jphill-13869
As a 70 year old women watching this film "112 Weddings" I loved the whole concept, But was feeling so sad that almost none of these couples will ever make it past the Dreaded 20 years. Would love hearing about them again after they have been with each other for over 25 years. The best time in a marriage was the first couple of years and Then again after the kids are gown and you discover you have really done a good job Of teaching them to be parts of the next generation of loving people. Our whole group of family and friends are looking at being married for over 45 years And the best part has been now.......I hope some of these couples will make it to this next step in life. Knowing you have someone who loves you unconditionally, and that you actually like Being with your partner is a really awesome feeling....
ngruber-1
I think the idea, the core concept to take all this footage and turn it into a doc was pretty good but ultimately Block's editing doesn't elevate the material. The sum is not greater than its parts. It's a mishmash of old wedding footage and more or less not very compelling interviews. We spent precious little time on the weddings themselves so the effect was diluted and ultimately we weren't invested in any one story. Block got some people to talk about their marriage HE also didn't manage to get too much out of his subject so as a viewer we feel we are watching a very self censored interview. This is really the challenge of shooting a doc without a script...and it's obvious Block had no script.
l_rawjalaurence
Filmmaker Doug Block has spent his life making documentary films, with a sideline of making videos of people's weddings. In this retrospective film he looks back at some of the 112 weddings he has filmed, to see how the married couples have fared after their nuptials have taken place.He interviews several couples, most of whom got married in the New York City region - one ceremony took place in Montana. They talk frankly about the stresses and strains of their relationships, and how they managed - or did not manage to stay together. It would be invidious to describe each marriage one by one, but what emerges most tangibly from the film is the willingness each couple have to describe the bad as well as the good aspects of their relationships. Block's camera seldom moves, but the interviewees eventually tell their innermost secrets, even though it is obviously painful to do so. One couple are particularly frank about their difficulties in dealing with their three-year-old daughter's experience of chemotherapy.Some marriages are inevitably more successful than others. Perhaps the saddest experience is of one wife who discovered after nineteen years and three children that her husband was having an affair. The distress on her face is evident as she realizes she has been deceived, and that she has not been able to satisfy her spouse. As narrator, Block wonders why couples enter into marriage, given the fact that it is so difficult to sustain over a lifetime.The film ends with a recent marriage of a couple, both of whom look forward to a life of bliss. Block understands this this will never happen, but realizes at the same time how marriage provides some kind of a bulwark against the vicissitudes of life; this is why couples still enter into it. 112 WEDDINGS leaves us feeling a little ambivalent about the sanctity of marriage, but still reminds us of its enduring popularity.The only criticism that might be leveled at this film is that all the interviewees are white; the subject-matter might have been more suggestive if Block had included the experiences of couples from different cultures and/or ethnicities.
