 10 pm on the terrace of your own apartment building was the raciest thing you could do. We hadn’t heard of Noel Coward then, but we understood later when he wrote “strange how potent cheap music is”.
So imagine my generation’s delight when Abba (we struggled to depict the mirrored B of its logo) finally became cool when the great Meryl Streep decided to sing her way through Mamma Mia! in 2008 – never has a film earned its exclamation mark more. There she was struggling with the inn on the island she had made her home with the daughter with three dads, who in a brilliant bit of casting managed to encompass every (by now) middle-aged woman’s fantasy. So there was our generation’s James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), our gorgeous wet shirt Darcy from BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth) and the man who made Lars von Trier’s misogynist movies somewhat palatable, Stellan Skarsgard. And there was the music, oh, the music.
Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
Ten years on, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is every bit as magical, camp and hammy as the first, with bells on. It’s no spoiler to reveal that Cher, the singer who invented the one-name global celebrity who could act, sing and dance, makes an appearance, in a helicopter no less. She comes late into the movie, by which time we’ve had our fun with the effortless Christine Baranski and the perky Julie Walters. Their combined age is 134 years, and between them they have 15 Emmy nominations for Baranski and a Damehood and six BAFTAs for Walters. What’s more when they put on the spandex and the go-go boots, they can dance, they can jive, and have the time of their lives. Which brings me to the other delightful assertion underlying Mamma Mia 2. Old Girls Rock. And Pop.
Earlier this year, there was another delightful Old Girls Rock movie, Book Club, which headlined four leading ladies of a certain age – Jane Fonda is 81, Diane Keaton and Candice Bergen are 72 and Mary Steenburgen is 65. The movie did a healthy $68 million at the box office. Mamma Mia 2, which stars Cher who is 72 with a cameo by Meryl Streep who is 69, has already done $230 million worldwide. Obviously there are a lot of old – and young – ladies and gentlemen out there who want to watch women being fabulous at any age (Bollywood, please note and immediately cast Ratna Pathak Shah in more movies). And mind you, age looks far, far better on the women than on the women, as Skarsgard’s rather prosperous figure and Brosnan’s artfully concealed paunch show.
Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton and Mary Steenburgen in Book Club (2018)
Being a grudge holder makes you fat, says Cher to her granddaughter, played by Amanda Seyfried. Clearly these old ladies don’t bear any grudges, which Cher goes on to prove immediately by breaking into Fernando to the conveniently named Fernando played by the luscious Andy Garcia, who seems to have become the good luck charm of old ladies who love, having just come off the success of Book Club. Garcia, for those who keep track of these things and are offended by the idea of Priyanka Chopra dating the much younger Nick Jonas, is 62, a full decade younger than Cher. Old women as sexual beings (Baranski’s character greets Garcia by muttering “be still my beating vagina” and then “have him washed and brought to my tent”) – what’s not to love?
In this universe where men are feckless and have “wandering eyes and restless groins”, the true romances and bondings are between the women, between girlfriends, between mothers and daughters, and between aunts and nieces.
As Colin Firth says in the movie, while upending himself from a contract negotiation, “family is all that matters”, even if family is being defined differently.
Lily James, who plays the young Streep, says at one point, “life is short, the world is wide”. Wide open for giddy encounters with love, emotional reunions with mothers and grandmothers, and teary-eyed ballads from mothers to daughters. So, to Abba, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the ghost of Meryl Streep and the reality of the magnificent Cher,
“Thank you for the music, the the songs I’m singing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?”
Kaveree Bamzai is a journalist and author.