Review

Review Date: 26-October-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

I am not a fan of using hand-held cameras for big screen movies, both because they make me nauseated and because if I am paying money for the theater experience I want a polished look with all the trimmings. But Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married fits well with the informality of this medium because the film is made up of intimate family moments at that most home-movie-obsessed of occasions, a wedding. I never felt sick while watching it, only fascinated.

The moments are not all grand or dramatic — some are simply funny, like a dishwasher-loading contest on which the groom and father of the bride stake their manhood — but they are all moving in their immediacy. The family in question has a lot of love but also wounds that have not healed. These are brought to the fore when the bride's sister Kym (Anne Hathaway) arrives at the beautiful Connecticut homestead from the rehab clinic where she has spent the better part of a year. Hathaway easily conjures up the whirlwind of nervous energy that attends a black sheep and an addict and blows through everyone around her. Her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) is happy to have her home but wary that she will siphon off attention from the occasion. Her father (Bill Irwin), a pliant man who stifles pain with extreme affability, just wants everybody to get along. With the exception of her sister's best friend, the myriad guests are ready to meet her with unbiased eyes if she would allow them to overlook her notorious past.

She doesn't. For someone so wrapped up in the minute-by-minute recovery of a sustainable self, the atmosphere of a wedding proves too tempting for outbursts of guilty rage. Not only that, but the crime at the core of Kym's guilt is something that unites and defines her family, something they can never forget even if they have forgiven. This has particular force when it comes to Kym's reunion with her mother (Debra Winger), an enigmatic figure who also enters the glow of wedding hoopla as a near outsider.

The script by Jenny Lumet wisely refrains from turning the mushy bonding of two souls and two families into a means of resolving Kym's issues. I am not even sure the fact of Rachel getting married propels Kym further along the road ahead of her. Yet the movie makes the wedding seem important because it brings her, and us, together with well-meaning people who look to each other to be happy.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.