Five members of our Filmklub, (the ‘k’ is intentional, we have pretensions) went to see the new Jonathon Demme movie ‘Rachel Getting Married’ (RGM), and as often happens with our gang there was a distinct boy/girl divide.
Ernie (our leader) hated it, Dermo described it as the ‘united weddings of Benetton’, myself and Dev admitted to tear-jerked moments and V had mixed, love/hate feelings, (we all wanted to strangle the musicians).
RGM begins with an interestingly dysfunctional Anne Hathaway getting out of rehab. The hand-held camera/cinema verité style starts here, (rumour has it that Demme gave out cameras to the cast in some of the scenes) and adds to the ‘you’re a guest at the wedding’ feel of the piece. The whole thing has a pseudo dogme aesthetic, it uses the constantly rehearsing wedding musicians to underscore the action and gives the impression of being shot in available light. Generally speaking this works to make us voyeurs in the recognisable world of family + big event = stress and is only shown up as a device at the points where the script becomes self-conscious and over-plotted.
Hathaway’s fragile yet defiant Kim returns to her family’s conducive middle class home in the run-up to her sister Rachel’s wedding. At first Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet present a warm, functional family supporting an attention-seeking, black sheep, but of course families are more complicated than that. Rachel’s initial delight at having her sister home quickly sours as Kim gives out about being passed over for maid of honour, and then hi-jacks the pre-wedding dinner with a fabulously embarrassing attempt at rehab stand-up.
Rachel is justifiably annoyed but refuses to be understanding. The sympathy cleverly shifts back to Kim and her vulnerability becomes clearer against her sister’s cornucopia of good things, (a wonderful groom, a nearly finished Phd and surprise news that she is pregnant). The girls vie for the affections of their (separated) parents, Bill Irwin’s lovable dad and Debra Winger’s uncomfortable, outsider mother. How could they ever have been married you muse to yourself? Ah well, now SOMETHING DRAMATIC must have happened. It is the revelation of a dead sibling and Kim’s part in his accidental death that makes sense of the family rift, but also tilts the movie into melodrama. In a film that is attempting relational intensity through a form of subtle voyeurism such a plot-twist overloads the characters with back-story. A gentle funny scene, where father and son-in-law compete to load the dishwasher becomes burdened with unwonted tragedy when the dead child’s plate appears. This shift also affects Winger’s character fundamentally, but does so, so close to the end as to undermine the minimalism of her role and make her suddenly the ‘fall-guy’ of the piece.
The thing about Rachel Getting Married is it’s like actually being at a family wedding and this is its strength and weakness. The most successful elements come before DCBS (Dead Child Back Story), when we see the central characters struggling with their familial love and their individual needs. This is the stuff of the ‘up close and personal’ style Demme has employed, and also of the inter-personal subject matter. Towards the end, however his love affair with all the interesting-looking supporting cast, (and those bloody musicians) takes over and renders the last section strangely un-dramatic, (if not totally believable in the way only a randomly filmed wedding video can be).
We laughed, we cried, we got a bit bored (Ernie nearly exploded with irritation) – just like a wedding then.