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Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie Dewitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger. Directed by Jonathan Demme.
For many scenes in Rachel Getting Married, director Jonathan Demme didn’t work with cinematographer Declan Quinn to plan any of the camera shots. Quinn was instructed to let the action dictate where the cameras pointed while the actors were doing their scenes. Similarly, many of the scenes were never blocked or rehearsed, and the actors were encouraged to work off of each other. The result is a wonderfuly non-Hollywood-looking movie whose dialogue (often improvised) and staging seem amazing in their intimacy and believability. There are whispered arguments in dark rooms, and characters who follow each other through hallways clogged with other characters, and musicians playing on porches who are told to shut up by characters in adjacent kitchens, and it (mostly) all works to make one heck of a character study.
Anne Hathaway is Kym, a twenty-something woman who leaves drug rehab for a few days to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt). The family house is crammed with people in the way that houses often are in those few days leading up to a wedding. There are guests from out of town, maids of honor all over the place, caterers, decorators, wedding planners, musicians, and old friends, all moving frantically about while Rachel, Kym, and their parents put on their best faces for this big event.
Kym’s got problems, and it’s not hard to tell that Rachel has had problems of her own. The whole family is dealing with something terrible, too, and although this family is pretty vocal in its affections, the grieving never seems to have been shared, each member dealing with it completely alone, even when they are all in the same room.
There are scenes where the emotions are so raw that you feel like an intruder, and those improvised camera angles heighten the effect. Similarly, there are scenes of great awkwardness that leave the viewer begging to be set free from the discomfort. I have said for a long time that one of the most dangerous things in the world is an open mike at a wedding reception, and there is a moment at a rehearsal dinner when Kym takes the mike and illustrates it perfectly.
As a study of these sisters and their relationship, this is a heck of a movie, Dewitt and Hathaway turning in some amazing performances. I have a few problems with Demme’s insistence on setting a scene and holding it there; the rehearsal dinner seems to take forever, and there is a wedding reception scene that seems far, far, far too long, giving us little more than characters in different combinations dancing to different kinds of music. Demme took advantage of his characters’ ties to music and placed musicians all over the place, so that what sounds like soundtrack music is often actually ambient music played by friends of the groom all over the premises and throughout the film. He also gave the musicians instructions to improvise according to what what happening around them, something that seems like a cool idea but which I found tiresome.
I will add that there are some musical scenes that seem to exist only because Demme likes the musicians. For instance, Robyn Hitchcock (or a character played by Robyn Hitchcock; it’s impossible to tell which) plays at the wedding, the cameras lingering on him as if Demme is saying, “Look who I got in my movie!” Tiresome.
These failings aside, Rachel Getting Married is a good showcase of Hathaway’s and Dewitt’s acting chops, the kind of thing that says here are two actors who really know their stuff, if you didn’t know it already.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
85/100 (Criticker rating)
Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie Dewitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger. Directed by Jonathan Demme.
For many scenes in Rachel Getting Married, director Jonathan Demme didn’t work with cinematographer Declan Quinn to plan any of the camera shots. Quinn was instructed to let the action dictate where the cameras pointed while the actors were doing their scenes. Similarly, many of the scenes were never blocked or rehearsed, and the actors were encouraged to work off of each other. The result is a wonderfuly non-Hollywood-looking movie whose dialogue (often improvised) and staging seem amazing in their intimacy and believability. There are whispered arguments in dark rooms, and characters who follow each other through hallways clogged with other characters, and musicians playing on porches who are told to shut up by characters in adjacent kitchens, and it (mostly) all works to make one heck of a character study.
Anne Hathaway is Kym, a twenty-something woman who leaves drug rehab for a few days to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt). The family house is crammed with people in the way that houses often are in those few days leading up to a wedding. There are guests from out of town, maids of honor all over the place, caterers, decorators, wedding planners, musicians, and old friends, all moving frantically about while Rachel, Kym, and their parents put on their best faces for this big event.
Kym’s got problems, and it’s not hard to tell that Rachel has had problems of her own. The whole family is dealing with something terrible, too, and although this family is pretty vocal in its affections, the grieving never seems to have been shared, each member dealing with it completely alone, even when they are all in the same room.
There are scenes where the emotions are so raw that you feel like an intruder, and those improvised camera angles heighten the effect. Similarly, there are scenes of great awkwardness that leave the viewer begging to be set free from the discomfort. I have said for a long time that one of the most dangerous things in the world is an open mike at a wedding reception, and there is a moment at a rehearsal dinner when Kym takes the mike and illustrates it perfectly.
As a study of these sisters and their relationship, this is a heck of a movie, Dewitt and Hathaway turning in some amazing performances. I have a few problems with Demme’s insistence on setting a scene and holding it there; the rehearsal dinner seems to take forever, and there is a wedding reception scene that seems far, far, far too long, giving us little more than characters in different combinations dancing to different kinds of music. Demme took advantage of his characters’ ties to music and placed musicians all over the place, so that what sounds like soundtrack music is often actually ambient music played by friends of the groom all over the premises and throughout the film. He also gave the musicians instructions to improvise according to what what happening around them, something that seems like a cool idea but which I found tiresome.
I will add that there are some musical scenes that seem to exist only because Demme likes the musicians. For instance, Robyn Hitchcock (or a character played by Robyn Hitchcock; it’s impossible to tell which) plays at the wedding, the cameras lingering on him as if Demme is saying, “Look who I got in my movie!” Tiresome.
These failings aside, Rachel Getting Married is a good showcase of Hathaway’s and Dewitt’s acting chops, the kind of thing that says here are two actors who really know their stuff, if you didn’t know it already.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
85/100 (Criticker rating)