So, I've taken a brief hiatus from reviewing the things that I've been watching, reading, and listening to. Given how long it has been I suppose it is odd that I should choose to write for the first time in several months about My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. I have, after all, been to the movies three days in a row, and more than fifty times since my review of Spotlight. On Thursday I saw Batman v. Superman, on Friday I went to 10 Cloverfield Lane, and last night I caught the 9:45 showing of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 at the Celebration on the other end of town. Of those films, I'm choosing to write about MBFGW2 for a very specific reason.
One of my favorite contemporary theologians, Don Carson (a Johannine scholar), has frequently said that in new works of theology he is looking for one or two sentences that will catch his imagination and intellect, and that this is basically the best he can hope for. This should be a sensation that is familiar to anyone who reads a lot of books, or watches a lot of movies, or listens to a lot of music. Most intellectual or imaginative creation happens at the margins, because most of what goes into writing a novel, or a work of scholarship, or making a film, for that matter, involves working with a set of familiar and established goals to contribute to a larger discussion.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, a lot actually. Because for 80 minutes of its 87 minute run time, I hated MBFGW2. It like watching a low stakes hostage crisis in action, but somehow the principal hostage was also the hostage taker. Nia Vardalos' character, Toula, is caught in a co-dependent nightmare with a family whose antics, demands, and constant presence seem destined to destroy her mental health. If this movie had taken a sudden left and turn into Arkham Asylum, and was revealed to be the backstory of Harley Quinn, the Joker's sidekick, I wouldn't have been shocked. I'd have been surprised...but not shocked. Moreover, the film can't decide if this situation is good or bad, the voiceover narration wobbles between extolling the virtues of "family," and decrying the demands of the monsters who are holding Vardalos hostage. At the end of the day, are we supposed to side with Toula? Pity her? Hate her? Who even knows.
There are problems with every level of the film: the performances are static and undifferentiated, the script is slapdash, and the plot is clunky. So why am I writing about it?
Because at about the 80 minute mark, the film did something that I really appreciate. It showed me something that I had never seen before. There is a series of shots of Toula and Ian, the main couple from the original picture, mirroring in the foreground (complete with improvised wedding crowns) the late-in-life wedding of Toula's parents, Gus and Maria. The image was beautiful and perfectly composed, taking full advantage of strong axis symmetry, and was so gentle and lovely that I can still see it when I close my eyes. It is a deep and meaningful meditation on marriage, not as a state that is entered into once, but as a way of life that progresses with you as you age, that draws you out from one stage of life into another, and continues to push you forward and draw you out as you live, what the ancient Greeks that this movie is so proud of would have called eudaimonia--the blossoming, flourishing condition of life well lived. I could barely breathe as I watched it unfold on the screen, and then, just like that, it was gone, and the film lurched into its awkward conclusion.
A week ago, I saw Zootopia, a wonderful animated film that just works. I liked it from beginning to end, found it charming and fun. I would watch it again 20 times before I'd go see MBFGW2 a second time. And yet, Zootopia didn't give me a moment like the one I described above. I don't know what this means in terms of aesthetics, how a sloppy failure can give me something that I am going to remember and take with me, and a well-tuned, perfectly calibrated entertainment can vanish into the well of memory. Who can say, all I know for sure is that I had a moment last night at the movies, and that's pretty good.
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