rachel getting married

so i’m out of school again and back to seeing movies. and that means writing about them. it’s the little way i make sure that i’m still thinking when i don’t have to write an essay every 2 weeks or so. since this is the first blog back since my hiatus, i’m open to suggestions…what i’m mostly thinking is whether or not i make these little reviews spoiler-free or not. currently, i’m leaning towards spoiler-free since i think more people will be likely to read them. but, either way, i welcome feedback and discussion – please weigh in! down to business…

i saw rachel getting married last night. this film premiered (i think) at the toronto international film festival, but i didn’t get a chance to see it there. it’s the newest film from jonathan demme (yeah…silence of the lambs. wtf?) everything i keep hearing is about how diverse a director he is, basically because people can’t find a constant theme or even style across his work. you might say he defies the auteur theory. and i think i agree…i couldn’t even fake some connection between anthony hopkins’ hannibal lector and anne hathaway’s kim. but i’d love to hear any attempts!

so, first off – i liked this movie quite a bit. mostly because it was a relatively original story, and the acting was great. anne hathaway was especially delightful. she plays kim (rachel’s sister), a recovering drug addict who is returning home from rehab for her sister’s wedding. kim is a self-obsessed person – always expecting people to focus on her, given that she’s received a lot of attention in the past due to her various addictions (which she alludes to comedically in passing). many important plot points and histories of the characters are elucidated this way – through brief references that are not difficult to piece together. i much prefer this to being told explicitly the details of the past – it seems more realistic this way – as often we don’t explain in detail our histories to people we know well. there is one scene i can recall where this does happen, but it occurs when kim is divulging a piece of personal information to her narcotics anonymous (NA) group, and that felt pretty natural to me. (no spoilers!)

the film is focused entirely around rachel and kim’s family, as well as rachel’s fiancé, sidney, and his family. rachel and kim’s parents are divorced and both remarried – the father’s side of the family is much more involved in the wedding and the lives of the two women than their mother and her husband. sidney is a black man and rachel is white – this fact is never verbalized, though obviously…obvious. i’m not sure whether its omission is due to its irrelevance plot-wise or to simply avoid any potentially offensive pitfalls, OR to avoid getting into issues of race that the film simply doesn’t have time for. i bring this up because i was honestly surprised that it wasn’t mentioned in the film. i half-expected there to be a crotchety grandparent character that objected or something along those lines…but nothing. i haven’t made up my mind about this. but I think it needs to be addressed. i mean, it’s great if the film is suggesting that race is a completely irrelevant issue, but i think this is somewhat unrealistic, even still, for many people and families. i think perhaps it serves to further the theme of blending families that can be seen in the film. divorce and race both serve to alter the family structures from the typical homogenous nuclear family to one with step-parents and different races. both of these things can be said to expand (or break down, however you choose to see it) the family.

and this brings me to kim herself, who has been a source of stress, drama, and difficulty for her family. before kim’s return from rehab, it seems as though things in their home had been moving smoothly, but that every other character expected problems when she did come back. her father is overly protective, though well-meaning, while her mother barely acknowledges that she has been absent – she pays most attention to kim when scolding her for poor behavior (ie smoking indoors). kim seems to desire something between these poles – she demands a great amount of attention, but doesn’t want to be coddled by her parents.

this contradiction in kim’s character is what i find most interesting about this film, and more specifically, the way anne hathaway walks this line – making kim sympathetic in one instant, yet painfully annoying and childlike in others. at the outset, we know this film is about kim – it begins with her parents picking her up from rehab; we are aligned with her and instantly sympathize with her as she has a somewhat painful conversation with her father and step-mother in the car ride home. she is instantly relatable as someone who has difficulty communicating with her parents. even as she arrives home, excited to see her sister, we sympathize that her plight is being overshadowed by the wedding planning happening all around her. kim must go to an n.a. meeting and her father will not even let her borrow a car to go – she must ride her bike. however, in many other instances, we see kim turn into a narcissistic brat. most notably, during her speech at the rehearsal dinner to her sister – kim decides to take this opportunity to make amends with her sister as part of her 12-step recovery. this causes a major argument between the sisters afterwards, as rachel suggests that kim did this not to actually apologize, but to bring all the attention back on herself. it is a painful scene to watch because we as the audience wish kim to stop speaking, and merely wish her sister well; we can recognize that she is indeed attempting to command the attention of the room. one subtle aspect that i thought conveyed this tension in kim was the way she constantly smoked in front of people, indoors, and seemingly anywhere she wished, without consideration for those around her. this seemed to me to point to kim’s self-indulgence. when kim is asked to stop smoking a couple of times in the film, once by her mother and once by her sister’s best friend, we see kim resenting the request, yet still complying. she has gained attention again, but in a negative way – and this allows kim to complain about her family and friends for not being supportive or offering her the attention she needs. even the title of the film fits into kim’s dichotomous personality – the title ‘rachel getting married’ is superficially about the wedding, and rachel’s character. yet kim is the character to utter this line and it is in reference to her return home from rehab, for “rachel getting married”. even when the day or the event is not about kim, she remains present and holding much attention.

and……….one last thing i noticed, the music of the film. we learn that sidney (rachel’s fiancé) has a career in music and that amongst his family and friends, music is a passion. consequently, there is a wide variety of music throughout the film, showcased at the pre-wedding festivities as well as during the wedding day and night. the music really aids in conveying the tone of each scene; similarly balancing the good and bad, and refreshingly, does not give away where the scene is headed, nor does it guide our emotions to a particular conclusion. i would just say pay attention to the different styles while you watch.

that’s it. let me know what you think.

here's the trailer.