My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

Watched ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ (2002) on Netflix.

About a Greek family living in Chicago, with some light-veined Greek cultural chauvinism and the family fuss about Greek weddings.

All throughout, I was reminded of our own Indian society - close knit families, the pressure on daughters to get married at the right age and have children at the right age, the entire family’s involvement in the marriage starting from election of the bride or groom, to the details of the ceremony, the insistence on marrying not just within religion but also within the ethnic group, cultural chauvinism in general, loud aunties and uncles and so on…

Fotoula Portokalos or Toula is a Greek woman living with her family in Chicago, still unmarried at 30, taking care of her family restaurant.

When she wishes to go to college to learn computers, her father is reluctant to let her go and her mother has to convince him to approve.

When she chooses to marry Ian, an Anglo-Saxon, not Greek, father Gus is upset. Moreover Ian is vegetarian.

It is not enough that Ian is Christian, he has to to be baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church for the father to bless them whole heartedly.

Toula’s grandmother, a ripe old widow in black is still raving about Turkey, the enemy of Greeks and will not reconcile herself to the truth that Greek and Turkey are now friends. 

Years after the weeding, Toula’s daughter too must go to a Greek school…

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A sleeper hit, the film became the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time, despite never reaching number one at the box office during its release. It was the highest-grossing film with that distinction for 14 years until the animated film Sing in 2016.

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And there’s plenty of Greek pride and cultural chauvinism and jingoism from Gus, the patriarch of the family.

‘Name 3 things that the Greeks did first... Astronomy, philosophy and democracy’

‘Give me any word and I will show you the root of that word is Greek’

‘Arachnophobia’

‘Arachna is spider in Greek’

‘What about Kimono?’

‘Greek word cheimonas means winter. So what you wear in wintertime to stay warm? A robe. Kimono’

‘There are two kinds of people. Greeks, and everybody else who wish they were Greek’

‘The Greeks invented pottery’

‘It's your lucky day to be baptized in the Greek Orthodox church. Nikki is going to be your Godmother. You know baptism comes from the Greek word baftisia. That's where we dip the baby in a beautiful little silver basin’

‘Greek women. We may be lambs in the kitchen but we are tigers in the bedroom’

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Loved the opening score

The movie doesn't explain why a good looking young man who could have any woman he wanted, fell in love with a shoddy rather old looking waitress? Irksome. 

Woman greets a boy, hugs, and mock spits on him thrice. Loudly. Thu thu thu. Its for good luck. Keeps the devil away. 

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Lines noted…

‘Nice Greek girls are supposed to do 3 things in life. Marry Greek boy, make Greek babies and feed everyone until the day we die’

‘The Greeks and the Turks are friends now... We told my grandmother the war was over. But she still slept with a knife under her pillow’

‘My brother has two jobs. To cook and to marry a Greek virgin’

‘The priest is coming to bless the new house’

‘My cousins have two volumes. Loud and louder’

(Man is the head of the house says Toula crying. Toula's mother consoling her that she will convince her dad to let her go to college)

‘Let me tell you one thing. Man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head anywhere she wants’

‘Waitress?’

‘Seating hostess, actually’

‘I was frump girl’

Frump - an unattractive woman who wears dowdy old-fashioned clothes

‘So for Happy Easter, we say Khristos Anestri. Then the other person says back, Alithos Anestri’

‘Don't let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become’

‘It's a bundt’

‘Greeks marry Greeks.... No one in my family has gone out with a non Greek before’

‘Didn't I say it's a mistake to educate women? But nobody listened to me. Now we have a boyfriend in the house. Is he a nice Greek boy? No, he's a xeno with long hair on his head’

#westerncinema