Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Written by Jenny Lumet
Starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie Dewitt, Bill Irwin, Anna Deveare Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Debra Winger
Release Date October 3rd, 2008
October 15th, 2008
I was not prepared for the emotional experience of Rachel Getting Married. After watching it for the first time in November of 2008 I was left raw and vulnerable and incapable of capturing the experience in words. The film worked me over and the experience is one of the most exhilarating and exciting moments I've ever had at the movies.
Directed by Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married tells the story of a New England family in the midst of a storm of emotions. On the one hand, eldest daughter Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) is getting married in the family's long-time home and a guest list of family and friends is pouring out the windows.
On the other hand, youngest daughter Kym is leaving rehab after an extended stay, recovering from an addiction to pills and alcohol. Kym and Rachel have always had a complicated relationship, the kind that only sisters can have. They have competed, unwittingly, for their parents' attention their entire lives. Kym through drugs and antisocial behavior, Rachel by trying desperately to be the good daughter.
Mom and Dad are divorced. Mom, Abby (Debra Winger) has retreated from her daughters. Dad, Paul (Bill Irwin) has lived and died for every moment of his daughters lives to an uncomfortable degree. He's remarried to Carol (Anna Deavere Smith) who balances his doting with calm presence.
The action unfolds over three days and nothing you might expect to happen happens. Rachel Getting Married never takes the easy way out. It doesn't have major set piece moments that can tie up a good trailer or marketing campaign. What it has in abundance is truth. Truth in how families interact. Truth how small slights can escalate into lacerating arguments.
Truth in how tragedies never really leave us. This family in Rachel Getting Married has had a tragedy and when the film is over that tragedy lingers over each of them. That is not to say that the film is filled with doom and gloom. Far from it. In fact, for as much sadness and heartache as there is, there is also joy, much of it found in music.
In a wonderfully passive way we learn that much of both families blending in this marriage are musically inclined. There is someone playing an instrument somewhere in the background of most scenes and it's all rather incidental and not a greek chorus to underscore drama or meant to distract. It just sort of is there. Music is just part of the lives of these people.
Movies shot with a digital handheld camera can be distracting and disjointed for us in the audience. We were all raised on film and the mostly crisp clean images that film provides. DV can tend to be sloppy and in the wrong hands invite a queasy feeling in the audience as if the camera would stop moving around so much.
However, the DV really works here. It feels as if we are a member of this troubled but loving family. We are more than mere witnesses to their sadness and joy, we are made a part of it by this handheld style, as if we were running the camera.
It's a phenomenally underappreciated achievement, one that should have earned Jonathan Demme an Oscar nomination for Best Director. On the bright side, Jenny Lumet who wrote the absorbing, exhausting and cathartic screenplay was nominated and will likely win the award for Best Original Screenplay.
Lumet learned so much from her father, the legendary Sydney Lumet, that it really is no wonder she can write something as brilliant as this. She has an ear for dialogue, an ear for the way families speak to one another that few writers can match.
Listen to the way Rose Dewitt and Anne Hathaway talk to each other. The rhythm, the patter, the bracing insight and the quick painful insult. It's remarkable. Listen to the way Hathaway bites off her words, her inflections, the wounded animal way she has of speaking when offended or hurt. Much of it is Hathaway, some of it is Lumet, all of it is brilliant.
I could go on for days about why Rachel Getting Married is one of the best movies I have ever seen, but I think I need to stop gushing now. I will just say that no other movie in the past 12 months has impacted me more and stayed with me longer than Rachel Getting Married and I think if you give it a chance you will feel the same way.
