Review: Rachel Getting Married

Recovering addict Kym (Anne Hathaway) is temporarily allowed out of rehab to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). With Kym already anxious being out of rehab and trying to stay clean, and Rachel naturally anxious about her upcoming nuptials, it’s going to be a tense arrival home for Kym, though loving father Paul (Bill Irwin) tries to keep everything calm. Tries, being the operative word there as family tragedy is regurgitated, and Kym’s naturally cynical and frankly catty demeanour tends to piss everyone off, eventually even her sister who finds she has a whole lotta buried resentment towards Kym. Rachel just wants one moment to be about her for a change, and not drama queen Kym. And then their estranged mother (Debra Winger) turns up, and that brings its own shitstorm. Anna Deavere Smith plays Paul’s current wife, whilst Roger Corman has a fleeting cameo.

Scripted by Sidney Lumet’s daughter Jenny (her debut), I can see why a lot of people might like this 2008 flick. However, because director Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the Lambs”, “Philadelphia”) appears influenced by the dreaded Dogme movement here, I’m afraid I won’t be among you. This is very well-acted stuff, but poorly-shot in shaky-cam by Declan Quinn (“Leaving Las Vegas”, “One Night Stand”) and adopting other Dogme tropes just drove me around the bend.

Yes, the extreme close-ups and shaky-cam do serve to keep you on edge just like the main character is. However, acting also suggests the same thing, so it’s not really necessary and just an irritating affectation. The worst thing though, are the long-takes. A pre-wedding toasting scene goes on for fucking ever. Yeah I get that Demme is going for pseudo-doco here, but it stops the film completely dead because you feel removed from it all. You don’t really get to know very many of the people involved, so it doesn’t hold much interest and just waffles on and on. I get it, sometimes that’s how weddings feel, but that doesn’t mean I want to see a movie about it. If you make it through that scene though, a later wedding party cum New Orleans street parade (not really) is even more elongated and tedious. These two scenes just took me out of the film. Also, I’ll never be of the belief that it is necessary to show someone on the toilet outside of a comedic gag. Everyone pees, but who gives a fuck? It adds nothing. I’m not sure if that’s just a Dogme thing, but it’s certainly annoying.

Yet, there were things about this film that I actually enjoyed. This was pretty much the moment when people realised that Anne Hathaway had serious acting chops, which indeed she does. I know she’s a divisive personality (i.e. Jealous women hate her irrationally), but she comes across as very sweet to me and so it’s interesting how well she plays bitter, jaded, and cynical. She’s terrific here as a young woman who is barely holding it together and she makes for a much more convincing recovering addict than say Sandra Bullock in “28 Days”, if not Michael Keaton in “Clean and Sober”. Also terrific is the underrated Rosemarie DeWitt, and she and Hathaway are pretty convincing as sisters, both physically and in their performances. They very nearly make the whole thing worth sitting through, frustrating as it is. They display some fairly ugly tendencies, but it’s pretty realistic on that front, if not particularly ‘entertaining’. Meanwhile, the casting of Debra Winger as their aloof mother is absolutely pitch-perfect. She seems incredibly distant, possibly even self-absorbed and superficial. However, there may be a reason behind it all. Veteran clown Bill Irwin (who I really only know as that guy from the ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ clip who isn’t Bobby McFerrin or Robin Williams) is actually pretty good as their well-meaning dad too, in a dramatic part. As for Demme regular Anna Deavere Smith, I felt like her character was never properly explained in relation to the family. I get that the film is a bit of a fly-on-the-wall thing, but it’s not very consistently done, so I wish things were explained a little more. It took me quite a while to realise that Smith was playing Irwin’s current wife. I just figured she was a relative of the groom. It’s not a terribly good use of her at any rate, and what the fuck was up with her serving watermelon at one point? Bit fucking racial right there, Mr. Demme. It’s a shame because otherwise one of the things I liked about the film was that the interracial marriage was just treated as the very normal thing that it clearly is. It’s a non-issue, as it should be. I just wanted to be a little more acquainted with the characters, if you were gonna present them to me.

Some good performances, but the Dogme style gets in the way of things here. In addition to being an ugly visual, by drawing everything out, it removes all the tension that the hard-working actors were mustering up. Ultimately I felt at arm’s length here, not so much like a distant relative, but an unwelcome and frankly sometimes uninterested witness to the events depicted in the film. Hathaway and DeWitt are outstanding, however and some of you will like this very much. Kudos for offering up the single worst version of ‘The Wedding March’ of all-time, by a rank amateur guitarist. That was hilarious, as was Hathaway’s character holding up a lighter.

Rating: C+