Jonathan Demme has always been good at filming celebrations – think of the high school reunion in Something Wild, the costume party in Philadelphia, or any of his concert films – so it makes sense that he would make a movie centered around a wedding. In keeping with previous Demme-fests, the event here is vibrant, eclectic and conspicuously multicultural, featuring Middle Eastern folk music, Indian apparel, Hawaiian belly dancing, and live performances by Robyn Hitchcock, Sister Carol East and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe (who, as the groom, essays a strangely affecting a cappella rendition of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” in his wedding vows). These aspects of Rachel Getting Married are true to form, even a return to it after the mostly unsuccessful Truth About Charlie and Manchurian Candidate. What’s less expected is that he would interweave the festivities with a bleak drama about a recovering heroin addict and her strained relations with her family. The scenes involving Kym (convincingly incarnated by Anne Hathaway) are intense and harrowing; this is the closest to the bone and least romantic Demme’s been since Melvin and Howard, and while he hasn’t regained the perfect poise he achieved in his 1980s work, I think he’s right to push himself in this uncomfortable direction. The jittery, amateur documentary-style camerawork never lets us get an emotional bearing on the situation, functioning in this way like the headlong title, which puts us right in the middle of an uncompleted action. Whereas a more jaded filmmaker might have ratcheted up the catharsis even more, and another Demme film would have diffused the tension in the general good vibes, Rachel Getting Married maintains an uneasy balance: the wedding provides a counterpoint to the WASPs’ nest of seething anger that is the Buchman family. Kym, stranded on the outside of the happy community and only ambivalently wanting back in, is understood to be a pilgrim-in-progress, someone who has not yet figured her shit out and is beginning to think the world won’t wait for her to do it.
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
12 Nov 2008 10:49 AM | Comments (4)
For me, RGM was little more than Robert Redford’s Ordinary People—hopped up on steroidsÑcolliding into a three-day “One World” music festival (you know: Peter Gabriel, Amadou and Mariam, Beausoleil, Damon Alburn, Jorge Ben, Clube Do Balan√ßo, Manu Chao, Daft Punk, Toots and the Maytals, Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, and, yes, TV on the Radio). I’ve grown highly suspect of movies about white people living in seven million dollar Connecticut estates; all this east coast, upper-class, boho bonhomie starts to scratch away at my spleen. No matter how many virtuous, upstanding people of color Jonathan Demme pours into the frame (one of Hollywood’s most grotesque cliches), Rachel Getting Married is still an over-the-top American tragedy about white people in carefully appointed rooms. That being said, Anne Hathaway gives a stunning performance. It’s the best acting I’ve seen on the big screen since Daniel Day Lewis drilled for oil. If only Jenny Lumet had toned down the dramaturgical dead ends (diswashers anyone) and shrill histrionics (representations of women in the film are problematic at best) and Demme had exiled the great majority of his buddies and family members to the catering tables (I kept expecting Spalding Gray to return from the dead), the film might have settled in on a potentially lacerating evisceration of white privilege and family dysfunction … but no, this is a world where Robyn Hitchcock sings songs in the backyard during a reception best described as a coalition of rainbows … When it comes to wealthy northeasterners and their fucked up rituals, I’ll take Noah Baumbach’s equally frustrating though abrasively engaging Margo at the Wedding.
Hi Jeff (and is this who I think it is?) —
I take your point completely, and in another mood I might have felt the same way. However, in light of Demme’s previous movies and general spirit, I (maybe too charitably?) took the overdone multiculti stuff to be an attempt to expand the limits of the Connecticut breakdown movie – which yeah, is totally becoming a cliché: they should’ve stopped after “The Ice Storm” – and at least gesture at other forms of life and culture besides festering suburban angst. I guess I see it as Demme trying to have it both ways, include anomie and community in the same small story… and for him, community just is boho eclecticism. But there’s some liberal wish fulfillment there, no question.
far less shrill and more grounded than margot at the wedding, but i agree with all the other points that jeff makes. the wedding is a jonathan demme house party masquerading as rachel’s wedding. and what’s up the indian wedding theme? like it’s cooler not to explain why they’re all dressed in saris. the scene in the salon was a total “jump the shark” moment, but the movie survives on the merit of hathaway, de witt, and winger.
Yeah, its that Jeff Turner (how many do you know Evan). I wanted to like this movie. I had such high hopes. I might not necessarily call it a Connecticut break-down movie, but more of a white privilege breakdown movie (and you are right, Demme seems to want to have it both ways with his post-racial/one world set decoration). But back to Brett. Yeah, the Indian wedding with the Brazilian dancing girls and the acapella Neil Young. Yikes. Still, I forgot how much I enjoyed Debra Winger’s return. She’s really the only character in the whole film you’d like to see more of, which is saying something.
Jeff Turner
14 November 2008
10:01 PM