Four Weddings and a Funeral: Love and Liturgy

Four Weddings and a Funeral is a romantic comedy about marriage, funerals, and true love. Hugh Grant (About a Boy; Love Actually) plays Charlie, an inveterate bachelor. Like the eponymous title, the film is four weddings (almost) and a funeral. The setting is in England. In the first wedding, Charlie is the best man. The highest decibel element of the film is its satire on ceremony. Charlie is running late to the wedding. He forgot to set an alarm. His morning ritual involves a series of expletives that is repeated throughout the day. Arriving at the chapel, a man asks Charlie if he remembered to bring the wedding ring, at least. Charlie pats his pocket, and opens his mouth in shock. No ring. Luckily, Charlie is bound to a group of friends who improvise for him, and continue to do so throughout the film. At this first wedding, Charlie meets Carrie, an attractive, daring, and confident American woman, played by Andie MacDowell (Groundhog Day; Short Cuts). Charlie spends the night with Carrie, and in the morning, is asked by Carrie if he will get engaged with her. As you can guess, while Charlie is handsome, educated, and charming he is somewhat scattered, even for a Brit, especially when it comes to rituals and commitments. Carrie leaves, and becomes engaged to an elder, stodgy, Scottish man. The audience, both young and old alike, are sure to cringe at a beautiful woman like Andie MacDowell passing up Hugh Grant for a plain, aged, and kilted politician.

The second wedding is hellish for Charlie, and serves to move the plot forward. There is a hilarious scene, with Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) as a priest who is doing his first wedding ceremony ever. He screws up the bride and groom’s vows by asking them to repeat hilarious opposite gender names and says the trinity is, “Jesus Christ, our lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Goat.” Announced in fancy cursive on an envelope on Charlie’s bed is the marriage of Carrie and Hamish, the third wedding. Charlie bumps into Carrie while Carrie is shopping for a matrimonial dress. He does not tell her he loves her. At the wedding, one of Charlie’s friends has a heart attack. This friend of Charlie’s is the most eccentric of the group. He is the one who mocks ceremony with intricate and colorful vests while at the same time taking immense joy out of it. To Charlie and his friends, his death means an end for the group’s fanfare about marriage, and a return to being serious about such events. After his funeral, Charlie hardens his heart about ever finding true love, and wishes for marriage, before it’s too late for him.

Charlie is actually on time to his own wedding. Everything seems to be going smoothly, until Carrie shows up. Carrie tells Charlie that she separated from Hamish. For Charlie, his facade of propriety comes crashing down. He will not say, “I do,” to Helen, a woman who was a bittersweet ex of Charlie’s. Instead, his brother signals to him in sign language, because the brother is deaf, that the groom (Charlie) is having doubts and is in love with someone else. Charlie repeats it in front of the entire clergy and guests. Helen punches Charlie in the face, and that is the end of that.

The fourth wedding is Carrie and Charlie, soaked and drowning in a sporadic English rain. Carrie and Charlie seal their vow not to marry each other, for the rest of their lives, with a drenched kiss. While marriage was the spur to Carrie and Charlie’s relationship, ultimately, their love could stand no such imposition. Their love is all heart, and no obligation. It’s a kind of love we should all aspire to, rather than the one with white dresses, tiered cakes, flowers, and strings attached. It is an especially poignant message, coming from a country that still tries to keep medieval ritual, with Kings, Queens, Lords, and within universities. The theme that will stay with the audience, whether they are civilized Englishmen, uncultured Americans, or somewhere in between, is that we have these ceremonies, but some of them matter and some of them don’t.

Four Weddings? Think of the Crazy Hats!

“I think we both missed a great opportunity here,” states Carrie (Andie MacDowell) as she reluctantly departs for the United States after a one-night-stand with protagonist, Charlie (Hugh Grant). Despite an unexpectedly overwhelming success in the box office domestically and internationally, “missing a great opportunity” is the sentiment of Four Weddings and a Funeral. This 1994 British film includes clever and heart-felt moments, but ultimately fails to elevate itself above the ranks of so many other generic, cute-yet-forgettable romantic-comedies. While it uniquely addresses the loneliness, lust, excitement, uncertainty, and regret of love, the story concludes with a feel-good resolution and overtly cliché kiss in the rain. The envelope is pushed, but when the plot reaches its culmination, the moment where this movie could truly make a statement with an honest or even slightly unexpected conclusion, it fizzles out, trading substance for cheap emotion. However, if the goal was to create a film that produces consistent slight chuckles and a naively optimistic view of the world, then it is a smashing success.

