The Wedding Plan

[osprey_archer]

I enjoyed Rama Burshtein's The Wedding Plan so much that I immediately added her other film, Fill the Void, to my Netflix queue - so I can watch it at some indefinite time in the future, once I've had time to recover from The Wedding Plan.



The poster for The Wedding Plan makes it look like a romantic comedy - it reminds me of the poster for My Best Friend’s Wedding - but it’s a comedy only in the Shakespearian sense that it ends happily. The bulk of the story is about sadness, even hopelessness, as Michal admits when one man asks why she’s agreed to a date with him after refusing to meet him the last time the matchmaker tried to set them up. “Despair,” she tells him.

Michal is 32 years old and unmarried, in an Orthodox community where this is quite unusual. At the beginning of the movie, she’s finally gotten engaged - only for the engagement to fall apart when she and her fiance go to rent the wedding hall.

Michal rents the hall anyway. She’s got the hall, she’s got a guest list of 200, she’s got the wedding date (the eighth day of Hanukkah), and God will send her a groom - or so she tells her horrified family and friends, who know very well this is likely to end in a humiliating disaster. (This is the point when it becomes a very good thing that the movie isn’t a comedy: this whole scenario would be excruciating if it were played for laughs.)

The thing is, Michal knows this too, at least sometimes. She puts up a brave (or maybe delusional) face when other people are around, but when she’s on her own her belief breaks down. “I’m a liar,” she sobs at the tomb of Rebbe Nachman, and repeats it again and again. She’s told everyone that she believes this will work but a part of her, an increasingly large part of her, is terrified that it won’t, and she's going to be left presiding alone at an empty farce of wedding while her 200 guests stare at her.

But in the end she’s just sick of this whole process and she wants it to be over. “I want to be normal,” she tells a fortune teller at the beginning of the film - and in her cultural context, normal means married - but if she can’t be normal she’ll settle for being the undatably weird girl who threw a wedding with no groom. Anything, just to get this over with.

Except she’s not actually willing to do anything: she gets a couple of proposals, but from men who don’t share her values, whom she’s afraid either don’t love her or aren’t capable of loving her. She also tells the fortune teller, “I want to love and be loved” - and that, in the end, is more important to her than normality.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Oh that sounds very intriguing--and it continues to be intriguing after looking at a trailer; I'll have to see it!

[osprey_archer]

I think you in particular would enjoy it!

[asakiyume]

I just watched it!

It was lovely! I really liked that all three guys who seem like active possibilities for her seem.... pretty equally active. And I loved the examination of faith and how she defends herself to the rabbi. I loved all her conversations with the various guys. Really really sweet (in the good sense of the word--not at all saccharine), moving, thoughtful film.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, I'm so glad you saw it, and that you liked it! It's such an unusual film - it's so rare for any movie to actually keep me hanging about which guy the heroine will actually end up with - or indeed if she'll end up with any guy at all! I thought surely she would, because a wedding with no groom would be such a devastating ending, but there were moments when it seemed like - maybe no.

I thought the examination of faith was wonderful too. I'd love to read an analysis of it from within the Orthodox community - I'm so curious how it fits into that worldview. If it exists it's probably Israeli & not in English, though.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, and I also meant to say - the director has another movie which I'm planning to watch at some point. Are you interested in seeing it too? It might be fun to try to coordinate so we see it at about the same time.

[asakiyume]

Sure, that sounds like a lot of fun! This one I had to get from solid-object-DVD Netflix, so if the other film is like that, it would require a little advance planning, but would be totally doable.

[osprey_archer]

I'll have to get the DVD from Netflix too, so we'll definitely have to plan in advance. March is already pretty packed in terms of movies, but April or May could work.

The other film is called Fill the Void, btw - it's Burshtein's only other film on Netflix.

[asakiyume]

That one looks good too!

Let's check in with each other in April; we can both request it at the same time.

[osprey_archer]

Sounds like a plan!

[sovay]

She also tells the fortune teller, “I want to love and be loved” - and that, in the end, is more important to her than normality.

That sounds very good.

[osprey_archer]

I also liked the fact that this is something that Michal does on her own - the movie never seems to be beating her over the head to give up on the goal of normalcy and pursue something that it finds more acceptable. It's just that when she's up against the fence, she finds that she just can't put normalcy above everything else.

[kore]

Wow, this does sound interesting.

[osprey_archer]

It's worth seeing if you get the chance.