Welcome to the Wedding Party
Rachel Getting Married
Directed by Jonathan Demme Running Time: 114 min.
Two-thirds into Rachel Getting Married, after Kym (Anne Hathaway) leaves rehab to participate in her sisters wedding, her arrival stirs up tensions and memories. There are so many characters, unsettled relationships and unpredictable situations that a viewers head spins delightedly.
Director Jonathan Demme sustains this feat of whirling prestidigitation with rambunctious style. He and cinematographer Declan Quinn simulate the shaky aesthetics of a home movie. But the hectic, true-life approach constructs a tenacious, essentially faithful vision. Avoiding the hip nihilism of repugnant family dramas like Margot at the Wedding and Before the Devil Knows Youre Dead, Demme offers compassion. Despite the storys adversitiesKyms sibling rivalry with Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), the anxious protectiveness of their father Paul (Bill Irwin), their distant, now-remarried mother Abby (Debra Winger), plus the pressure of friends and in-lawsserenity keeps emerging. And its hard-earned.
This is a family-chaos film thats also lively and fertile; a view of life energized by the awareness of transience, dissatisfaction, unfairnessand the will to keep going. Comparisons to Demmes famously benevolent Citizens Band (1977), Melvin and Howard (1980) and Something Wild (1987) dont explain whats distinctive about this achievement. Centered on Anne Hathaways Kym, a fragile yet self-punishing emotional hurricane, its Demmes most distinctively politically sensitive moviemade to look rushed and feel hurried as if heading-off disaster and documenting relief.
Not surprisingly, Rachel Getting Married follows a remarkable run of Demme non-fiction films: the plangent mortality-musical Neil Young: Heart of Gold, the sympathetic Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains and Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward, his highly original series of five half-hour docs about Hurricane Katrina survivors that focused on faith, aspiration and Southern character. These experiences inform Rachels Connecticut-set story with spiritual awareness about the political particulars of democracy in action, enhancing Demmes usual family-of-man benevolence.
The motley gathering of Rachels wedding preparations, weekend-long dinners, 12-step meetings and domestic battles are a 21st-century update of 1980s multiculti measures. The race, gender, class mixture is blessedly free of fashion and sarcasm (as when Kym is complimented, Youre so tiny; its like youre Asian!). Rachel is boldlynaturallymixed. Paul has remarried interracially (to Anna Deavere Smiths Carol) and Rachel finds a similar partner (Tunde Adebimpes Sidney). Asserting broad humanism, Demme offers music, of course, but primarily the rhythmed texture of voices, personalities and unconstrained behavior: A sad/funny fight between Kym and Rachel displays an uncannily knowing, even vicious, test of nerves; they wage lifelong strategies of affection and resentment until one trumps the other. Kym complains about this little world of paranoia, judgment and mistrust, yet a comfortable familiarity underlies her frustration. Thats the beautiful surprise of the fractiousnessand succorconveyed in Jenny Lumets screenplay.
Not even Thomas Bezucas laudable, complex The Family Stone had this kind of exuberant resilience. Demme understands resilience as the source of democracyof human renewal. Showing a white Jewish female and black males faux-India-themed wedding complete with Samba dancers is joyously One-World American. Through this sincere eccentricity, Rachel transcends the banal dirty-secrets routine of that family-gathering Dogma film, Celebration. Demme says grace (tested by Kyms unease) during the first extended-family rehearsal dinner: a series of toasts peaking with Sidneys kind-faced mother (Carol-Jean Lewis) alluding to paradise. She recalls those praying women from Demmes great Beloved. This timeless moment signals lifes precariousness and appreciates its amplitude like the banquet in John Hustons film of Joyces The Deadonly reversed into Demmes gratitude for the living.
Demme surveys people who learn to make do and those who cant. Hathaway is an ideal heroine for this with her Liza Minnelli-like eager eyes and open vulnerability. That we yield to all these charactersparticularly Irwin, DeWitt and the avid Wingeraffirms Demmes trust. Rachel Getting Marrieds social scale and emotional fullness would do Renoir and Altman proudstill its Demmes genuine vision.
Lots of worldly horror pollutes our cinema this year4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Paranoid Park, Funny Games, Wanted, The Dark Knight, Lakeview Terracewithout being true to life; but Rachel Getting Married defies all that by rehearsing heaven.