To quote from a certain Very Impressive Clergyman, “Mawage is wot bwings us togeder today.”
Weddings are kind of weird. You get a lot of friends and family together, and it’s a multi-day thing leading up to a relatively small amount of time for the ceremony and subsequent reception. (It reminds me of the Super Bowl in that respect.) And as we learn during this stop in our Twenty Films Around the World series, there’s a certain commonality to them. It doesn’t matter what the specific ritual is regarding the wedding itself. Lots of people come. Some are related, some aren’t. People get stressed. Tempers flare. Emotions run high and truths are revealed. And often, the wedding/reception leads to a couple of people becoming couples themselves.
And we see all of these things and more in today’s episode. First on the projector is 2001’s Monsoon Wedding, a comedy directed by Mira Nair. It’s a little bit Hollywood, a little bit Bollywood, and does a wonderful job of bringing multiple cultures together in one place. And there are a couple of subplots which start in one place but end in a very different one.
From there we jump to another Indian neighborhood, but only briefly, as the story for After the Wedding makes a jump to Denmark. Suzanne Bier’s 2006 film takes its main character to Copenhagen for what’s ostensibly a business deal, but it turns out that there’s a lot more than meets the eye. And, as I said earlier, truths are revealed.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Our journey Around the World in Twenty Films continues with visits to Japan and Spain. First up is When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, from 1960. Then it’s 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a slightly misleading translation of the original title. Go watch them! Then come back here!