What's Cooking?

What's Cooking? is a delightful, heartwarming, and thought-provoking drama from 2000, featuring a diverse and talented ensemble cast headlined by Joan Chen, Julianna Margulies, and Mercedes Ruehl. Under the careful direction of Gurinder Chadha, who carries a reputation for touching upon diverse cultures and societal norms in her work, this film captures the essence of Thanksgiving Day in modern America.

An ingenious intersection of four distinct cultural backgrounds, What's Cooking? presents the audience with a fascinating jigsaw of sorts – portraying the highs, lows, conflicts, surprises, and most of all, the love that unfolds in four different families residing in the same suburban Los Angeles neighborhood. This holiday tapestry incorporates the families of a Vietnamese couple, an African-American couple, a Jewish couple, and a Latino couple. Each brings their own unique traditions, histories, and recipes to the grand American festivity of Thanksgiving.

At first glance, the ensemble cast might seem overwhelming, but the film manages to offer each character some genuinely touching moments. Joan Chen plays the role of Trinh Nguyen, the matriarch of the Vietnamese family, offering an earnest portrayal of an immigrant mother’s struggles and her passionate efforts to fit into a completely different culture while maintaining her own. Julianna Margulies provides a nuanced performance as Rachel Seelig, one half of the Jewish couple, whose efforts to hide her sexual preferences from her conservative mother create tensions during the holiday meal. Mercedes Ruehl, playing Elizabeth Avila, the mother of the Latino family, brings a sense of fierce resilience and warm-heartedness to the multicultural tableau.

The film could be seen as a brilliant commentary on multiethnic societies, ingeniously using the universally beloved occasion of Thanksgiving as a vessel to explore the conflicts and commonalities amongst various cultures. Diversities of cultural outline and glaring differences are brought out on the dining table during the family gatherings. However, despite these differences, the virtue of Thanksgiving remains the same – to acknowledge the blessings and to spend quality time with loved ones, reflecting gratitude, and cherishing love.

What's Cooking? paints a vivid picture of the multicultural American society, laced with all its complexities, challenges, but above all, its beauty and co-existence. With the turkey roast as a central motif, one can observe the fusion of tastes and the juggling of ethnic customs and American traditions.

Director Gurinder Chadha masterfully weaves the narratives into a beautifully intricate fabric of life, exploring family dynamics, relationships, racial tension, complexities of modern life, and even sexuality. She manages to blend the serious topics with elements of comedy and lightheartedness, thereby ensuring the narrative never gets too heavy or tedious.

The music selection further elevates the film by adding more emotional depth to the scenes. The cinematography and art direction comprehensively capture the ambiance of Thanksgiving, engaging the audience with warm, earthy tones, and compelling them to virtually smell the turkey roasts, cranberry sauces, and pumpkin pies prepared in each kitchen.

What's Cooking? is a cleverly-crafted film that sort of acts as a microcosm of the multidimensional American society, showcasing an intriguing, yet moving exploration of how different cultures celebrate a common tradition like Thanksgiving. It effectively highlights how cultural nuances may vary, but the common bond of love, unity, gratefulness transcends beyond the differences.

While the film offers no fairytale resolutions, it emphasises that unity can exist amid diversity, and common threads of human experiences knit us together, despite our differences. It serves as a reminder that the American dream embraces various cultures, and Thanksgiving is a testament to that collective camaraderie – a day spent with family, food, and football, experienced albeit differently in every American household.

As a chorus of celebrations, What’s Cooking? is a film that stimulates the palate as much as it touches the heart, offering the audience a relevant and relatable slice of the American multi-cultural experience. It's a sumptuous cinematic feast that audiences, regardless of their cultural background, would find delightful to indulge in.