The strongest aspect of Four Weddings and a Funeral is the well-developed characterization of Charlie and his close friends. Mike Newell and Richard Curtis, the respective director and writer, do a fantastic job creating distinct supporting characters without drawing too much time and attention away from Charlie. Each member of the group has his or her own unpleasant flaw, but the way they accept, support, and celebrate each other throughout the movie make the close friendships realistic and endearing. This creates opportunities for bizarre, comedic minor characters, like the sloppy speaking priest or the senile old man. Hugh Grant’s portrayal of Charlie, the well-intentioned bachelor prone to social mistakes, is commendable. He subtly, yet effectively wears his heart on his sleeve, allowing the viewer to truly feel his character’s nervousness, embarrassment, disappointment, and joy.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Andie MacDowell starring opposite him as Carrie, Charlie’s American love interest. Her uncomfortable delivery of lines meant to reveal quick whit and strong emotion come off unconvincing and unnatural. This further accentuates certain areas of cheesy, poorly written dialogue. Carrie’s character lacks the charm and charisma of the other supporting characters. Coupled with her emotional flippancy toward Charlie, there is little appeal for Carrie in this film other than the anticipated happiness of Charlie.

The plot is not the strongest, often relying on major sporadic events to propel the characters from one emotional episode to another. The contemplative emotional low of the film is induced when Gareth, the lovable older friend, drops dead completely out of the blue. The possibility for resolution comes when Carrie conveniently shows up at Charlie’s wedding and announces she is again available. The film moves from wedding to wedding to wedding to funeral to wedding, lurching over large gaps of time in-between, making the death of Gareth and the reappearance of Carrie even more jarring. It feels as if the story grew stale and the writer had to inject a sudden immediate event in order to carry along the plot.

The film exhibited the renowned British quick, dry wit very well. Jokes and jabs at others’ expenses add to the charm of the close friendships and provide a majority of the comedy. The film is directed well, with moments of awkward pause and enjoyable body flailing for even more laughs. It cleverly places characters in humorous situations that require even more humorous solutions. Still, it touches upon major emotional undertones as it chronicles adults coming to terms with the difficulties of loneliness and the search for love. This film is a decent comedy and an above average friendship-comedy, but it falls short of being an exceptional or noteworthy romantic-comedy.

"On the Pleasure Train to Blenheim Palace": A Review on the Pleasure Gardens at Blenheim Palace

Located 30 minutes away (via bus) from Oxford in Woodstock sits Blenheim Palace, a monumental country house and a certified World Heritage site owned by the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Blenheim Palace is known and advertised to be the birthplace of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Designed in the English Baroque style by Sir John Vanbraugh in the 1720s, Blenheim Palace stands today as a historical monument of past grandeur with its extensive garden grounds as an evident aesthetic strength. For the purpose of optimizing time and content, I purchased the £8 concession ticket that allowed access to all the public gardens and the railway.

The Blenheim Park Railway and the miniature locomotive, tenderly named Sir Winston Churchill, seemed like a peculiar, inorganic addition to the older, historic palace grounds. Established in 1975 as a tourist attraction, the jarring modern quality of the train instantaneously draws a visitor away from the preserved Baroque atmosphere of the palace and its grounds. If not distracted by the novelty of riding a miniature train, a visitor might be forced into the realization that this monument to English architecture and horticulturist splendor has been transformed into a Disney-esque tourist attraction. However, the 10-minute train ride does provide a panoramic view of the grounds, which is essential for a visit to Blenheim.

This strained, yet whimsical juxtaposition of old and new continued to pervade the visit to the Pleasure Gardens. The first thought when entering the Pleasure Gardens was a speculation on how the word "gardens" was defined by the modern architects and horticulturists who designed the blueprints for the Pleasure Gardens. As a recent addition to the Blenheim grounds, the Pleasure Gardens seem to have been designed as an amusement park of tourist attractions, a corner of temporary diversion and profitability for those who find trees and lakes rather "boring." In fact, an older woman approached me, sensing that I was a person with reasonable sensibility or observed that I owned a map of the grounds and asked if I knew where the "actual" gardens were. We both concluded that there were no "gardens" at the Pleasure Gardens.

