Four Weddings and a Funeral – 1994
Any time you have a movie that can combine laughter and tears in a deeply emotional way, you have something special. This movie had moments in which I was laughing out loud, and moments when I was in a puddle of tears. The movie’s title is very indicative of the narrative structure of the film. There are, in fact, 4 weddings, and 1 funeral. The weddings were fun and frothy, and the funeral was powerful and emotional.
Hugh Grant plays Charles, a man who is described as a serial monogamist. He goes out with woman after woman, searching for his one true love, but never finding her. He has a tight and incredibly close group of friends that love him dearly. Tom, Gareth, Matthew, Fiona, David, and Scarlett, played respectively by James Fleet, Simon Callow, John Hannah, Kristin Scott Thomas, David Bower, and Charlotte Coleman.
Charlie feels that he is destined to always be at weddings and never in them, that is… until wedding #1. Her name is Carrie, played by Andie MacDowell. She is pretty and bright, American, and willing to jump into bed for a fun romp if the mood takes her. Charlie is the best man, at the wedding, and the two hit it off right away. But by the time the next morning arrives, he finds that his lightning bolt has struck, and he is in love, though she has to go back to America.
Wedding #2 arrives and is full of funny shenanigans, like Charlie being seated at a table full of his ex-girlfriends who discuss the difficulties of dating him as if he wasn’t at the table with them. Or Charlie being trapped in a room in which the newlywed couple, Lydia and Bernard, played by Sophie Thompson and David Haig, are having loud, wild, passionate sex. Again, he runs into Carrie, and despite the fact that she is engaged to be married to a Scotsman, the two sleep with each other again.
This leads us into wedding #3 between Carrie and Sir Hamish Banks, played by Corin Redgrave. Charlie is miserable as he sees his one true love saying her vows to another man. And it is also clear that Carrie is unsure about the vows she is taking. Everyone else has a lot of fun, though unfortunately, Gareth has too much fun, and ends up dying of a heart attack.
This leads us to the funeral. Here is where I lost control and openly wept for the characters on the screen. You see, Gareth and Matthew had been lovers who were deeply in love with each other. John Hannah, who played Matthew was a young and relatively unknown actor at the time, but the eulogy he gave was perfectly delivered. His dramatic timing was spot-on. He stayed right on the edge of tears until the very end of the speech, and only letting his voice crack half way through reading the beautifully sad and emotional poem Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden.
Finally, wedding #4 comes when Charlie decides to give up on love and, out of fear of being alone, marry one of his ex-girlfriends, Henrietta, played by Anna Chancellor. But everything is thrown into chaos when Carrie arrives right before the wedding and tells Charlie that her marriage didn’t work out, and that she is once again a free woman. Charlie, with David’s help, gets out of the wedding, though he receives a black eye to show for it. The movie ends as he and Carrie meet and declare their love for each other. Happy ending!
I don’t generally like to turn my reviews into a synopsis of the plot, but this one had such a well-put-together story that I couldn’t help it. And it is that neat and tidy story that was the real star of the film. Sure, our main stars, Grant and MacDowell, were both good, and they were both overshadowed by the joyous performance by Simon Callow and John Hannah’s emotional speech at his funeral, but it was really the great script by screenwriter Richard Curtis that stole the show.
I also have to make mention of Kristin Scott Thomas’s wonderful performance. She had her own little dramatic scene in which she admits to having been in love with Charlie ever since she met him. It was a serious and heartfelt moment in the midst of a chaotic sequence that was very touching and well-played. Fiona was perfect as she told Charlie of her unrequited love, letting him know that she was quite aware that he would never love her in return. The mature and gentle way in which the scene was handled made it special and memorable, just like the entirety of the film.
And as an afterthought, as the credits are about to start rolling, it is shown how everybody else eventually gets married to people they met over the course of the film… well, almost. As a last joke, Fiona is shown getting married to Prince Charles. Her image has obviously been superimposed into a photograph with the future King of England, making it even funnier. The entire movie was both fun and endearing from beginning to end with each of Charlie’s friends having their own little dramatic moments as they try to understand life and love in their own ways.