Half Bride

The award season is over and new movies will be released in the following weeks. In the meantime, while I keep on waiting to catch The Italian (2005), I decided to recommend two DVD options : The Syrian Bride (2005) and Half Nelson (2006). Enjoy!

The Syrian Bride (2005)
Although not exactly like My Big Fat Greek Wedding or Father of the Bride, The Syrian Bride is like these films in that it is built around the same, universally magnetic moment: the wedding day. The difference here is that this wedding odyssey is not based primarily on personal/cultural factors, but rather is deeply rooted in political and historical antecedent. Mona and Tallel share the same culture, Syrian, and live a couple of miles apart; but she, Mona, comes from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights while Tallel waits to marry her at the Syrian side of the Israel-Syria border. Because of Israeli and Syrian laws, as soon as Mona crosses the border, she can never return.
I watched The Syrian Bride and the film Babel (2006) on the same day, and my conclusion is that both have similar objectives: to portray the human miscommunications and misunderstandings of our world. Nevertheless, Babel had to intertwine multiple extreme situations around the globe to capture part of this feeling; The Syrian Bride was able to convey a more personal, deeper, and wider reflection of the same problem in a small story of a family in a small village – that is simply brilliant. Highly recommended!

Half Nelson (2006)
Months ago, when I saw Half Nelson's trailer at a movie theater (E Street Cinema), I really was not so excited to see it. The plot didn’t seem particularly innovative from what I’d heard (inner-city white teacher struggling to make a difference in the lives of his students in the heart of Brooklyn while balancing his own drug addiction problems). Fortunately, not everyone thought like me, and last week the film received nods for best male and female lead at the Independent Spirits Awards. This is a small, independent film that focuses on the contradictory nature of life -- how people can actually help others and simultaneously find themselves being helped. Novel, insightful portrayals of the film’s main characters and its almost artsy documentary-style filmmaking, as well as great acting by Ryan Gosling, makes this movie a great choice if you are up for a psychological drama.