I saw Rachel Getting Married because it had an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 100% of the top critics (now 95%). I also heard great stuff about Anne Hathaway's performance. I hadn't seen her Princess Diaries work or her Agent 99, but I liked her in Havoc, Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada. And it was directed by Jonathan Demme and writen by Sidney Lumet's daughter, Jenny Lumet. I knew it was about a wedding where the family had problems and not much more.
Hathaway plays Kym and the film opens with her getting out of rehab to go to her sister's wedding. We find out the specifics of her past as the film unfolds, so I won't discuss it here. Suffice it to say, Kym has a difficult time, feeling the pressure of returning to the family and Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) wants the day to be about her. There's a lot to be said between them and with their father Paul (Bill Irwin). The divorced mother (Debra Winger) lives nearby and makes a few appearances as well.
The film does a good job presenting how all these people feel over the 3 days of the wedding. There are a few big arguments and they work well. The acting is strong all around, but these characters don't really have an arc. Some behaviors change by the end but I'm not really sure I believe it. It's not supported by realizations or conversations, but it is plausible as people are imperfect. I suspect these people will have similar weekends in the future. It left me feeling a bit unsatisfied and I'm still trying to figure out if that was completely intentional or not.
I didn't really understand who this family was. Rachel is getting a PhD in Sociology and yet brings practically none of this education to bear on the family's situation. They live in a massive house in Connecticut but there's no massive source of income described. We don't really know what the father does but it's probably related to music but there's no indication that it's the super-profitable kind of music career.
I've seen a number of reviews that comment how wonderfully multicultural the wedding is. It's been 40 years since Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, why is it such a big deal that the film doesn't comment on an interracial marriage? I wasn't shocked the groom has an asian friend. I was surprised that he acted more like a best man than the best man and we didn't know anything about him. The wedding has an Indian theme, with Saris and an elephant cake, (but no henna) but there are no Indians to be seen and no explanation for this.
There is a lot of music and it's insanely eclectic. A young drummer and an electric guitarist (Demme's son) playing Hendrix, a jazz sax player, an english folk guitarist, a violinist, and then, completely unexplained we get dancers from Brazil's Carnival. The groom, Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe) is an African American musician living in (and perhaps from?) Hawaii. I really wish this film was 15 minutes shorter from excising the wedding dancing; though a shot of Kym during this was perhaps the best bit of acting in the film. The rehearsal dinner also had dozens of speakers and we heard them all for no good reason.
Demme must have seen Cloverfield and loved the camera work so much he decided to do it himself. Sure a handheld camera can make a film seem more intimate. But if the goal is to make you feel like your there, don't constantly move the camera around and run circles around the characters. I haven't had that point of view since I was a puppy.
I thought aspects of the film were good, particularly the performances, but found it too indulgent in the music and camera work. I guess I can see why Rotten Tomatoes gives it 84% positive reviews, but I don't see why so many are raves. There's a little bit of Altman here, but he doesn't explore all the characters. For those characters he does go into, there wasn't enough for me.
2 comments:
As usual you hit the nail on the head here. Excellent performances by all. And throughout the movie I tried to remember what, specifically, I was picturing Bill Irwin from. Sure he was Mr Noodle #2 on Elmo's world, but there's some scene of him dancing that is stuck in my head and I can't think of from where. Anyways back to the movie...indulgent would be the word. Obviously Demme is a huge World music fan, because he just stuffed the movie full of it. We fast-forwarded through a huge portion of the wedding, because really what was the point? And I really didn't get where these people...mostly the groom and his posse, were from. Just by coincidence another member of the wedding party was in rehab with Rachel? C'mon.
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