The Pleasure Gardens is primarily composed of the Butterfly House and the Marlborough Maze. The Butterfly House is a temperature-controlled greenhouse containing butterflies and plants native to their environment. As an aesthetic piece, the Butterfly House is a deceptively plain and homely room containing a number of exotic plants with no butterflies in sight. However, the beauty of the Butterfly House only exists through the same lens and attention to detail as those who admire Pointillism. In Pointillism, the realization of its innovation lies within the moment of epiphany when the viewer realizes that the detailed painting is actually composed of irrelevant tiny dots that create lines and color when placed close together. At the Butterfly House, the art is in the symbiotic unity of plant and butterfly in a form that is so undetectably natural. If a viewer doesn't actively search for a butterfly, its detail in the greater art scheme goes unnoticed.


The Marlborough Maze applies the same concept of Pointillism to its beauty, but observed through the reverse effect. The beauty of this piece relies not on the detail, like the Butterfly House has, but on the panoramic aerial view of the maze. From the ground view, the Marlborough Maze appears less magnificent than advertised on Blenheim's website. However, upon entering the maze, it is made evident that the Marlborough Maze contains an intricacy and complexity in its pathways. This delayed gratification of awe emphasizes the value of the piece as more than just aesthetic or visual, but also as temporal. The aerial view of the maze displays the symmetrical design of the piece, which simplifies and complicates the experience of getting lost within the maze.

As I walked away from the Pleasure Garden after hours, the juxtaposition of the modern aesthetic and the ungroomed countryside seemed less like an imposition of mass-produced entertainment and more like the inevitable union of old and new artifacts in a changing world.

All photographs are copyrighted to Lucas Loredo.

'Ghost Trees' Transforms the City of Dreaming Spires

The lawn in front of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History stands out from the usual sights of Oxford’s stone academic landscape, though not just because the grass is open to the muddying tread of passers-by. The lawn is covered with the massive trunks of rainforest trees.

Oxford alumna Angela Palmer’s environmental art exhibition Ghost Forest, currently on display in front of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, consists of ten imposing tree trunks situated on irregularly oriented concrete platforms. Palmer calls the trunks ‘ambassadors’ for all rainforest trees facing the threat of deforestation. She deliberately selected trees from Ghana because of the country’s progressive laws towards the timber industry—only three of the tree trunks were felled by an axe; the others by natural means. In consequence, Ghost Trees offers a balanced message of dire warning and hope. True to their title as ‘ambassadors’, the trees have already had an impressive history of exposure through installations in London’s Trafalgar Square (November 2009) and Copenhagen (December 2009).

Now ten months into its twelve-month residency in Oxford, Ghost Trees seems to have grown roots in this community. On a sunny Monday afternoon tourists and local residents wander through the collection like a sculpture garden, taking photos or eating a late lunch in the shade of a six-foot tall root network. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, Palmer’s design reinforces that the exhibition is not a substitute for the community park. Polite signs remind visitors, and their children, that the tree trunks are not to be climbed on like jungle gyms. Informational plaques demand the respect for knowledge that one would more likely expect inside the Museum of Natural History than on its front lawn.

Overall, Ghost Trees evokes an atmosphere that is more like a cemetery than either a park or a museum. While the baroque coils of roots suggest life and energy, the dry and weathered texture of the wood affirms that every one of these magnificent trees is dead. The large rectangular plinths that the trunks rest on are distinctly monumental. Their haphazard orientation elaborates the cemetery metaphor, suggesting how deforestation constitutes a massacre that is both quick and indiscriminate. Through this lens the plaques for each tree read like obituaries—sober yet ‘humanizing’. Palmer endeavours to personalize each tree by focusing on the etymological origin of the species name, when possible. She also includes narrative anecdotes about the trials of transportation for particular trees. These ‘obituaries’ always end with a list of common cultural uses for that particular wood. Poetic coincidence or no, the wood from a surprising number of these trees is frequently used to build coffins.

