Throughout the first twenty minutes of
Rachel Getting Married (RGM), I was ready to write the film off with a huge sigh of "over-rated!" Anne Hathaway, awash in Oscar buzz, seemed to be doing an impersonation of Maggie Gyllenhaal in
Sherry Baby. Then, the music started. And hours later, it's still consuming me.
RGM is a film about a dysfunctional, tragic family on the eve of a huge wedding celebration. It is taped in mostly a hand-held, shaky,
Cloverfield-esq faux documentary style. It adds a richness and beauty to the narrative that no other movie like it has ever achieved. The actors
don't seem to be performing. It's the most "in the moment" movie I have ever seen. Demme's vision is enriched by Cinematographer Declan Quinn's masterful interpretation, bold close-ups, passionately lingering takes, wide, ambling, trailing scenes that go on forever, and one particular scene of grimacing tension shot POV through the windshield of a careening car (seen in one of the video's linked to this post). Demme's
style brings great depth to the film, but most of all, it brings a heightened sense of reality. This cinematography has proven effective in the horror genre (most effectively in the Spanish film
REC), but Demme shows us, for the first time in my memory, the breadth of its effect upon a drama. We are AT Rachel's wedding, which is especially cool, because it's the awesomest wedding ev-ah!
Rachel is Kym's more socially adjusted, though anguished sister. Her wedding is an explosion of expression. A multi-cultural, multi-religous, eclectic affair of intriguing people with infectious charms. The wedding is filled with a fantastic array of personalities that defy type and culture. They are profound. They are cute. They are wickedly talented and completely unpretensious about sharing these talents in the name of a good time. I wanted to lift my glass. Pose for pictures. RGM's allure is its greatest power,and it is symbolic of all the things that make life worth living: namely love, friendship, companionship and most of all....the music.
Rachel's wedding and rehersal dinner is a dream-like musical revue. It's a myriad of live musical performances that twist and whirl through the movie's plot like whacked-out Sand-Art. They drive the film. From jazz to rock, dub reggae to trance, brit pop folk to choral singing, and then, just when you think you've seen it all...a hot latin precussion group, complete with Carnivale-style, scantily clad dancers pounce onto the scene. Their arrival is equally uplifting and improbable. " Upon further consideration of this fact, I realized that Demme has a history of incorporating concepts so seeminglessly into the plot that they seem inseperable. Consider the fusion of the City of Philadelphia into the film Philadelphia. In that film, the city was more than a backdrop, it seemed to contain and expound the pain and suffering of Tom Hanks' character. Music works very much the same way in RGM, driving and guiding the plot, equally satiating and compounding the tragedy. RGM has no score. All of the film's music is played by characters, and the effects are entrancing.
This is no wedding I have ever been to. It's unlike anything anyone I know has ever been to. My family finds the chicken dance exhilarating. But Rachel's wedding isn't supposed to be probable...it's supposed to be beautiful. It supposed to represent the reason why these trauma-wracked people bother waking up in the morning. It's an artist's dream. They love one another, and that love is so big and true and consuming and infectious, that it literally MAKES the movie. It makes the pain in the movie bearable.
Life is hard, and
RGM's characters, who are coping with the death of a family member as well as a myriad of other problems: drugs, divorce and detachment, painfully explore
this truth. Mark Twain said, "life is pain, an anyone who tells you differently is selling you something." The only recourse for the torture of existence is love and art.
RGM has plenty of both. P.S. -- yes, Anne Hathway is THAT good, but I thought Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel was even better.
