A Wedding is a film by the legendary Robert Altman. It’s not generally considered to be one of his major works, but after watching it I’ve come to believe it’s quite underrated and deserves a place in the man’s first tier of work. Altman’s take on a wedding film is pretty similar to his sideways takes on other genres, in that it’s completely uninterested in what most films of the type would be interested in: the actual couple getting married. They’re supporting characters at best (and considering that the groom is played by Desi Arnaz Jr., that’s probably for the best). There’s less a plot than a ton of different threads, including unplanned pregnancies, several different levels of class tensions, all manner of secrets being exposed (most of which were pointlessly kept in the first place), and so on, all done with a dearth of sentiment. What surprised me about the movie was how funny it was–a lot of the humor is supplied by a squad of truly inept security officers, who among other things beat up the groom’s uncle and then assume he’s an impostor after seeing his ID, and of course allowing the main wedding gift to be stolen. Later there’s a speech by the lead security guy to the priest conducting the wedding about how he also took an oath of celibacy when he began his work. Really, though, there are so many ironic lines and barbs, it’s hard to just pick out a few. There’s so much going on in the movie and actually most of it lands, including a surprisingly resonant death of a minor character that caps the film. So I would readily recommend it.

And guess what, it’s also freely available on YouTube. Here‘s Part 1 of 10, if your Friday is going slowly. (Update: apparently embedding isn’t working, so click the prior link to check it out.)