March 5, 2006

Good as Gold[ing]

Tonight is the Academy Awards, and I'm thinking about a wonderful film made by Fred Golding for MSNBC. It's called Love and Marriage, and it follows four couples over a year's time...exploring the dynamics of love and marriage...what makes them work; what makes them fall apart.

There are many extraordinary aspects of the film (which was shown as three one-hour segments). You really got to have a sense of these couples. The filming and editing were so brilliant that even by spending a relatively short time with each of them, you got to know them and you got to understand how they got where they are and - probably - where they were going.

But, for me, there were two aspects that really stood out.

The first was that Fred (who happens to be a good friend of mine) made the film very personal. Coming off a divorce himself, he put himself right into the movie. He narrates very personally throughout...we see him in therapy sessions, we see him interact with the four couples...and his presence adds a raw quality that makes the movie so much more real and immediate. Rather than get in the way of the couples' stories with his own, he amplifies them. As he is candid, they are candid.

It made me recognize again how important and powerful authenticity is in effective communications.

The second aspect that really stood out for me was that of the four couples - (one was a happily married midwest couple with four young children...one was a divorcing couple...one was a couple in which the woman is a high-powered executive and her writer husband is a stay-at-home dad...and one was two gay men with two African-American children) - the couple that, in my mind, most clearly had the healthiest relationship was the two gay men.

I do not think this was intentional. Nor do I believe that everyone would come to the same conclusion. But it does say something about the severe limitations of the prejudices our society holds on to...and the adviseability of letting them go.