Oh! You pretty things!

Film: Four Weddings and a funeral

There is a notion that director Mike Newel and his often collaborator screenwriter Richard Curtis single-handedly ruined reputation of British cinema; Not far from true, today, British film is most known for such romantic comedies like “Bridget Jones diary”, films relying on hope that dry British accent sounds funny to Americans, more than on actual humor. Though Great Britain was home to David Lean’s epics, Nicholas Roeg’s contemplativeness, Peter Greenaway’s eccentric spirit, Ken Loach’s and Mike Leigh’s social dramas, even Kubrick’s refugee to territory less controlled by producers – today, people expect only romantic comedies from British cinema; Scene of going to pub is as inevitable as going to strip-bar is in average Hollywood copper.
Yes, British comedies were never bad; “Full Monty”, for one, is remembered as the rare film that manages to get a laugh at poverty and to leave a bitter feeling after that laugh, enough to pass the message. “Sliding door”, not very good, is at least intriguing. “Four weddings and a funeral” was a heck of a film, film with so much layers that in requires repeated watching. “Nothing Hill”, by the same crew, was a desperately bad and shameless copy of “Four weddings and a funeral”. All elements that, authors thought, were the audience draw, are there: confused Hugh Grant, beautiful American women, an obligatory, unlikely group of friends, Grant’s indecisiveness, and people constantly embarrassing themselves in order to get a laugh out of audience. Pure crap.
And then, on legacy of that, you have films advertised as British romantic comedies (or comedies with British lead actors), a tagline that grants only one thing: A lot of people will accent that you probably consider amusing, embarrassing themselves, regularly getting drunk, and a Hugh Grant on top.
Sadly, that’s the case, and I somehow think that all that could’ve been avoided if only Newel, Curtis and Grant didn’t decide to copy themselves and try to match the success of “Four weddings...”
Of course they forgot one simple thing: Success of “Four weddings...” wasn’t just a result of such superficial elements, but also of the fact that it was a clever, deep, insightful film that dealt with dilemmas that lots of us encounter in our young bachelor age.

