Rachel Getting Married (2008)

VERDICT:
7/10 Black Sheep

Never been a big endorser of eloping, but now I’m starting to get it. 

Rachel Getting Married is about a recovering drug addict who splits from rehab for the weekend to go to her estranged sister’s wedding. Due to her combative personality, troubled past and incessant need to “make amends”, it ends up being a damn long weekend filled with tons of family drama as old wounds come back to the surface while everyone does their best to make the wedding go off without a hitch.

Another great reason to have an open bar. 

So this is the latest effort by director Jonathan Demme, and for all intents and purposes, Jonathan Demme is the man. The guy’s done a crap load of outstanding movies over the years – all of which I really need to get around to reviewing – and the funny thing about Rachel Getting Married is that it looks nothing like a Jonathan Demme movie.

When I think Demme, I think of shots like this with stationary cameras and the characters looking right at the audience while talking to the person right in front of them. That kinda thing has been his m.o. for centuries now, and it’s an m.o. I happen to totally dig, but that noise is gone here.

Rachel, on the other hand, is filmed with shaky handheld cameras, no one in the cast is looking at the audience and even though it’s new, it works. If you’re telling a good story, it always works. The best explanation I can give is that this new direction makes you feel like you’re in the wedding party instead of just an outsider looking in. There’s a number of lengthy scenes during the rehearsal dinner and the actual wedding that don’t move the plot along but rather just show everyone coming together for Rachel getting married and it’s these little touches that not only add to this sense of audience involvement but also serves as a great respite from the relentless family drama.

And, sweet sassy molassy, is there a lot of drama. 

More or less, each new scene is Kym yelling at her sister, Kym generally raising hell or Kym reminding everyone that she used to be a junkie, you know, in case they forgot. The bad news is that it gets to be a little much and some of the scenes where she gets up on a soap box and doesn’t know when to get down are so painfully awkward to watch that I literally could not look at the screen it was making my skin crawl so badly. The good news is that Kym is a very complex character who gets more interesting the more we learn about her and the more she develops. So the good ends up outweighing the bad as the movie goes on, which is nice.

But for all the kicking and screaming, the most powerful parts of the whole movie come when everyone just shuts up. Whether it’s a silent pat on the back from one in-law to another or listening to a Rachel’s husband sing “Unknown Legend” by Neil Young as his wedding vows, it never ceases to amaze me how much you can say with the quietest of gestures or without saying anything at all. Inside voices, everybody. Calm the eff down.

The acting is also quite solid on everyone’s behalf. Ann Hathaway seems like a strange fit as Kym at first (or maybe that’s because Kym is written to be so strange at first) but she really comes into the role the more we get to know her. Good stuff. Bill Irwin also plays a great dad and I love that Tunde Adebimpe (the lead singer of the awesome TV on the Radio) was cast as Rachel’s husband. Even more bonus points for giving a cameo to Fab Five Freddy.

And Rachel really has one totally awesome wedding, one that I totally couldn’t pull off.

Rachel Getting Married can be a bit much at times, but it’s never melodramatic and has enough moments of subtle power to balance out all the totally in-your-face verbal bashings amongst this wildly and believably dysfunctional family. Whaddaya expect, folks? It’s Jonathan-freakin’-Demme.

Here’s to hoping my wedding goes a little smoother.