Brehm Center

With summer fast approaching many things are on the calendar: camp for the kids, swim lessons, the family vacation, and oh yeah, cousin Anna's wedding.  Aren't weddings always an intense time of... joy...and all those great family dynamics?!  To prepare you for this summer's round of weddings and family dynamics, we'd like to recommend two movies (out on video/dvd), My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Monsoon Wedding.

Both of these movies, one from Hollywood, the other from Bollywood (the largest film industry in the world located in Bombay, India), came out last summer. Small independent films, they nonetheless were surprise hits, running away with viewers' hearts.  Why?  Both films were immensely entertaining. Many of us saw our own families in these movies. Some of us found that we could better accept our families' idiosyncrasies after watching those of others.  We may even have heaved a sigh of relief realizing that our families are not so quirky after all.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is about, obviously, a Greek family.  Toula, a somewhat awkward, homely single woman, whose family has all but given up on her ever getting married, narrates our story.  She tells us, Greek women are to (1) marry a Greek boy, (2) make Greek babies, and (3) feed everyone for the rest of your life.  Thus, begins our glimpse into a typical Greek-American family, and the comical love story that ensues between Toula, and the obviously-not-Greek, Ian Miller.

Unlike many of the big budget studio films out last summer, this story is about life with a small "l."  It is just for this reason that many told us, "It's my story too." As you listen to Toula's father try to convince everyone that all words, even Ian's last name, come from the Greek language, or as you watch her Aunt Voula (in our opinion she steals the show) share her deepest secret with Ian's reserved parents, you recognize that this film is truly a small treasure of human comedy.  Those of us with "mixed marriages"-reserved northern European roots on one side and passionate southern roots on the other-will particularly enjoy the humorous, yet sympathetically drawn, caricatures.

In Monsoon Wedding we are thrust into the middle of very different wedding preparations. There is going to be a large Indian wedding, and the viewers have to figure out who's who through the flurry of activity and mix of languages. Even the bride and groom are in the dark, meeting each other for the first time, as their parents have arranged the marriage.  Aditi, daughter of a large Delhi family, is preparing to marry Hemant, a non-resident Indian-a computer programmer from Houston.  And there the twist begins: we will again witness a wedding between persons of different cultures.

The story soon becomes even more complicated.  Aditi, while following this traditional path of arranged marriage, is also quite "modern," as she has had a liaison with a married man.  In addition, various subplots swirl, from a cousin's painful childhood experience being relived to the wedding planner's own poignant plunge into love. When you add the other family members, the constant flow between English, Hindi, and Punjabi, and the mix of tradition with modernity, you realize once again the messy joy that families bring.

Aristotle once said that the "plot was the most important element of drama."  Certainly this is true of these two movies. Unlike special effects blockbusters, both these films are content to tell the basic story of how love, honesty, and understanding conquer stereotypes and fear.  Through the medium of large extended families and lavish weddings and feasts, we see that "love wins the day even as the melting pot bubbles" (Roger Ebert). Both these films are joyous expressions of culture and family, which leap over generational and national boundaries to celebrate our common humanity. These two films are the perfect "family" films-perfect because they are about family-that quirky, clashing, living organism (which includes some very adult themes).

The family of God fits that description too, doesn't it?  Why else would Paul share his object lesson with the Corinthians about all of us  "being members of one body"?  He knew that there would be days that neither Toula's family nor Aditi's could hold a candle to the complexities of living together in the family of God.  These two movies not only help us laugh at ourselves, they can help us learn something about family dynamics in the Kingdom of God. We see people accepting and including each other and their gifts in the large family celebration.  It is for example, both lovely and hilarious when Ian's very timid mother brings her very small bundt cake to the exotic-smelling, pig roast rehearsal dinner, where it is graciously received by Toula's mother, even though she's not sure what it is!  As we "celebrate our diversity" in the Covenant family, some of us wonder about the "bundt cakes" and "Aunt Voulas" in our midst. Some of us may even wish they weren't present. But both these movies show us that differences can be celebrated, and past hurts overcome, when there is the mutual flow of respect, humor and love. But the greatest of these is love.