Whad’ja Think: Rachel Getting Married

With the possible exception of certain horror genres, “cringe” is not a word that most people hope to see in a recommendation.  Common connotations, however, often don’t tell the whole story. Consider the case of Rachel Getting Married, a movie that made me cringe for all the right reasons.  And with the right frequency – I didn’t cringe throughout, and the occasional cringes were hardly my only physical reaction to the film.  They were good ones, though, and without them I wouldn’t have made it to the fond grins and I found later.  I cringe because I care.

I’ve attended a lot of weddings over the last decade, and at nearly every one (my own certainly included) I’ve been struck by the high-stakes atmosphere of the event. Weddings have an uncanny knack for coaxing latent agendas and resentments out of hiding places in even the most apparently harmonious families; the most that be hoped for is that the appearance of unbroken harmony is maintained in the eyes of the guests. Since most of us don’t have dysfunction-free families, throwing a wedding is a calculated gamble from the outset.

I don’t know that I’ve seen a better dramatization of this phenomenon than Rachel Getting Married. Anne Hathaway is absolutely worthy of the plaudits she’s been receiving for her performance as Kym, the wild card at the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). Kym has an iffy haircut, bad posture, and an all-too-acute awareness of her status as the blackest sheep in the family.  Chain-smoking, self-absorbed and blunt to a fault, she balances carefully-placed chips on both her slouching shoulders.  This is a character who expects disapproval, and there’s plenty in her to disapprove of.  I cared for her tremendously.

As realized by Hathaway, Kym wants to be better than she is.  She wants to be the sister that Rachel needs by her at her wedding, but she doesn’t know how.  The guilt for her past misdeeds, and the damage they did to her family, is a burden I very much wanted to see her overcome.

For her part, Rachel doesn’t make things any easier. She’s settled in to her status as the “good” daughter, and she’s got the kindly fiancee and bright future as a psychologist to show for it.  As Kym oh-so-unsubtly points out, Rachel enjoys being the non-deficient one largely for the leverage it affords her to excoriate Kym for being a fuckup.  That Rachel is the almighty bride gives her an additional leg up, which she’s not averse to using. DeWitt, an actress I don’t recall seeing before, never steps wrong in a role laden with possible pitfalls – if we don’t ultimately like Rachel, then we won’t care if Kym ruins her wedding.

Also worth a significant note is Bill Irwin as the girls’ father. It’s tempting to analogize Irwin’s performance as the beset dad to the kind of plate-spinning antics he’s proved his genius for in his career as an über-clown (if you’ve never seen his stuff, here – you’re welcome) — but to do so would be merely glib, and unjust to the nuance of the work he does in the film. Irwin’s natural warmth and good humor stand in relief to the limitations of his character that become apparent. The presence of as a habitual apologist and people-pleaser amidst the discord is familiar in more ways than one. The only minor fault I can find with Irwin’s character is that he is named Paul Buchman – apparently screenwriter Jenny Lumet found the incongruous association with Paul Rieser’s character from the cutesy sitcom Mad About You not worth avoiding.

Jonathan Demme’s direction of the movie reveals his affection for the stripped-down, grainier, independent-film quality that the material requires. It should be noted that film does occasionally fall prey to that genre’s familiar bugbear of jittery handheld camera work; the film’s eventual arrival on video should significantly reduce the necessity for Dramamine. The movie is nicely accented by a lot of impromptu-feeling musicianship, obviated by the groom’s being a musician of some kind. The suffusion of ambient rehearsing and jamming provides a nice counterpoint – not to mention what should be a worthwhile soundtrack recording.