breaking the Hollywood machine

My Brother's Wedding (1983)

Whenever nonprofessional actors are cast in films, they give such compelling performances that people are surprised they never received formal training or had prior experience. This is not the case with My Brother's Wedding. The line delivery is often stilted, mechanical. But this is not to the film's detriment, quite the contrary. As a film outside of mainstream Hollywood, it is layered, uninhibited, and radically authentic.

Pierce Mundy (Silas Everett) lives with his parents and works at their dry cleaners. At 30 he has no grand aspirations. His older brother is a lawyer with a snooty fiance who comes from money. Pierce does not hide his contempt even from the fiance herself. He's sick of hearing about her charmed upbringing where she never had to work or struggle for anything.

Pierce will be the best man at his brother's wedding. Of course he wants nothing at all to do with any of it. Indeed, why would his brother choose him to be best man at all when they aren't close and Pierce is the black sheep of the family?

The person Pierce is loyal to is his best friend Soldier who just got out of jail. He goes around town trying to find a job for him with no luck. One of his prospective employers has this to say:

"That's one fella they should keep in jail till he rot."

It's unclear why Pierce has such unwavering loyalty to Soldier. There's a moment that bluntly veers into sexual assault when Pierce arranges for Soldier to have a tryst at the dry cleaners. The woman resists Soldier's violent advances before finally succumbing to them. This is the man Pierce treats like his actual brother. Pierce does tell Soldier’s long suffering mother that the two of them are a lot alike. Soldier hasn’t ever sold dope or done anything evil. Like Pierce, he’s just someone without ambition, who is sort of aimless. That isn’t a crime.

My Brother's Wedding is a rich portrayal of life in a South Central Los Angeles neighborhood. A lot of the buildings are run down and it's clearly poor/working class. The people though, are vibrant, and never does the film veer into a spectacle of poverty or violence. It feels incredibly alive, perhaps because it's neither glossy nor embellished.

I watched a film called Yakuza Princess which had some of my favorite cinematic things: violence and neon drenched cityscapes. The story and characters were so hollow though. Despite that movie's sleek cool, it didn't grab hold of my attention like My Brother's Wedding. The relationships Pierce has with his family, Soldier, and neighbors are just more compelling.

My favorite character is a young girl with a crush on Pierce. Sassy but shy, she asks Pierce to take her to prom, though that’s still a few years away.

There’s one scene that feels true to my own life: Pierce is sent to a neighbor’s house for one of his mother’s pots. My mother’s always lending hers to family members.

This film reminds me of race films of the 1930s and '40s. The acting was oftentimes just as stiff and mechanical. With the exception of pioneering filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, there isn't much to recommend these films. My Brother's Wedding may not be as dramatic as Micheaux's stories, but it is similarly groundbreaking. The specter of racism doesn't loom overhead, but tragedy does shatter the relative quiet. It's essentially a slice of life which is really rare in Black film. Of course the films with tragic storylines are necessary, but the more lighthearted ones offer a well-rounded portrait of Black life. After all, trauma doesn’t usually have the last word. Or else it co-exists with joy.

I would like to see more films like this today. No embellishments or grand overtures, just warmth and profound simplicity.