Three movies in which weddings either take place or significantly don't...

1. Manje Bistre, Baljit Singh Deo, 2017

This was our wedding anniversary movie, and it was appropriately amiable and light-hearted.

The background to the story revolves around the preparations for a Punjabi wedding, so there's a manic cast of characters constantly shouting at and past each other as they career round getting things ready (I particularly like the scene where the boys go out to the village to round up charpoys, which it is obviously traditional to lend for these occasions).

It's set in the 1980s (or so I read), and many fans talk lovingly about its depiction of "old Punjab".

And it's true, the gentle hues of the (admittedly idealized) rural scenery are very evocative, and set off to great advantage the vibrant outfits of the protagonists (particularly watch out for the lead character's jumpers and turbans, of which he has an enviable collection).

The hero falls in love with someone who is already engaged. On the way to sorting this out, there's the usual amount of mixed messages, confusion, and chaos, but in the end all is well.

Plus there's a lot of discussion of chocolate barfi, which can only be a good thing.


Weddings in Indonesia, 2010-13





2. Their Finest, Lone Scherfig, 2016

This is billed as a comedy, but is actually quite sad.

The story is set during World War II, and features Catrin, a young Welsh woman who gets a job with the UK department of government that is responsible for creating morale-boosting movies.

Many themes weave themselves together in this movie, all of them subtly developed. There's the world of propaganda, which never lets the truth stand in the way of a good story. There's the world of international relations, in which the need for US war support justifies all sorts of dubious editorial decisions.  There's the world of women's rights, ably championed by Catrin, who manages to hold her own in the patriarchal world of government, despite systemic bias and regular, personalized put-downs from her male colleagues. And, of course, there's the war. Bombing, destruction, constant uncertainty...

Catrin, who has followed her feckless artist boyfriend to London, but is not quite bold enough to appear in public without a sham wedding ring, eventually realizes not only that he too is a remnant of the patriarchy but also that he is sleeping with other women. In the meantime, she has in any case fallen in love with a colleague, Tom. Communicators though they're both supposed to be, they're not that good at communicating this kind of stuff, and things are a bit fraught for a while. But finally love prevails -- all the way up to his stupid, pointless death on a film set... So that's a non-wedding as well.

This movie has quite a stellar support cast, but the real stand-out is Bill Nighy, with his portrayal of aging thespian Ambrose Hilliard. Nighy somehow manages to make this vain and ridiculous old buffer into someone you can't help liking (at least a little).







3. The Other Story, Avi Nesher, 2019

This is set in Jerusalem, and after listening to The Marrying of Chani Kaufman a few weeks ago, I felt it would be an interesting counterpoint.

The basic plot is that Anat and Shachar -- who once led secular, unconstrained, and highly publicized lives, but then turned to the ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism, and now abide by very strict religious rules -- want to marry. Violently against this proposition are Tali and Shlomo (respectively, Anat's mother and grandfather), both of whom despise the form of religion the young couple are now involved in. Tali's ex-husband, Yonaton, is drafted in from the US, where he now lives, and given the brief to disrupt the relationship by digging up dirt on former singer Shachar (played by Nathan Goshen, an actual Israeli pop star).

This is an interesting scenario, pitting the "harsh dogmatism of orthodoxy against an equally stringent form of atheism that, as a moral philosophy, is just as closed-minded and fiercely held as the religion it rejects".

Perhaps this is the reason it broke box office records in Israel.

In a sub-plot, Shlomo (a psychologist) is counselling another couple. Here, the woman is moving in the opposite direction to Anat -- away from the strictly regulated version of Judaism in which she was raised, and towards the emancipatory, ecstatic world of goddess-worship. Her husband is horrified, and afraid of the effect these ideas might be having on their son. (What is probably worst for their son is the constant hostility they show each other, but anyway...)

Despite the interest of these various trajectories, however, it felt to me as though the film had been written all in capital letters.

Everything was extreme, somehow, for no good reason. Did the young couple's pre-conversion background have to be quite so lurid? Did the pagan ritual have to built up as though it was going to be a horror movie? Did we really need that melodramatic kidnapping-and-rescue, when the contested child is taken off to a nunnery by his father? 

And so much, on the other hand, was left unexplored. What had made the singer turn to religion? What had made Tali and Shlomo so vitriolically opposed to it? Why are goddesses always demonized? 

Meanwhile, Yonatan is only too successful in digging up dirt on Shachar. He blackmails him into "confessing" to Anat, and it's left unclear at the end whether her forgiveness (and therefore the wedding) will be forthcoming.

So the ending ties absolutely nothing up, which is a good thing.

And you definitely come away with a very clear picture of manipulation. Which is something families excel at, regardless of their religious stances.