Late Marriage (Hatuna Meuheret)

I watched Late Marriage over a month ago but, as was the trend with April, I was putting everything off. That includes taxes, which I filed an extension for on the deadline that was already pushed back due to national holidays, my expired car inspection, which I got pulled over and ticketed for, my next LVAD appointment, laundry, and writing this blog entry.

I just left the Studio Movie Grill in Lewisville half an hour ago. Thanks to who I will now refer to as “my angel,” I had two Groupons and a May 3^rd deadline to use them. Unfortunately, the cinematic options these days are horrific. Given the sparse selection, I chose to use the first Groupon on The Raven, which exceeded all expectations as the understudy to both From Hell and Sherlock Holmes. The thought never occurred to me, but I left realizing I know little to nothing about Edgar Allan Poe. From the film I was given the impression that Poe’s views on death may be right up my alley.

Think Like A Man and The Hunger Games have dominated the box office this past month, a vomitous truth. As soon as I heard The Five Year Engagement came in fifth at the box office this weekend, I knew it was the movie for me, and chose to use my second and last Groupon on Engagement. I have little to no faith in the general public’s taste in movies (see the box office leading and vomit inducing titles mentioned above).

I am inexplicably drawn to Emily Blunt, one of the stars of Engagement. Blunt isn’t a very good actress and she was an insufferable bitch in The Devil Wears Prada, the first movie I saw her in, yet she melts whatever it is currently masquerading as my heart (see also The Adjustment Bureau). Since I was a child, I’ve always had an affinity for British accents and red hair. I believe she had both in Prada. Blunt may also be the only woman I find attractive when she cries. It won’t make sense to a “normal person,” but it’s almost as if she radiates with red, watery eyes and tears trickling down her cheeks.

Engagement brought me back to movies like When Harry Met Sally and Forget Paris, which are great entertainment, but horrible movies to glean relationship expectations from. Whoever started the idea of “the one who got away” did the lonely world a terrible disservice. I always assume there is a reason two people don’t end up together, as we are constantly changing what stage in life we’re in. If we change our friends and cells every seven years, why should our relationships be any different? I’ll be the first to admit I don’t understand how to cultivate a healthy relationship with any person, which brings me back to Late Marriage.

I’m one of those people who will never marry, at least not for love. I don’t believe in love. I believe in sexual attraction and infatuation, both of which are fleeting, yet more real to me than the concept of love will ever be. The older I get the more the idea of an arranged/status/asset marriage makes sense. However, I draw the line where someone else is the motivating factor for the union, as with Late Marriage.

I don’t know where the idea of living to meet your parents’ expectations came from but I would expect it has something to do with a gross misinterpretation of “honor thy father and thy mother,” another archaic notion I don’t subscribe to. You don’t get to choose your parents and it’s insane to suggest that honor or respect is automatically bestowed upon a person by virtue of succumbing to carnality and engaging in coitus that results in childbirth. Even a bitch can get pregnant, give birth, and raise pups to adulthood (if asked, that’s exactly what I’ll say my cunt of a mother did).

In Late Marriage, the main character’s parents, aunts and uncles all wanted him to marry, even if it meant marrying someone who is generally considered to be a child. The disturbing part to me is that his relatives didn’t want him to wed because they were worried about him finding companionship. Instead, they seemed more preoccupied with making their son suffer as they had all done. One of the few things I think America has right is the concept that children are supposed to have better lives than their parents. One of the things that makes my own mother such a cunt is her resentment that I didn’t have to suffer an abusive drunk of a father, deal with mulatto racism, or have to split affection, attention and the like with three siblings.

The main character’s relatives were also concerned about perception, another oddity I don’t quite understand when it comes to people who think like this. He wanted to marry a divorcee with a child, who the family referred to as a whore, but it was forbade because of how unseemly it was, in their deranged minds, for their son to marry a single mother. These same people thought it was kosher for their son to bed a girl who, if my memory serves me right, was still in high school.

Without ruining the ending, Late Marriage ends in a way more aligned with my cynical and loveless world view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0EHSUGZflw8

I don’t know if I watched Late Marriage in Georgian (which I didn’t know existed until moments ago) or Hebrew. Either way, it was my first non-documentary experience with the language.