Moonstruck (1987)
Review of Moonstruck (1987), directed by Norman Jewison
I literally had no idea that Cher acted until I stumbled across this on the newly added section of Kanopy. I also learned that she was Armenian when researching this movie, which also was a fun fact to learn. Armenian representation, let alone vaguely Middle Eastern representation, has been limited to the Kardashians, but now we have Cher too.
But on a different vein, I’ve also never seen a movie in which Nicholas Cage was under the age of forty, and so imagine my shock when he appears in this one with a prosthetic hand. I was so shocked because I think the earliest movie I’d seen with him was the one where he was a history PhD hunting for a lost treasure on the back of the US Declaration of Independence. So this movie was a trip ride.
Although my feelings about this movie are quite mixed, I did enjoy the process of watching it. Let’s dive deeper into this review, shall we?
Content
Moonstruck is about an Italian-American widow, played by Cher and named Loretta, who has recently become engaged to her Italian-American boyfriend Johnny. Right off the bat, we’re thrown into old-school NYC Italian-American family culture, which I found to be wild because I’d never been able to experience it myself (hell, I didn’t even eat any classic Italian food while I was living in New York City. I’m a shame, aren’t I?).
But, with many diaspora communities, we see the gossiping, how interconnected the families are, as well as how these families speak Italian at home despite being first or third generation. Loretta’s boyfriend, however, has a mother in Sicily who is dying. So he books a ticket back to Italy and leaves Loretta in NYC with her family.
Because they are now engaged after the first turn of events, Johnny asks Loretta to ask his estranged brother Ronny to come to their wedding.
And so Loretta wanders into the bakery Ronny works at, mentions Johnny, and Ronny promptly has a mental breakdown. It seems that he harbors a lot of resentment towards Johnny because he was able to get a girl (his own fiancée left him after his hand was cut off) and because Johnny has distract him, leading to the accident where he lost his hand. But this is where the movie gets weird, because Loretta then begins to cheat on her fiancé with his own brother.
What throws me off are these random interruptions of like planes, trains, and the moon inserted throughout the movie. I understand their purpose because we’re getting these themes of transitions in life, as well as those who look at the moon and dream, but I don’t think they really add anything to the actual movie. They feel like sudden cuts, ones that are unnecessary and are forcibly trying to insert symbolism into the movie.
I do enjoy, however, the characters living very 1980s mundane lives in New York City. As mundane as you can get in NYC—our main characters, Ronny and Loretta, casually go to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center at one point of the movie. I remember the days dreaming of wanting to go there, but I couldn’t afford it. Opera is another big theme in this movie, as they go to see an opera in which a painting of the main characters is constantly referred to again and again.
I came out of the movie with the thoughts about passion and what following your heart can do. Loretta engages with cheating of her fiancé, who she doesn’t seem to actually love, with his brother, while she catches her own father engaging in an affair at the opera.
We also get the thread of the random university professor who keeps going out to eat with his female students and always ends up pissing them off, which is a mood but also not because it’s creepy.
Both of our main characters are suffering, and while you can’t choose family, you can choose marriage and what to do with your life. And so, despite the pain and the pretenses they put up, they choose each other and to heal. People are stupid and make dumb decisions, but, at the end of the day, they can make the decision to change their circumstances.
Overall Thoughts
Visually, on the screen, it’s an okay movie. There’s nothing spectacular or wowing about the film itself, but you really have to dig deeper and discover what exactly the film means to you and your life in order to discover the charm it holds. I don’t think I’ll be rewatching it, because I wasn’t into the actual film itself, but I would read the screenplay just to dig deeper into the characters and what they symbolize in life. Like I said, people are dumb, and sometimes these characters are unrealistic, but that’s life.
