the estate of holy marriage
by
Douglas Messerli
John
Considine, Allan F. Nicholls, Patricia Resnick, and Robert Altman
(screenwriters), Robert Altman (director) A
Wedding / 1978
Big weddings are all embarrassing in one
way or another, as two different families and hordes of relatives and friends
all gather to drink and celebrate or possibly mourn the coming together of two
young lovers. At least, that’s the presumption of writers John Considine, Allan
F. Nicholls, Patricia Resnick, and Robert Altman. You can almost see them
sitting round a table listing all the terrible things that might logically (an
illogically) happen at such an event.
It’s nearly impossible, and clearly
unnecessary, to list all of the events delicious goings on, which include
various highjinks of the adolescent boys and a running mob of young siblings.
When you have both a nurse and a doctor in the house you know that everyone, in
way or another, is going to get sick. As the wedding party descends upon the
mansion, nearly everyone is desperate to pee. Regina Sloan Corelli (Nina Van
Pallandt), moreover, is a drug addict; the caterer, Ingrid Hellstrom (Viveca
Lindfors) has fainting spells and, after swallowing the doctor’s pills, gets
high; the bride’s brother is epileptic; and poor Tulip Brenner (Carol Burnett)
gags at the very thought of the unwanted advances of Mack Goddard (Pat
McCormick). Later, however, after it is established that Tulip’s husband, "Snooks" Brenner (Paul Dooley), has an
incestuous crush on his beautiful but nearly mute elder daughter Buffy (Mia
Farrow) and that he regularly verbally abuses his wife, Tulip permits herself
to consider a tryst with her new admirer.
Then there is the wedding couple
themselves, the not so pretty Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker) whose teeth are
still in braces and the not so smart Dino Sloan Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.), whose
brain, equally, is in need of straightening.
By movie’s end, at least, order is
somewhat restored. Tulip tells her would-be lover that she will not meet him in
Tallahassee, Muffin makes it with the father’s, Luigi Corelli (Vittorio
Gassman), long-lost brother, and, most importantly, Luigi, who it turns out was
a former restaurant waiter—freed at last from the dictates of Hettie—drives off
with his brother into the sunset, leaving behind the looney world in which he
has for so long been entrapped.
The real targets of Altman’s satire,
it becomes apparent, are not these absurd figures, but love and the “the estate
of holy marriage” itself. Loving and living, the director seems to argue, are
always an unholy mess. And, indeed, if one wanted to explode the metaphor, one
might suggest that movie-making, particularly given the large ensemble
groupings of Altman films, is the same kind of chaotic marriage of
larger-than-life personalities with libidos to match. Such relationships to the
auteur-father are always fraught with
every peril imaginable; but, at least, he can always drive off, like the father
of the groom, into the future, leaving the messy result of his “marriage” behind.
Perhaps only now can I understand my early reactions to this film, for it is a
kind horror film, a disaster film as well.
Los Angeles, June
27, 2016
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