#aliswedding

Ali’s Wedding is NOW STREAMING on SBS On Demand! 

This week during quarantine I had the opportunity to watch many movies. One of these movies was called, “Ali’s wedding”. This movie was all about the life of an Iraqi-born man growing up in Melbourne, Australia. This man goes through many hardships and jumps through many obstacles after he lies about his academics. By watching this film, I was able to learn a lot about the Iraqi culture, and their religious culture of Muslim. I was very intrigued by this movie because, of all the films I watched when looking at family dynamics, this culture was the one I knew least about.

Ali is one of three children; he had another older brother who suffered a tragic accident in Iran and passed away. He has a loving family with a stable mother and father. In this movie the parents play a very prominent role in Ali’s everyday decisions. They have a lot of say into what their children will do. Ali’s mother is very evidently more of a supporting role in the parenting duo. She is helpful and does most (if not all) of the chores around the house. She is a shoulder that they all lean on, but she is not the dominant one in the home. She is very well respected and is very kind, but she does not work, and she is not typically the one that her children go to when they need serious advice. When something is wrong, she is the one to fix it however, she does not seem to be the one that handles the big decisions. Ali’s father, like all of them, is very strong in his faith. Although they are all very religious, he is very clearly the most well practiced and loyal Muslim of them all. His father is not quick to anger and even says at one point “I wish I could raise my voice back at you but my religion doesn’t allow it”; with this being said he is a very mellow man who is guided by Allah in his everyday lifestyle. His father has very high standards and expects a lot out of all of his children. One thing he emphasized greatly was education. He was most proud of his son when he was well educated. Both Ali’s parents understand and emphasize the importance of marriage constantly throughout the movie; in fact his father says to Ali,  “no many is complete without a wife”.

These are some of the men/elders with in their religious community. The man in the center on the right is Ali’s father.

 As the movie continues his mother tries to set up Ali for marriage. There is one scene where she approaches him and asks what is most important to him in a wife, intelligence, appearance, or cleaning. She decides that she thinks cleaning will be the best quality to have. I thought this was very telling because in typical American culture this would have been found offensive to women however in this movie it is not frowned upon nor is it offensive in any way; it is just their normal way of life.  It is evident that his mother is not interested in what he is looking for in a wife. In fact, when he shows interest in another woman his mother makes it clear that she only wants him to marry an Iraqi woman who was born in Iraq like their own family. They wish to stay within their culture and in-group. This, I felt, was similar to many other cultures. Ali’s parents set him up to have tea with a woman; this tea ceremony is a way to propose the possibility of marriage. Because Ali is not aware of the traditional customs, he mistakenly finds himself engaged by the end of this tea ceremony without having had any say in the decision. It is clear that he does not want to go through with this but does not want to let his parents down. It is evident throughout this movie through scenes like that and many more that all Ali would like to do is please his parents and be a “good” Muslim. The parent’s approval means everything in this movie, and it appears as if this is common in this culture based on the other Muslim characters in the film as well.

The most interesting aspect I noticed in this film, that has differed greatly from what I have seen in the other movies I watched, was the women's’ unwavering desire to please the men. When Ali is having tea for the second time with his fiancé, they have a very interesting conversation. His fiancé when asked how many kids she wants says, “however many makes you happy”. As he purposefully makes up scenarios about their future together that make himself seem unappealing and unbearable, she responds with “as long as you are comfortable, I will be too” her joy is prided in his comfort and making him happy. I found this to be very interesting because having never spoken to him before she was already willing to conform to his wants to make him happy; she completely neglected her own opinions. This is far unlike what I have seen in traditional American culture.

Similarly to how in this movie, the women were expected to clean and conform to the men, they were not to further their education. In this movie, the women in this religious culture were not praised as highly as men. Rather, they were hardly praised at all. For example, one of the men in their community scores a 96.4 on his medical exam to be a doctor and is paraded through the mosque and raved about. He is given a trophy and treated like royalty. A woman scores a 99.1 and is completely neglected. They also do not expect her to go to university afterward because she would have to mix with the men. Even after passing her exam with flying colors, the woman who scores a 99.1 on her medical exam chooses not to become a doctor because her father does not approve. She said that she believed that there needed to be a Muslim to look after the women and he did not agree. She explains to Ali that he would have a “heart attack” if he found out she even played basketball. The women were not seen as equal to the men in this film. Interestingly, although the women were not treated as equal as men, and were thought to only please the men, most of the women in the movie did not mind at all. This was something I realized that would differ greatly from American culture. In this movie, the women seemed to be okay with conforming to the men and limiting themselves; they were very happy and content.