Customer Reviews

Married in America 2

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This engrossing film about diverse married couples in America really took me by surprise. It's as funny, heartbreaking, and suspenseful as any Hollywood movie. And remarkably, what happens in Married in America 2 is all true! It's a documentary but thanks to the different storylines (including some wild and crazy freakin' couples) it feels more like a highly-addictive TV drama - the kind you pop into the DVD player and can't stop watching and then can't believe 2-plus hours have gone by in a blink.

Each married couple kept me hooked and for different reasons. One pair that really stood out for me were Toni & Kelly, a lesbian couple who, in an incredibly memorable restaurant scene, have a confrontation with a closed-minded jerk who can't shut his mouth. The tension in this scene will stir your emotions. I know I went from a rage (wanting to punch the bigot in the face) to being choked up by the heroic reaction from another diner in the restaurant. You gotta see it to believe it.

Another couple who really jump out would be Chuck & Carol, hard core bikers with lots of tattoos and explosive drama and a very rocky relationship. In fact, they're divorced in Married in America 2 and it made me want to go back and see them get married in the first part.

I actually watched Married in America 2 before seeing Married in America (part one). Thanks to entertaining recaps in part 2, I was able to follow along without a problem. Now I can't wait for Married in America 3!

All the reviews of Married in America 2 are accurate--this documentary film (and the series it's part of) is addictive and compelling. The stories about the marriages of these nine couples are irresistible because they're true.

Just as interesting as the documentary itself is a forty-minute interview with Michael Apted about why and how he went about making this series.

Apted distinguishes between two kinds of films that he makes--"movies" and "documentaries." He started his career in Britain in the 1960s making sociological TV documentaries like the 7 Up series (the model for Married in America and Married in America 2).

But he's also made star-driven Hollywood movies like Coal Miner's Daughter with Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones, Continental Divide (John Belushi's only decent film), Gorky Park with William Hurt, Gorillas in the Mist with Sigourney Weaver, The World Is Not Enough with Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, the British-American TV series Rome, and the movie Amazing Grace about the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

Apted can make historical drama (sometimes called "heritage film" in Britain) seem realistic--not merely trivia like the color of the togas, but the way people in another time think and talk. (The question of whether a historical movie could actually be true takes up several shelves in a university library and can probably be reduced to the answer, "No.")

Apted is like other foreign directors--Percy Adlon (Bagdad Cafe, Rosalie Goes Shopping), Peter Weir (Witness), and Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas)--who are drawn to American cultures because of their strangeness (or their uniqueness, if you want to be nonjudgmental about it). Of course, Hollywood is also where the money is.

In an improvement over the first films in the Up series, Apted has small video cameras and unobtrusive sound recording equipment so we can follow the couples as they go out and live their lives rather than just watch them sitting on a couch talking about themselves.

Even so, these snapshots of nine marriages every few years only hint at the lives that are unfolding every day.

I use this film in a course on marriage and family. The marriages illustrate many of the topics we read about and discuss, the couples are varied, and students like it. The film makes a good basis for a take-home or in-class essay question because students have a range of couples and themes from which to choose, and they can miss part of the film but still have material to discuss.