A Wedding (1978)

“[High on the pills given to her by Dr. Meachum] Death is a horseman. Death is a thief in the night. Death is a four letter word.” – Ingrid Hellstrom

Number of Times Seen – 1 (10 Jun 2024)

Brief Synopsis – The extended families in a wedding party wreck havoc due to the vast social differences between the two families.

My Take on it – Typical Robert Altman kind of story with tons of characters who are all constantly having multiple conversations simultaneously. The method is hit or miss and in this case, it doesn’t manage to get the viewer to truly care about everyone in this extended wedding party. The characters are all very quirky and it makes things more difficult to really choose who to care about as things move along in a very strange way. The mixture of drama and comedy works well here and the cast uses their talents to keep things feeling more realistic. Loved seeing Carol Burnett in this film because of the seriousness of her character which is so much against type of what we would expect.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Director Robert Altman admits that the whole production of the film came as a joke. A reporter had kept asking him during the middle of shooting 3 Women (1977) what he planned to do next and Altman jokingly replied that he was going to film someone’s wedding seeing as that was becoming a more common thing to do at the time. Altman said: “I’m going to make a movie about a great big fancy wedding!” As Altman reflected on it, he decided it was actually quite a good idea, as he had never been to a wedding where something didn’t go wrong. Altman’s off-hand idea manifested itself in a drinking session with his 3 Women (1977) crew that evening after the meeting with the journalist. Within a couple of weeks, Altman had commissioned screenwriter John Considine to start developing a story and a guest list. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)