Muriel's Wedding

Muriel’s Wedding is a dark Australian comedy film directed by P.J. Hogan. It follows the life of Muriel Heslop and the obstacles she goes through to achieve what she believes is the ultimate goal in life, marriage. The main theme of the film is ‘winning’. Muriel has always been the ‘ugly duckling’ and the ‘useless’ one in her family, she is so obsessed with getting married that she goes to extremes and gets caught up in lies and deceit to become like ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’. She believes that getting married will prove to her family and friends that she is a success and has made it in life and all her problems will disappear. Through her journey to achieve her goal she realises how naive she has been the entire time and that marriage is not the only thing that matters in life.

Muriel believes that marriage is the ultimate goal in life and therefore, ‘winning’ to her, is getting married. To her, getting married will fix all her problems and will instantly make her a success in life. She is so obsessed with achieving her goal that she fails to realise that in order to achieve a goal there are obstacles that you need to overcome. At 30 years old, still living at home with no job, she takes drastic measures and completely reinvents herself by changing her appearance and even her name in order to find a husband. She becomes so desperate that she answers a personal ad and agrees to marry a complete stranger in order achieve the wedding she had always dreamed about and becoming a married woman and therefore a success. This is a perfect example of her attempting to achieve her goal without overcoming obstacles, such as dating or getting to know someone before getting married. This could be a result of how people around her, especially her father, have treated her growing up.

Bill Heslop, Muriel’s father, is clearly the most dominant member of the family. He is the stereotypical aussie bloke, rude, blunt, racist, egotistic, and sexist. He believes that women are the lower...