This wedding scene drew a lot of criticism for being over-the-top and more burlesque than authentic. Well, those people clearly haven't attended enough weddings. In fact, the behavior displayed here at the wedding buffet table is tragically similar to what happened in real life at the reception following my father's funeral.
Neil Klugman, a kind of reverse Gatsby, is ambivalent about his feelings towards wealth and the kind of life Brenda leads. He responds to and identifies with an African-American youth who comes daily to the library to stare at the pictures in a book of prints by Paul Gauguin depicting the colorful dreamscapes of Tahiti. Benjamin and the young actor (Anthony McGowan) share a kind of heartbreaking chemistry in these scenes, and they make me cry every time.