Everything seems okay at first. The surroundings are familiar. The faces, while new, aren't horrifying or anything spectacular even. Just a bunch of people like the kinds you see in the check-out line at the grocery store. Sure, they might have an inordinately high percentage of overly priced yet quaintly designed jars of jam or pickles in their carts. Lots of bran, to be sure. They might talk too loudly in the produce aisle, and allow their young children to sword-fight with carrots, knocking into elderly people trying to pass. But who doesn't, right? What matters is they're friendly with open faces and liberal hearts!
If you just threw up in your mouth a little at that last sentence, then you should come sit next to me right now, because that was the devolution of feeling I went through watching Rachel Getting Married. An well-crafted film, to be sure - I give Jonathan Demme credit for expertly placing the audience right there at this event... this infernal event... see, the problem is I realized about halfway in that I didn't want to be anywhere near these people, and certainly not as close as Demme was getting me.I should step back a bit before I come off too harsh, and get back to the things about Rachel Getting Married I do admire. Like I said, Demme's work behind the camera is tops. The editing is appropriately loose and the cinematography nicely naturalistic - all of the technical aspects are well managed to expertly create a sense of you-are-there, right in the middle of it all. As for the performances, if this film had been edited down to the scenes between Anne
Hathaway and Debra Winger - to everything including Winger, really - I'd have had a much easier time with it. Their scenes were great; Winger, with very little explicit to work with, crafted the film's most indelible character. You could see the seams here and there in Hathaway's performance as dysfunction-magnet Kym (and I swear that if they insisted on hitting me in the face with her "Oh, Sex Pistols stickers! She must be edgy!" bullshit another time I might've insisted on a very stern talking to with the film) but mostly I thought Hathaway did a terrific job of slipping into the jittery narcissism of an over-coddled train-wreck.Anisa George as the protective best friend of Rachel was really wonderful in an unforgiving role - she was right on to distrust Kym, but Kym is, well, played by Anne Hathaway, and that means her hatin' is an unforgiving role - and Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel did have some really nice moments...
... with a character built to make me cringe, on every level of personality design. See, this is what it comes down to - for the most part, I thought the performances were good. I thought the film-making was well done. But these people... I don't want to spend two hours with these people. And I can pin-point the two moments when my opinion of them curdled, and they both have to do with Rachel. During the rehearsal dinner scene, when Rachel started feeling deeply the saxophone player's song for her... UGH. Nothing makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand faster and my stomach flip quicker than when someone starts feeling it that way. And then... her wedding theme. Saris? Seriously? You're wearing saris? For absolutely no explained reason besides, I assume, to continue on showing off how rich your upper-middle-class liberal sensibilities of multi-cultural admiration are. Eww. That sort of superficial - that is to mean literally, surface - assimilation of another culture for seemingly no more benefit other than to outwardly express one's liberalism makes my fucking skin crawl. It's like shouting, look, we have African art-work on our walls! And I wear expensive imported beads from Somalia! Ugh. And OF COURSE there was a kid on leave from the service there and OF COURSE the film TWICE gave voice to wanting him to come home in a very stern "We love you but are against this war" tone. UGH. And then the groom SANG his vows, and that band was RIDICULOUS, and then there were hipster geeks in contrasting bow-ties dancing with SHOWGIRLS at the reception, and I HAD JUST HAD ENOUGH OF THESE FUCKING PEOPLE. I felt trapped at a party with a bunch of people I wanted - NEEDED - to punch in the face immediately.
And well... listen, I don't want to be indecent here, but... was Bill Irwin's father character supposed to be... touched? In the head, I mean? What the hell was wrong with him? I thought Irwin, an actor I've liked before, was just ghastly. Terrible. Hammy and ridiculous and out-of-control. I could almost have seen the film swerving into a horror film where Irwin's character was supposed to have been possessed by the ghost of his dead toddler son - that is the only was I can make sense of the way he was behaving every time he was on-screen. Like, dial it back, man. Dial it the fuck back.But no, in this suburban cesspool of unquenchable narcissism, dialing it back wouldn't be doing anybody any good, would it? If you're not screaming your feelings out in front of a crowd of like-minded strangers and loved ones, you're not really living after all.
Drive away, Debra Winger! Drive quickly, and don't look back! You'll turn into a pillar of flavored sea salts if you do!
