Be prepared to see DJIN WEDDING multiple times. I say that as someone who was incredibly mixed on the film the first time through. I was watching the film and for a while it felt like a well-made art-house film that wasn’t going to do much. And then stuff started to happen, and the characters got to flex their personalities and what seemed to be conventional art house musings became something more. As the film moved towards its conclusion, I realized that I was going to need to see the film again because what I was seeing in the final sections altered what I felt about the early portions. If I had known what where this was going, I would have had a very different experience.
Nominally the film tells the story of four siblings over the course of a span of years. As the film opens, they are moving into a house that was seized by the government and given to them. Their mother dies and then things happen. Time shifts. When the film picks up everyone is coming together for the wedding of the sister. The older brother is coming home, and the young two boys are drifting. What happens is the film. It is not a tale that you will full expect since the paths of the siblings is not what we typically see. The older son could get away because he was the first born, the sister has little choice but to marry. The young boys are bound with one taking care of the other who has special needs. It is not shiny happy bunny smiles. I was quietly dragged until I was pitched off a cliff.
This is more like a novel than a film. It is also one of the truly rare films, mainstream or art house, that absolutely insists on going its own way and completely trusting its audience will go with it. It doesn’t lean into cliché or well-worn tropes; it just tells its story at its own pace.
One of the highest pieces of praise I can give the film is to say, you have to stay with this because where it ends up and how it ends up is not what you expect at the start. This is a film that is exactly what we want from all of the films we see something that isn’t like anything we’ve seen before.
I don’t know what more to say, other than I want to see it again. I’ve only seen it once, but I know I need a revisit, but I have to wait until I can find the film to sit with it again and once more give it my full attention.
Highly recommended.
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