I may be slightly biased in reviewing this proposal video due to the fact that this is one of the most immediately likeable couples I’ve ever seen. The couple basically consists of a charming, funny, winsome guy and a girl with the absolute CUTEST mannerisms ever. I’m a bit smitten by these two. I know you all tune in for purely objective analysis, so, you know, I figure I should disclaim myself in advance. For the sake of the quantitative analysis you’ve come to expect, I will not mention again how cute this girl’s mannerisms are. (more…)
Tag Archives: proposals
Knight in Shining Armor
10 FebThis proposal video is a chief example of what I call the spectacle proposal — probably my least favorite kind. Before I rip into this video, let me just say that I do like this guy and hope his marriage is going swimmingly. I’ve reviewed engagement videos before where the people are fundamentally depressing to look at. While I’m a little cold to some of the decisions in this video, they seem like good people. (more…)
Jerry and Julie
8 FebThe first thing you notice about this video is its accidental foray into avant-garde cinema – because the framing is fucked up, you can’t see Julie’s facial reaction. It’ s how Mark Romanek would shoot his own proposal video. It turns out to be a really nice effect because you begin to imagine her face as you watch her body tell the story. It hooks you. Later, the mere presence of her face becomes a simple pleasure amplifying everything she’s so ecstatically feeling.
When Julie does kneel into our sight, her face is such a gift to watch. It’s so honest and happy — “motiveless” as Jeff A. would say. The motive for her happiness is pure: she’s saying yes because she wants to spend the rest of her life with this man, not because she’s the first of her sisters to get married or because she’s always wanted a wedding or because now she co-owns the cabin in New Hampshire.
For his part, Jerry really holds the space; his smile and clear eyes show a guy who is fully inhabiting the moment. Gentlemen, take notes. This is how you propose. He’s so there, so relaxed & happy, so focused completely without any weight of pretension.
Jerry also has another killer move. He doesn’t present the ring until after the proposal. This is fucking brilliant. When you present the ring as you ask, it has a whiff of bribe about it, as one poet might put it. It cheapens the moment. It’s like waving money at the waiter in a fancy restaurant as you order the Penne Puttanesca. In fact, Jerry’s move is doubly brilliant, since he essentially gives Julie not one moment for a lifetime, but two. (more…)
A Short Sideroad into Rejection
4 FebOne can predict the response to an engagement proposal within one half-second of its start.
Simply watch the woman’s mouth. If it is closed, you are doomed. If it is open wide seventy feet — or if it is covered by one or more hands — and accompanied by a slight crouch or total physical collapse, you are looking at your future wife.
In this video, note Bridgitte’s….um….lack of wide-open mouth.
The Last (and Best) of the Proposal Videos
14 DecFinally, I have found the proposal video that will take your breath away. With this, I end this little journey.
What I have learned is the following:
1. These videos, at their best, are records of a moment where everything else falls away, where your entire consciousness is in your throat, where the only thing on earth that matters is right now, right here. This is the moment, as David Blaine says of his endurance work, that “takes away the ego” and “puts you in a position so intense that the ordinary ‘I’ doesn’t exist anymore”, where you are called to “live truthfully in a given moment…and feel completely alive and awake at one specific moment.” In my first post on this blog, I quoted Jeff Buckley: “There’s only ‘present’ and ‘absent’. That’s it. It’s the balls, just the utter deathlessness, fearlessness.” For all of us, this is the moment we cannot fake, cannot possibly be false for. All of one’s life before should lead up to this moment, and all of one’s life after should be an effort to become worthy of the person you implicitly promised to be in that moment. Remember Godard: I said I love. That is the promise. Now, I have to sacrifice myself so that, through me, the word ‘love’ means something. As a reward, at the end of of this long undertaking, I will end up being he who loves.
2. The proposals that are most moving are not the most clever or the most populated with family or the most Graustarkian. What is most moving is watching a person — even if only for a solitary, fleeting moment — become something bigger than they are: they become love itself. These proposals are not great because they are sweet, but because they remind us all of who and what we really are.
3. In the truly great videos, the woman’s response is visceral — you can see that it completely takes over her body, where she instantaneously abandons grocery lists and errands and industry conferences, abandons even the ability to control her hands or, most powerfully in the following video, her ability to speak. The man is steady, fully present, vulnerable, and strong.
