Rachel Getting Married

Released:  October 3^rd, 2008

Rated:  R

Studio:  Sony Pictures Classics

Starring:  Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger, Anna Deavere Smith, Tunde Adebimpe

Directed by:  Jonathan Demme

Written by:  Jenny Lumet

Personal Bias Alert:  identifies with Rachel, wouldn’t want to attend this wedding

8 of 10

            This isn’t my family.  I’m not from Connecticut money, my father didn’t hobnob with artists, and no one in my family is a psychologist (my psych minor is the closest we’ve got).  In my family, the weddings tend to be small affairs, and my favorite part is usually guessing how much longer we have before the table of chain smoking, oxygen sucking extended relatives blow up the reception.  And yet, I found myself connecting with this family, recognizing little moments of anguish and joy and relishing in the words they gave me to describe my own family grievances.

            Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) may get the title and the marriage, but the film is about her hurricane of a sister.  The family’s life, it seems, has been engulfed by Kym (Anne Hathaway) for most of her life.  A nasty drug addiction has caused her to bring nothing but drama and disappointment to their clan, and the mistrust that has instilled is apparent as soon as Kym checks out of rehab for her sister’s wedding.  There’s still love there; Rachel embraces her with a joyous smile as soon as Kym appears and her father’s paternal care is embodied by how often he tries to feed her.  Slowly though, as Kym’s behavior proves to be erratic and inappropriate, their guards come up and old wounds are opened.

            Before this film, I never would have described Hathaway as a natural actress.  I liked her in several things, but I could always feel her effort, could always see the actress behind the character.  That’s what makes her performance in Rachel Getting Married so revelatory.  Watching her is like seeing the kid you’ve been rooting for finally hit that home run.  You knew he had it in him, it just took him a while to get there.  Hathaway finally boldly and loudly stepped into her character’s shoes, and it feels just right.

            Rosemarie DeWitt serves as Hathaway’s co-star, counterpoint, and foil.  For all Kym’s loudness, DeWitt’s Rachel is reserved and solid.  Having played a similar role in my own family, I must admit that I connect to Rachel more, and perhaps because of that mildly prefer DeWitt’s performance to Hathaway’s.  Make no mistake, I think both are excellent (along with Bill Irwin as their father), but DeWitt is the one that gets under my skin.  There’s a large, dramatic scene about halfway through the film in which DeWitt lays bare Rachel’s feelings, and she embodies the way I feel towards my family so completely that she actually helped me to better understand my own emotions.

            I give DeWitt a lot of credit for her performance, but of course none of that would have been possible without writer Jenny Lumet.  This is the only screenplay she’s had produced, and its one hell of an effort.  Aside from Rachel, my favorite part is the way she captures the flow of conversations, how they twist and overlap before veering off abruptly into an entirely different direction.  These are the kinds of weighted conversations you have with people you’ve known your whole life, and Lumet captures it in a way not often seen in films.  The screenplay pulls off so many difficult things such as this, that I can’t imagine it’s the only one Lumet has in her.

            Lumet certainly took risks with her screenplay, as did Jonathan Demme with his direction.  I liked many of the choices he made, like shooting handheld to make you feel like you’re jostling through the wedding with everyone else, but some didn’t work out as well.  He indulges a bit too much in the wedding and other extraneous goings-on, and the film loses momentum because of it.  It reminds me of something Christopher Plummer recalled Collin Farrell saying to him while working with the distractible Terrence Malick:  “Aw, we’re just going to be a couple of Ospreys.  He’ll shoot the Ospreys, not us.”  The problem here is that Rachel Getting Married is a character study, so it’s a detriment when the characters become background to the Ospreys.

            Despite this occasional wandering, Rachel Getting Married remains one of my favorite films.  It feels like a very personal film for Lumet and Demme, but it’s open just enough for others to find themselves in.

Other Notes:

Ø  The public’s afraid of me too, Kym.

Ø  The moment with Kym in the kitchen after the dishwasher scene is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve seen.

Ø  Can I hug this film?  I want to hug this film.

