Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 17-October-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Father of the Bride (1950, 1991)
Most people, even those with no knowledge of the enormity of planning a wedding, find it an intriguing subject for disgust, ridicule, envy, or admiration. How could it be otherwise when so much money is at stake, and when marriage is considered one of the Facts of Life, for better or for worse? Little wonder then that someone thought to make a movie about the rigmarole that usually surrounds the passage into matrimony. Little wonder, too, that the story played better 50 years ago than in 1991.
"Father of the Bride" adopts the point of view of a heavily invested yet almost extraneous participant in the wedding process, who serves as a sympathetic guide into the mysteries of the ritual. In Vincente Minnelli's 1950 version, Spencer Tracy gives an endearing performance as Stanley Banks, an Everyman lawyer with a happy home who suddenly encounters the impending reality of the empty nest. With a son in college and another in his teens, Stanley is particularly distressed when his young daughter (Elizabeth Taylor) announces her engagement to a heretofore unremarked beau (Don Taylor). Being enlightened 20th-century parents, however, he and his wife (Joan Bennett) offer no resistance to the marriage and proceed with the formalities that society demands (meeting the in-laws, buying the trousseau, organizing a party, etc.). Like many older shows, the movie isn't easily pigeonholed into one genre; it's an enjoyable mix of cultural observation, light comedy, and lighter drama.
Weddings are still in fashion, but candid narrative is not; the remake of "Father of the Bride" squanders almost everything that works in the original. (I'm really beginning to believe in the dumbing-down of America and Hollywood's reflection of --- or is it contribution to? --- this phenomenon.) Whereas the characters in Minnelli's film seem like real people, the stereotypes in the 1991 movie are so awash in overstatement that they cannot hope to be taken seriously. It's as if the actors and the guy who wrote the music were instructed to project for people in the back row. When the latter-day Mr. Banks (now a sneaker-designer named George and played by Steve Martin) gets the news from his daughter (Kimberly Williams), he collapses into a fit and hallucinates that she is a 6-year-old in pigtails. (ATTENTION AUDIENCE: THE FATHER STILL SEES HIS DAUGHTER AS A CHILD. HE IS UNHAPPY WITH HER ENGAGEMENT.) He then initiates countless acts of passive aggression against the nuptial ambitions of the bride, his wife (Diane Keaton), and their travesty of a wedding coordinator (Martin Short). The movie dishes out slapstick, gags involving attack dogs (never a good sign), a precocious little boy of the type only found in movies (Kieran Culkin), and, for those poor souls who aren't getting the message, a running voiceover to explain exactly what George is thinking, doing, and feeling. Caught uneasily between satire and sentiment, it feels like a strained attempt to recapture the charms of age-old rituals by filmmakers who do not understand them.
But, really, why should they? The two versions of "Father of the Bride" illustrate some of the familiar deficiencies of modern movies compared with older ones, but they also reveal major cultural changes from the middle to the end of the last century. In the 1950 film, the wedding itself (more religious and imbued with notions of chastity and motherhood) seems to be an organic extension of the life that the Bankses represent. Stanley chafes at the cost of the event and the mutation it works upon his family, but he never opposes it and comes to view it as a custom that reaffirms the ties between home and community. He also appreciates the opportunity it gives him to reminisce on his own life, love, and marriage. (His wife, the perfect '50s homemaker, doesn't cajole or insist to get him to go along with the plans; she simply confesses that she gave up her own dreams of a big wedding to comply with his wishes and would therefore like to go to town for her daughter's special day.) Everyone in Stanley's family seems to know his or her place, respect the places occupied by others, and be satisfied with the arrangement. The giving of a daughter to another man, though sad, is therefore a confirmation of the fitness and continuity of a well-structured society.
Cut to the '90s, however, and the way in which the sexes fit into the order of things has become blurred and confused. Most people would crow that women have been liberated from the necessity of being housewives, and yet the popular bridal ceremony has hardly changed, containing the same anachronistic rites and symbols that once made sense (virginity, subjection, etc.). As if to gloss over the strange status of females as ostensibly independent but fundamentally (and often willingly) subordinate, women are commonly portrayed in television sitcoms and movies like "Father of the Bride" as infinitely more savvy than men and possessed of dictates and whims that must be heeded. (I'm fascinated by the two branches of this stereotype: if the lady is rich or married, she's a goddess admired by all; if poor or single, she's a bitch admired by her girlfriends.)
Keaton, as mother of the bride, has the same perfect home and girlish waistline of her 1950 counterpart, but also her own company (alluded to but never elaborated upon) and an all-knowing, all-confident, holier-than-her-husband dominion over her environment. Her daughter is studying to be an architect, was always opposed to marriage (until she met Mr. Right), and takes offense when her fiancé gives her a blender, but she still dons white, walks down the aisle in a veil, and seals the deal with a $1200 cake. On top of the overblown theatrics, the whole premise of the remake smacks of frivolity and hypocrisy; instead of a hallowed ritual, the wedding seems like an aggressively feminine assault on a man whose role has been reduced to following orders, admitting his own folly, and writing out checks. With the traditional significance of the rite diminished by 1991, the story is no longer sweet, funny, or touching, whereas back in the day it could be (and was) all three.
Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
