Posted by Of late, marriage as a concept has started to intrigue me. Being married for over three years now, I now experience its intricacies and intimacies more closely after all the hullabaloo of the wedding and the honeymoon period is over. You witness marriage as a thread that binds two individuals. Depending on the situations, the words exchanged or the external factors blasted on the relationship, the thread changes its tenacity. It is in the variance of these factors and their impact that I am increasingly drawn to stories of marriage on screen.
Every film or series I watch is like exploring a new world and new dynamics. Noam Baumbach directed Marriage Story was probably the first to draw me. It was released almost 3 years before my wedding in 2022, yet, the roundabout manner in which the characters chose and unchose themselves was fascinating. You realise there is never really a clean break in a marriage. There are residual emotions, memories and nostalgia present. No matter how good or bad the ending was. Scarlet Johnson’s throbbing neck veins and snot-filled eyes as she shouted at Adam Driver, holding him accountable for years of gaslighting and selfishness, still holds a place in my mind. Driver going down on his knees, clutching her legs to say, ‘I am sorry’, while she rubs his back, knowing he will forever regret saying, ‘I wish you were dead’. This is another raw reality of marriage. You almost always know the impact your harsh words are going to have on you and your partner.
Choosing and unchoosing and yet never being able to give up, is another facet of marriage that was beautifully captured in Hagai Levi’s Scenes from a Marriage. Jessica Chastain and Oscar Issac, during their marriage, chose different careers, different partners and sometimes even opened their marriage, but an invisible string always seems to draw them closer. However, the threads were never strong enough to bind them in the rigid confines of marriage. In a way, it depicts chaotic trysts of uncertainties that never resolve but somehow bind them. Their daughter is rarely shown as a the sole binding factor in their marriage. A stark deviation from divorce-woe dramas.
Recently released, The Roses, in its morbid humour and drama, shows sacrifice, support and disrespect guised as love. Yet, all these are still not enough to hold Oliver Coleman and Benedict Cumberbatch’s marriage. During divorce, they fret over tiny details, with ego being the guiding factor. In fact, the ego is assumed to be the strongest wind firing their sails of divorce negotiations. They push each other to the brink of death, but never really have the courage to make the final shove off the cliff. Those invisible threads again seem to be at play here. Another unanswerable ploy of how marriages bind people.
While most of these movies and series talk post-marriage, Celine Song’s The Materialists blatantly calls marriage a business exchange. She is not wrong. When I see my close female friends try to find a partner, I see how woefully less the other party brings to the table. It also questions the whole institution of marriage, its wicked bias for uplifting men while sacrificing and erasing the identities of women at the altar.
I now see marriages as icebergs. The tip is composed of the aesthetic pictures you frame on your wall and share on your Instagram. Below it, are the giggles and smiles you share in the intimacy of your walls on days when stress or relatives does not disrupt your days. Then, just above the water, are recurrent fights you have. The never-ending ones that never lead to a solution, but constantly badger you. These are the ones that form the dents and crevices on the iceberg. When they get too intense, they can cut off the tip. And then, below the water lies the unspoken, unheard and unwritten bits of marriage. They rarely come up unless a current topples it. But they exist and in some ways form the base of the iceberg. It maintains its buoyancy, its tenacity, making marriage an iceberg that learns to live on a bed of discontent but one that helps you build something sweet out of it.