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11 comments:
"and OF COURSE there was a kid on leave from the service there and OF COURSE the film TWICE gave voice to wanting him to come home in a very stern "We love you but are against this war" tone."
Oh no. Anything but that. Can't stand it. Stinks of upper class white liberalism.
I mean, of course I agree with the sentiment. And I'm so liberal I'm probably spilling into far left extremism. But it was like this movie had a checklist and was desperate to hit all the exact right notes to show us How Very Understanding And Good These People Are. It just came off as poseur-ish bullshit to me.
I mean, I agree too but why does every movie now have to have a message? Couldn't a movie like Rachel Getting Married get by WITHOUT making an anti war message? It's the same thought I had during The Visitor when they showed an anti war banner near the beginning. I was, like, "Really, The Visitor? Did that have any real point?"
This should have been named Actors Getting Married ( actors who have been through far too much analysis and probably did a 12 step program just for the experience). If this was intended to be a liberal movie I wish they had made a point of how creepily Christian 12 step is rather than giving it a big ballet hug and two air kisses.
I've been to actor weddings, this was spot on, and not something I ever wanted to pay for.
Well it's the sort of "we accept everybody!" liberalism that would never think of calling out any religion's bullshit, much less the eternal wisdom of 12 stepping.
I'm only going to state my case on this so far, as it's pretty clear we're just coming at this movie from two different directions entirely. But for me, the kinds of people these were was totally beside the point. Yes, they were a very specific type of liberal/hipster/multi-cultural-window-dressing kind of family; of course they're against the war and make a point fo saying so. Of course the groom's going to sing his vows because he lives his life in music or whatever whatever. Of course one of their friends is a DJ and another one sings world music and another has those awful (hilarious) pink sunglasses.
To me, the kinds of people these were was less important than the fact that their specificity made the whole thing seem completely real. I know people like this. Clearly, you know people like this. And this is the kind of wedding they'd put on.
i think we part ways in that, while this experience isn't MY experience, I find them well-intentioned and not hateful or worthy of having vital organs cut out of them, whereas you...feel differently, let's say.
But I think grounding the film in something so specific and making it all ring (sometimes cringingly) true lays the groundwork for some seriously impactful emotion.
And that's all I'll say because HOLY GOD are we not gonna be able to talk about this one.
It's a perfectly reasonable argument, Joe, and I do admit that I have an especially large stick up my ass when it comes to these sorts of people. But then, the specificity of who they are, from where I'm standing, is integral to the entire voice of the movie. And I don't like what it's saying or how it's saying it. Like these kinds of folks, it just rang false to me on so many levels. It was all so tidy in its sloppiness, like the lovingly under-designed furnishings of their old but not-too-old home built for 5000. The dog, the costumes, the pillows! They all drove me fucking nuts.
All that said, Debra Winger, bless her lucky ass, got an underwritten part that she worked magic with. She got to be quiet, and not scream her feelings - except in that really, really phenomenal scene between her and Annie at her home with all the punching! - and leave her character wonderfully vague. I loved everything having to do with her, because the movie didn't cram her into this claustrophobic box of over-characterization like it did with everybody else.
Everybody else was So Layered, with Many Layers, Layers Upon Layers Of Layers, Deep Meaningful People, Good And Bad and yadda yadda just hit the exact expected note on every freaking specific point. It's supposed extemporaneous sloppiness was diagrammed to the hilt at every given opportunity, it was wearying.
Joe, you missed a point. The actor weddings I have been to have been anything but genuine, everything is about the bold reaction. This movie did not ring true. The only ringing was my ears from the shriek of a bunch of insecure actors constantly going way over the top in a attempt to stand out and "supporting" each other. I only identified with the Winger character, the one who ran away.
The few points of well acted emotions we drowned by the ham acting surrounding them.
You might want to lay off of Brothers and Sisters, it is clouding your judgment
...Okay.
But what was the deal with that giant poodle? I mean, fuck.
"Rachel Getting Married" is the first movie I walked out on in the theater exactly for the reasons you gave, JA. I did not want to spend another minute with these people. At all. I didn't care. It was so infuriating how smug and self-involved everyone, and I didn't see the point of spending time with these people.
By the time we had the 5th song for the happy couple and the 7th toast to the happy couple at the rehearsal dinner, I was done.
If you want to see a good movie about a big wedding with some musical interludes, family drama, and also shot on digital video, watch "Monsoon Wedding".
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