Palmer’s exhibition runs the risk of being too straightforward. The aesthetics are largely conventional; the methods—put something on a pedestal and call it art—familiar. Ultimately the trees are transported, not transformed. The crowning glory of Ghost Trees is not its concept, as it is easily uprooted from London to Copenhagen, but rather the fortune that has ended up here, in Oxford. The organic, sculptural curves of the roots and bark stand in elegant contrast to the intricately-hewn masonry of museums, colleges, and libraries. Liberated roots reach towards the sky like a superior order of Oxford’s dreaming spires. The architecture of nature asserts itself over the architecture of humankind.

Instead of feeling overwhelmingly morbid or artistically pretentious, Ghost Trees feels right at home in a city where cryptic churches and moss-covered graveyards are casually integrated parts of history. However, this particular cemetery is not emblem of the past but rather the present and the future.

Four Weddings and a Few Bumps in the Road...

The title of this blog post sums up the story of the film, Four Weddings and a Funeral, directed by Mike Newell, starring Hugh Grant, John Hannah, and Andie MacDowell. This film takes 74th place in Time Out London’s list of 100 Best British Films (www.timeout.com), and as someone completely ignorant to the spectrum of British films in existence, I think it is worth this recognition. Four Weddings and a Funeral is not the typical romantic comedy, despite that Hugh Grant plays a starring role. Rather, this film uses romance and comedy as vehicles for revealing the often-sad truths of life, in an ironically optimistic way. What’s more, this film seems to be as British as they come. It combines a lighthearted attitude (that some may interpret as too “Hollywood”) with the European film attitude of “Life’s imperfections are what make it beautiful.”

Four Weddings and a Funeral presents a touching combination of humor and despair to which the average person can relate. It combines family, friendship, love – both reciprocated and unrequited, heartbreak, and death. But instead of solely focusing on these topics through the romantic relationship of Hugh Grant’s character, Charlie, and his opposite, Fiona, the film also explores these topics through friendship and family. For example, the relationship between Charlie and his deaf brother is particularly striking for a few reasons: it is a true example of undying love, and it portrays Charlie’s brother’s deafness as mundane and often humorous. Along those lines, this film does a remarkable job of finding humor in the most difficult parts of life, while at the same time honoring them for being difficult.

The quintessential British-ness of this film was most evident in its comedy and was enhanced by the presence of the starring American outsider, Fiona. Unlike American comedy, which tends to be full of ridiculous punch lines, Four Weddings and a Funeral is funny because it doesn’t try too hard. As we say in improv, be obvious and the comedy will follow. This film completely resonates with that improv maxim because it is obvious and everyone can relate to it: everyone has been late and rushed to get out the door, everyone has danced like a fool, everyone has that one crazy friend, everyone falls in love, everyone has experienced loss, and so on. Adding the contrasting American outsider, Fiona, enhances this beautiful, often wacky, British-ness because she finds it attractive. What tops things off is the fact that this cool, independent American winds up falling in love with English charm, love, and friendship. Fiona’s move underscores an overarching message of the film that the people we love keep us grounded and help us finds the laughter in life.

In short, watch this film if you are looking for a romantic comedy with depth. It will make you laugh, but it will also make you cry if you want it to. Personally, I appreciated the contrast between my laughter and tears because it reinforced for me the idea that laughter and tears can express quite similar emotions. They each aid in emotional catharsis: when we have had enough of one, we often find our way to the other. Four Weddings and a Funeral is an honest film that does exactly what it tries to do. It shows us real life and helps us laugh about it.

The 39 Steps - A Comedy?

On April 25, I saw a theatrical adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s film, The 39 Steps. The play was very different from the film itself, though it did follow the plotline fairly rigorously. While the film was made in a very serious, suspenseful style, the performance I attended took Hitchcock’s work and turned it into a comedy. The overall effect was that the play relied more on slapstick humor than suspense; comedy seemed to be its main artistic goal.