Many probably know the story but I’ll repeat it for my own pleasure:
First invention of “Four weddings and a funeral” is that the film happens in whole on those five social events (plus one shorter interlude). Limiting scene to these public, social occasions has an unique effect: we have a feeling that those characters spend all their life attending big social events; There’s lack of private life, lack of time-for-yourself, and it seems like whole their lives comply to the rules of such events. For one thing, on these events, noone will ever tell you something directly: you’ll find out things from hints, sidelines, from listening to someone else’s conversation, and, specially nice touch, you won’t be able to let your feelings out while the weddings last (it’s not appropriate). Only when the funeral comes, you’ll stand to think about your life for a bit.
Charles (Hugh Grant) is the main character; Pretty, blue-eyed, funny, yet shy and indecisive. The essential doubt of this character is that he doesn’t believe in true love of epic proportions, the one that films and novels tell us about; And yet, at the same time, he hopes for one. He is struggling to keep his feet on the ground but deep inside he is expecting to meet a women and feel the thunderstroke. It’s something of a common feeling in modern world, with the clash of the ways of life. On one side, promiscuity, one-night-stands, premarital sex, are common thing nowadays. For one, we have a right to choose, to try before we permanently connect to someone. It is a cynical time in which noone is waiting for true love anymore, noone is Madam Bovary, reading romantic novels and waiting for the knight in shiny armor. Yet somehow, we all feel nostalgia for those times, we read about it in the books with a lot of joys; Women still want to be swept away with love and men still want to be fearless heroes. But we are too cynical to still believe that such times ever were, except in fairy tales.
That is Charles’ main problem too, he is still a romantic deep inside. He meets Carrie (Andie MacDowell) on the first wedding, she is attractive and she is someone he could spend the rest of life with. But he doesn’t feel the thunderstroke so he lets her pass by. Not much later, he becomes aware of the love that came slowly, not as a wave but as a tide; But when he meets Carrie again, she is marrying another guy. And that’s something of a greatest fear that Charles, or any man, could have: missing an opportunity to be happy, to have a happy life. He is living this great fear: when he finds out about the wedding, he really seems like a person who missed his only chance, he really doesn’t believe that he will ever love someone but her.
But Charles is a modern man, so he is pragmatic enough. He doesn’t rush into her arms and ask her to cancel the wedding, he doesn’t despair or kill himself, he doesn’t do any of those things that noone but a romantic character from a book or a film would do. Charles tries to comfort himself with the second best, if he won’t have a happy life, he’ll have some kind of life, that’s for sure. What happens next, I think, we all know.
Charles’ counterpart is Tom (James Fleet) desperately clumsy, immature person, you could say a laughing stock of the party. He is (as anyone who life wasn’t very gratuitous to) stripped of all illusions. What he hopes for is a girl, pleasantly looking, who will be able to stand him. That’s, in his opinion, the most a social loser like him could ask for. Finally, that’s what most of people settle with, and he realizes that one, Romanesque true love is not the only grant of happy life (which is what Charles seem to think). Tom is a peculiar character, he is intellectually immature, but emotionally probably the most mature of the case. His dialogue sequence with Charles following after the funeral is perhaps the most telling moment of the film, the sequence that sums up everything that happened so far into a coherent, telling meditation about modern day relationships and about the outlook of modern man to fairy-tales (and frankly, how sticking to those fairy-tale ideals can ruin you – which is, actually, nothing that haven’t been said before). This sequence also turns Tom, until that moment a comical relief, into a character that is, next to Charles, perhaps the most important in the film. He is Charles’ contrast, and in the same way, shares his problems.
These problems being that they’re both bachelors in their best years, not only they want completion through marriage, but society asks them to. A person who never forms a family is in one way or the other, still outcast from society, and neither Tom nor Charles have the desire to be outcasts. They feel that, somehow, this is their last chance and they have this great burden of years incoming.
Which is why characters of Matthew (John Hannah) and Gareth (Simon Callow) are important. They are a freewheeling gay couple (a thing that we indeed find out from hints, never directly from someone), and they are, in a way, outcasts: Matthew through his folded-arms introvert appearance, Gareth, on contrary, in his cheerful, energetic persona of shameless entertainer, perhaps even Clown, where impression that he belongs to the crowd is only illusion given by the fact that he actually stands above the crowd. When Charles and Tom talk after the funeral, Tom says “We can’t be like Matthew and Gareth”; They have to marry and settle one day. He hints that the reason society is not giving Matthew and Gareth (who is at that moment already dead) the same peer pressure it is giving to Tom and Charles because it has given up on them. Tom and Charles, among other things, don’t wanna be given up on; Gareth and Matthew didn’t care.
I said that people in this film can only open up on funeral, because such honesty is not considered appropriate for a wedding. Gareth, a kind of spiritual leader, a person who gets the party going, is here also the person who, by his death, allows characters to finally open up, to cry under the rain, to reconsider what they’ve done so far and how high their stakes are. He remains a spiritual leader after his death. John Hannah, competent Brittish comedian, as Matthew delivers a moving speech on Gareth’s funeral.
The rest of Charles’ little circle of friends includes Fiona (Christine Scott Thomas), charming but definitely unfinished character; There is David (David Bower), Charles’ deaf and mute brother, who gets his points by sharing smutty comments in sign language that noone can understand but Charles – an action that comes unexpectedly from a deaf and mute person but only when he forget that he’s a human too. Finally, there’s Scarlet (Charlotte Coleman), totally useless except as a comical relief, but final touch on the picture.
There is, of course, cameo by Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean, Black Adder) as a new, confused priest, quite unimportant moment of the film but (of course) main star of the trailer and advertising campaign. Those who came to see Mr. Bean weren’t quite happy, unless they decided to stay for the rest of the film.
Particular Newel-Curtis humor based in embarrassment lays just fine in this setting, social occasion where seeing someone embarrassed in often the pinpoint of amusement (take inept best-men’s speeches for one). They repeat this gag through entire film, and it works all the time, perhaps thanks to Grant’s performance, who always precisely delivers mute embarrassment, but every time slightly different. Grant has a talent for comedian but in his roles, he is constantly typecast as the same confused Englishman from this film, so he hasn’t got much chance to develop his comedy skills. Sadly, humor based on embarrassing is something that later British comedies took over from this film, even though here, it is mainly a supporting character, a sort of pad, background.
Film reconstructs English weddings to the detail; I even learned quite a bit about them. For instance, I didn’t know that bride and the groom make a list of presents they want to get, so guests pick from the list. Very convenient, even if a bit impersonal. Here, everybody gets whatever comes to their mind, so in the end newly wed are usually stuck with a bunch of stuff they don’t need, and they’ll probably never use.
I like the director’s work here, I like how he manages to place quite a lot of characters in one frame for the most of time. I like how he balances different planes through quick exchange of camera focus. There’s a lot of very nice solutions here, though they’re usually laid back, subtle and in purpose of the story, never the main event,
The worst moment of the film is probably the ending. Even if we discard Charles’ final speech to Carrey, something that doesn’t make very sense, and the obligatory standing-in-the-rain romantic moment, the decision to force a happy ending on every single character from the film is quite annoying. They are saying that everyone at the end finds his way to happiness despite all worries and dilemmas, but that is something that film has been trying to subtly say all the time, and forcing it as a final message in the end, is like poking in the eye. Film has shown a lot of spirit, a lot of smarts in saying big things with small words, but the ending simply doesn’t have any of those. The ending is something that seems to be put there only for hard-core romantic comedies fans: people who want to see happiness till the rest of our lives all over, people who don’t have enough imagination to think of what will happen with some character after the film is finished, so they need the director to tell them.
But all in all, “Four weddings...” is a very good film, with something of a reputation of a soaped romantic comedy, understandable because of it’s first appearance but undeserved because of it’s quietly realized ambitions.

posted by Srdjan @ 12:22 AM