Polish Wedding (1998)

I can't claim to know anything specific about Polish culture or Polish-American culture and I'd assume the slating "Polish Wedding" has got, particularly from Poles, is something akin to how some Irish people view Hollywood films about Irish-American families. Some of it is understandable (ever watch "Far and Away" without cringing?) but most times I think critics read too much into the context and not enough into the film itself.As an outsider, "Polish Wedding" comes across as a film about white working-class Americans. I can see parallels with some of my own relations - an American community that uses the glue of their shared ethnic origin to bind themselves together. In the film's case, that happens to be Polish and there is an authentic ring to the hothouse bonds of a large family with Catholicism always present in the background.However, despite its very American setting, "Polish Wedding" is far more European in structure and storyline, a record of ordinary events about ordinary people who don't have heroic aspirations and who adapt the best they can to whatever life throws up. In a way, it's almost like reality TV, a chance to peek into the lives of others without having any influence on the outcome.While not as intense as classics in that tradition like the "Three Colours" trilogy, it is an interesting take on a theme that has rarely been examined by Hollywood and has enough inter-personal emotion to compensate for the lack of complexity in the story.

This movie is highly entertaining with unpredictable, character-driven, plot twists that pull you in like the smell of comfort food cooking in the kitchen. The story itself is a grand view into the mundane working world of fighting, resentments, loyalty and ultimate forgiveness, of a large Polish family all living together in the same house.Mother and daughter are powerful and attractive and the men alternately ignore them, wait for them, and chase after them. The matriarch of the family is romantically unfulfilled but finds meaning and purpose in the context of her family and children. The daughter is growing into adulthood and recognizing her feminine power in the context of a budding relationship but, like her mother before her, ultimately trapped. The members of this emotional but practical Polish immigrant family don't live life, life lives them. The characters and performances make this movie well worth watching.

If you have a sense of humor and are over the age of 30 you'll probably understand and love this film as much as I did. It'd be hard to beat the quality of the cast unless one was filming a movie about American football or Kabuki theatre, and the script lives up to their quality.Gabriel Byrne is excellent as a hard-working Polish father who finds refuge from his family in his bakery. Lena Olin is perfect as the beautiful mother with five children who makes one last desperate and menopausal escape attempt from what she sees as her Catholic prison sentence. Claire Danes is their funny, chaotic, excessively hormonal and headstrong daughter who sets out to lose her virginity just as she is selected to lead the community's Catholic procession as the Virgin Mary. The rest of the cast has earned accolades in other works and they're equally credible here. All of the characters somehow succeed in winning the viewer's affection, and all of them are human. There's a pleasant craft about this film along with a pleasing and sardonic sense of humor. I've seen it three times now over several years, and it always draws me in.

I've just seen this movie. Polish Wedding was widely discussed in the Polish media and was regarded very controversial because of the way it described Polish society in America. I have some thoughts about it: 1. Movie misses a plot. It consists of several scenes that loosely linked. 2. Writer seems to have very faint knowledge about Polish culture and Poles. Poles don't eat pierogis every day on every meal :-) They don't smoke more than other nationalities. Music seemed to be rather Balkan. There are many Polish names but I don't recognize many Polish features and it completely misses Polish family atmosphere. 3. People kneeling before Hala crowned with garland. What was that? Does Teresa Conelly think that Poles recognized in her Virgin Mary? It's totally stupid scene.