Given that the goal of the performance was to entertain the audience and make us laugh, the play was successful in achieving its goals. I noticed that the skill of the actors and theater technical team in certain aspects resulted in this success. The actors’ creative use of movement played a major part in making the performance a hit. In a scene in which the actors ride on the outside of a train, they tipped their hats, waving them back and forth on their heads to make it look like the wind was blowing in their faces. Similarly, the movements of the actors through doors, waterfalls, and other passages had to be mimed, as the stage was clearly not big enough to accommodate real houses or waterfalls. This became extremely funny when the actors would go through a series of seemingly never-ending entrances and exits, only to end up in the same place on stage. In the scene in which Annabella Schmidt dies, the actress moves in a very rigid, awkward manner with irregular timing to portray the subject of death lightheartedly and humorously.

The use of lighting and props in the performance was very effective. In scenes in which the police are chasing Mr. Hannay, the directors decided to pull down a sheer, red-colored curtain over the stage space and use paper cut-outs of people and models of airplanes behind the curtain to act out the scenes. This creative use of props not only made more efficient use of the stage space, but also conveyed the general idea of the chase better than if they had used actual actors. The opaque red color of the curtain gave the scene a sense of urgency and danger, as Mr. Hannay was running for his life across the terrain. The lighting in this scene, as in other instances, played a significant role in changing the mood and focus of the play. This made it very clear to the audience when the mood changed from lighthearted to darker.
With regards to acting, a total of four actors and actresses played all of the parts in the play, about 10 or so total characters. One man was Mr. Hannay; one woman played all the female roles; and two men played all the minor roles in the play. The two men sometimes had to play multiple roles at once, which, along with making their scenes very funny, made it interesting to watch how they switched characters so quickly yet still gave each character its own unique voice. The male and female lead, however, did not seem to be as skilled as the other two men. Some of the scenes between them felt unintentionally awkward.

Although I enjoyed the play as a piece of entertainment, I do not think that it was especially good in terms of artistic value. Clearly, the goal of the performance was to show the audience a good time and perform comedy. As far as their goals, the theater company definitely achieved them. However, despite achieving their goals, I still do not think that it was a good work of art because the goals they set were not high enough to reach any kind of meaningful artistic expression. The performance did not make me think or question myself in order to understand the value of the art being demonstrated. The satisfaction I felt from watching this play was immediate – there was no delay in gratification that I sometimes feel with more meaningful works of art. I would consider this play very successful entertainment, but I did not think it was impressive or substantial in terms of artistic value.

The Ashmolean Museum's "Art in China in the 1960s and 1970s" Exhibit

Mount Qixia (1961), Zhang Xinyu

September in the North (1963), Chao Mei

The Return of the Graduate (1977), Liu Xiu

Demurely situated in a warmly lit room of the Ashmolean Museum, the exhibit “Art in China in the 1960s and 1970s” is a testament to how propaganda art captures the eye at first glance, and then unsettles the mind for long after. Art in China in the 1960s and 1970s reclaimed the traditional ink landscapes of its earlier Qing predecessors to reflect and celebrate the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). While the exhibit reflects the Soviet art influence of the 1950s—socialist realism—in its heroic figure compositions, the nuances among the pieces express a movement of artistic rebellion.

The Ashmolean also directs the visitors’ attention from the human to the landscape through a juxtaposition of pieces, such as “The Return of the Graduate” and the more scenic “Mount Qixia.” In “The Return of the Graduate,” the female subject’s sentimentality is the focus of the piece. The exhibit later focuses on the landscape as the primary subject of the paintings, eventually eliminating the human as subject in pieces like Chao Mei’s “September in the North.” In the scenic “Mount Qixia” painting, the human is subsuming the scenery, a landscape of red forest without human subjects. The overwhelming presence of red leads the viewer to wonder whether the red forest’s foliage is composed of crowds of humans gathered to worship Mao.

Spatially, the Ashmolean creates tension by placing traditional works of Chinese ink landscapes on the opposite wall. By spatially contrasting two interpretations of landscape, the exhibit chronicles its historical role as muse and manipulation.

While the exhibit itself navigates through movements within subjects, the nuances within the propaganda art are not artistically transgressive. Expressed through the communal art style and subject matter, individual authorship was discouraged and the art of this period was a collaborative enterprise. The very nature of art lies in the expression of the individual through aesthetic means. Therefore, these expressive limitations inevitably manifest a tension from what is said and what desires to be said. Ultimately, this tension is the underlining soul of the art in China in the 1960s and 1970s and this Ashmolean exhibit.