This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Past Revived
Plot Overview
In the halcyon hippie "time of the flower power" Donna Sheridan
(Meryl Streep) ventured to the small Greek island of Kalokairi with
New Yorker Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan) who claimed he loved
her. He had to return to the states to clear up some unfinished
business—he was engaged—and they lost touch. She went
traipsing on the rebound with Swede Bill Anderson (Stellan
Skarsgård) who took advantage of her vulnerability. Then high
from performing a gig with her girl band, the “stupid
reckless slut” did it again with Brit Harry “Head
Banger” Bright (Colin Firth). When she fell pregnant, her
mother laid a trip of “Catholic guilt” on her and
abandoned her. She raised her daughter alone—no small
feat—after applying a small inheritance to a tourist hotel on
the island, which she runs.
Now mostly grown up twenty-year-old Sophie
Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) has captured the heart of ("You turned
my world upside down") Sky (Dominic Cooper) and they want to get
married. In Greece you can have either a secular or a religious
ceremony; you don't need both. The secular one takes about three
minutes and the religious one runs from 45 minutes to an hour, what
with all the Orthodox liturgy. Sky wants the former of "blue jeans
& beer," but Sophie has prevailed for the latter to better bond
with her mom and for that matter with the whole community who will
attend. She intends to stick around after the honeymoon to
help her mother. While "ransacking some old trunk" she
discovers her mom's diary that gives the particulars of the three
men who could be her father. She writes them invitations in the
name of her mom on false pretenses hoping to recognize her dad and
get him to give her away.
Sam and Harry
hop some planes and arrive by taxi at the dock
(“Bugger!”) just as the last ferry (“my
sentiments exactly”) has pulled out. They think
(“Bollocks!”) remarkably alike (“my sentiments
exactly.”) Bill arrives in his ketch and they three sail
together to the island on the wings of the wind. They entertain
themselves for the day or so waiting for the big
event—in real life the pre-wedding merriment lasts a week.
The girl is clueless which one is her dad, so they all three come
to the chapel thinking he's the one (“Better be a wide
aisle.”) Of course, she has only one dad, but he's here in
three persons. This is somewhat similar to the doctrine of the
Trinity in which there is but one God who exists in three Persons
(Father, Son and Holy Ghost.) It's a mystery. Both are. The priest
is thunderstruck. Orthodox weddings take so long because they
perform each piece of it three times in honor of the Holy Trinity.
But usually they don't have a three-person father to give away the
bride. They'll have to trim it down further to fit it all into
movie time, take out more non-essentials, but did they have to skip
over the vows before the pronouncement and the kiss? Not to
worry. In Orthodox weddings there are no vows exchanged; instead,
the parties make promises to God. The three men are honored each to
be a third of a father here. That solves the mystery mathematically,
but not biologically, to say nothing of theologically.
Ideology
In the olden days long ago, people
dwelt in small villages and no one traveled very far his whole
life. They all attended and witnessed a village wedding. When towns
grew into cities and distant travel became possible, another
provision had to be made for witnesses of who belonged to whom.
They largely settled on two official witnesses of record, as also
the Bible recommends (Isaiah 8:1-2.)
According to Mathetes, ad 130, “Christians follow the customs of
their native lands in regard to marriage. … They obey all
the laws of their country.” In Greece for a religious
ceremony the best man & the maid of honor serve as the two
witnesses of record, being the most in the know. For a secular
wedding any two (adult) witnesses will do. Sky had “wanted to
take a boat to the mainland with a couple of witnesses.”
In fact if you don't have witnesses, they will be provided.
Not so in America. If you go to the courthouse to get hitched by the JP, you have to bring your own. They have a rule against providing them, as the witnesses would in that case be officers of the court, and the first amendment's establishment clause forbids the government from establishing a religion, marriage being, as Augustine put it, a domestic church.
Even though the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a football
coach leading his team in prayer on the field after the
game, there remain problems. When I was cleaning dorms at our
local, federally subsidized, university, we weren't allowed to do
campaigning or proselytizing during our work day. My mindful
supervisor wouldn't allow me to go on my lunch break to help
itinerant preacher Brother Jed field questions in the free speech
area. My office worker friend there would refrain from using his
lunch breaks to march with his daughter going by in her climate
change protests. Even if you could find a low level employee who is
not a sworn officer of the court, there would be problems using her
as a witness even off the clock. In that case there is a precedent
solution: in various times & places, non-freemen were assigned
a weighted percentage to their witness status. Say, based on my
three examples, such an employee were to be considered a third of
a witness on her lunch break. Just get three of them and you've got
a witness. It would be their honor. Nevertheless, it's
probably easier just to bring your own. To use a baseball
analogy from authoress Emily Nemens:
Ask any fan, and .he'll tell you there's something satisfyingly linear about baseball: three strikes, three outs. Four bases, nine innings. A lineup, for chrissake— [However,] Charting the line gets mighty complicated: there are so many men playing together, so many more behind the scenes, coaching and cajoling and sometimes sabotaging the game's progress, pulling the line until it goes bonkers, more like a dance chart than any sort of arrow. (5)
Baseball and weddings are straightforward … until they're not.
There's a part of the Orthodox
wedding where the priest is reading that the wife should fear her
husband, and during the recitation the bride comes and steps on the
foot of the groom telling him she won't be taken advantage of. In
this movie they move it out of the ceremony proper and take it to
a sing-along image where the chanteuse waiting for her ship to come
in pushes aside the captain of a steamer and takes over the wheel
from him, while her two female confederates play with the lever
telegraphing conflicting signals for speed to the engine room.
It being a given that the bride was sincere in her promise to honor
and obey her husband, this probably means that he was just being
too overbearing in such and such a situation. Using a
competitive race analogy the apostle Paul enjoins (1Cor. 9:24-25) “that they which run
in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize. So run, that ye may
obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in
all things.” To have a prize-winning marriage, a man can't be
too heavy-handed with his wife, eh.
Production Values
“” (2008) was directed by Phyllida Lloyd. It was written by Catherine Johnson, Melvin Frank and Sheldon Keller. It stars Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Amanda Seyfried. The singing and acting were great.
MPA rated it PG–13 for some sex-related comments. It was filmed on location in Skopelos, Greece. The cinematography was splendid and the Greek locations bright, stunning, and wondrous. The costumes were for the most part lovely, as well. The still shots of the once hippie lovers now turned straight were a laugh in themselves. The film was cheesy laying it on a bit thick, but I didn't mind.
Extensive liberties were taken with an Orthodox Christian wedding, but that's show biz. The optics were Catholic, however, putting the viewers more at ease in a church setting they'd be used to from many Catholic depictions common in movies. The priest was demonstrably bald but Orthodox priests wear a stiff, conical black hat called a kamilavka. They also cross themselves in the opposite direction from Catholics, and western crosses are straight without the bulbous projections. But it is what it is.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The movie did a good job of depicting the sad consequence of a girl not knowing who her father was from her parents' free love hippie days and the mom having the onerous task of raising her all alone. However, its overall tone was upbeat. There are some extras one can sing along to. It's a righteous musical.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done dance action flick. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Five stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Mathetes, Epistle to Diognetus 5. Quoted in Ken Johnson, Th.D. Ancient Church Fathers. Copyright 2010 by Ken Johnson, Th.D. USA.
Nemens, Emily. The Cactus League. Copyright © 2020 by Emily Nemens. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, First edition 2020. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org