4. What makes the following video the most moving is the gravitas. While in a past blog post I’ve sung the praises of the utterly adorable ice skating girl for her total commitment to the moment, what I also realize is that her love is thorough, but thin. Even from where she kneels in total abandon, she is only capable of giving a certain amount; she hasn’t yet been hollowed out, hasn’t yet been left out to rot with the sky and the rain, hasn’t yet been called upon to be something larger than she is, to lead others, hasn’t yet failed at something that meant everything to her, hasn’t yet been successful at something she never thought she could, hasn’t yet reached into the lives of others to fundamentally alter them because of who she, uniquely, is.
Now, at the end of 2008, I can say I have been hollowed out. After this year, I have been left out to rot with the sky and the rain. I have been called upon to be something larger than I was at the time, to lead others, to create things where before there was nothing. I have failed at things that meant everything to me, and I have been successful at things I never thought it remotely possible that I could. I have reached into the lives of others, and, to quote Lauren quoting Koo, have left fingerprints on their appliances.
My final thoughts and the video are after the jump.
Emily & Matt: Intimacy like Elevator Music
14 DecIn this latest installment of the marriage proposal critiques, we have Matt and Emily — a surprise engagement that happens on-air between two newscasters.
According to my particular taste in marriage proposal videos, this pretty much exemplifies the worst there is to offer — so much so that it’s worth watching. It stresses all the wrong things: it features an overly-creative location, it privileges spectacle over intimacy, and there doesn’t seem to be the slightest gravitas to the act of merging one’s life with another. This guy is hamming it up from start to finish. Is there anything less genuine, vulnerable, in-the-moment, and emotionally authentic than the way a newscaster speaks to another newscaster?
There are full versions of the video online, but don’t watch those, just watch this shorter one after the jump….
Proposal: Joshua & Heather
9 DecThere are a few elements of a good proposal, I’m learning. First, the setting should be natural, not atop a castle in outer space. Propose somewhere you’ve been before.
This clip wins mild approval. While I subtract points for all the religious overtone, and for the fact that he claimed to know she was the one within days, I give those points back for his repeated use of the word “courtship”. I also award serious points for the Bammers-esque move of acknowledging opposition.
But most of all, this is a fantastic response by the girl. Ladies who read this some day, take notes.
Proposals: Bryant & Kaycee
9 DecThis one is tough to watch.
Aside from the Fisher Price “My First Proposal” starter kit, the neon sign is a surreal inclusion. While the choice of an airport is interesting (it’s a symbol of transience, distance, and reuniting), the guy’s stony visage is an alienating collage of steely determination and abject passionlessness. Face it: this is how Mount Rushmore would get engaged. Most striking, though, is the transience of the event. Within seconds other people are hugging her, the Mom is already past it, commenting on the shirt. It’s as if he never, even in this moment, is the captain of his own destiny.
While the people are likeable, this is a queer proposal. I give this a 2 for physical reaction, a 2 for guy’s coolness, a zero for emotional authenticity, a 4 for innovative setting, and a 4 for mise-en-scene (the whimpering of the camera operator is the lone moment of emotional fearlessness in the piece.) Total score: 12. Not good. The video is below.
I am the J. Hoberman of Marriage Proposals
9 DecI stumbled on my latest fascination — watching videos of marriage proposals on youtube — by accident. It all started when I searched the phrase “epic fail” in youtube and it brought up videos of, among other painful episodes, guys getting stiffarmed while proposing in front of basketball halftime shows. Then I saw it: “most creative marriage proposal ever”. So I think to myself, let’s see what you got, mtherfker.
It was pretty good, but the woman’s reaction was disappointing, vis-a-vis the guy’s creativity. That’s why I was so into this woman’s championship reaction in my previous post. Thus, I’ve decided to create a running series of cinema critique on videotaped marriage proposals.
I think that, of the many reasons that this is an insane idea, the biggest is that the only 4 people I know who read this blog are guys — worse, two of them are already married. So this series will be amusing to me and will have basically no interest for my readership.
That’s great blogging, Gunny.
A Quick Note to the Woman I Marry Someday
8 DecHere’s a quick note to the woman I marry someday: when I propose to you, please react like the woman in this awesome video.
I love the cute little pitter patter move when she stands up!
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