Philadelphia

Released:  December 22^nd, 1993

Rated:  PG-13

Studio:  TriStar Pictures

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington

Directed by:  Jonathan Demme

Written by:  Ron Nyswaner

Personal Bias Alert:  who doesn’t love Hanks and Denzel?

6 of 10

            Philadelphia is very much a period piece, a work intended to shed light on a prominent issue of its time.  Works such as this, no matter what the medium, can do the world a lot of good.  However, these stories exist due to their context, and as time moves on and cultural attitudes change, the issues they’re railing against often get resolved in one way or another, and the work’s commentary suddenly has nothing to comment on.  The path of history is littered with influential works of art that no longer matter, and I’m afraid that Philadelphia may be destined to join their discarded ranks.

To give this film its best chance, lets discuss some context.  The CDC first used the term AIDS in 1982, one year after the US became the first government to recognize the illness.  In 1983, the CDC ruled out transmission by casual contact, food, water, air, or environmental surfaces, which did little to stem the growing concern.  Actor Rock Hudson became the first celebrity to die of AIDS-related illness in 1985, the same year Ryan White was refused entry to middle school due to having AIDS.  By 1987, AIDS was a global concern, becoming the first disease ever debated on the floor of the UN.  Also that year, the US added HIV to its immigration exclusion list, making it impossible for any HIV+ person to enter the country.  It took eight years for the total number of AIDS cases in the US to reach 100,000 in 1989, and a mere six years for that number to quintuple to 500,000 in 1995.  Smack in the middle of that explosion, AIDS becomes the number one cause of death for US men between the ages of 25 and 44, and Philadelphia became the first major Hollywood film to focus on AIDS.

            With the furor surrounding the AIDS crisis at an all-time high, it’s lucky that a filmmaker like Jonathan Demme was the first to bring the story of an ill lawyer fighting to be treated equally to the masses.  Several of his trademark techniques are highly effective at getting audiences to empathize with his characters, a hurdle any film with a gay, AIDS-stricken character at its center had to overcome.  One such trademark of Demme’s is his stubbornly methodical pacing, which forced his potentially prejudiced audience to stop and take a good, long look at the disease in question.  Another calling card is having his actors look directly into the camera, which made connecting to its two main characters almost effortless.

The subsequent public embrace of Philadelphia’s ill lead has much to do with Demme’s presentation, but you can’t discount the brilliantly cast Tom Hanks.  Remember, at the time Hanks was known as a charming comedy actor, so his startlingly gaunt, sickly appearance was tempered by the public’s general goodwill towards him.  Make no mistake, Hanks turned in a great performance as lawyer Andrew Beckett, but having a recognizable presence such as his was a major aide in making people comfortable with this film.

            Just as important, if not more so, is the audience’s conduit into the film, here played by Denzel Washington.  As a prejudiced man himself, Washington’s Joe Miller is Andrew’s reluctant lawyer, who’s as uncomfortable around Beckett as the audience is.  Washington is the only character who undergoes any major changes, and it’s his journey towards understanding and acceptance that Demme steers the audience towards.

            So, we have a film perfectly set up for its time.  It did what was necessary to impart a message of tolerance to an unwilling audience, which is a wholly admirable undertaking, but the shortcuts it took to get there become blatantly obvious to those of us coming at it from a different perspective.  The time the movie takes to hit you over the head with just how decent Andrew is becomes ponderous.  The prejudiced bosses he’s suing are so evil they may as well pass their time twirling their mustaches, and Miller’s path to acceptance is filled with enough heavy-handed road markers to direct an incoming jetliner.  The whole thing is just so one note that it’s difficult to get whole-heartedly behind it.  If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself nodding along to the film’s message, thinking ‘well duh that’s wrong.’

            I can’t say I was particularly entertained by this film, but it’s pleasant and might still be useful in persuading stragglers to let go of their prejudices.  I can’t imagine anyone whose compassion wouldn’t eke out after seeing Hank’s Kaposi’s sarcoma riddled body.

            Other Notes:

Ø  To write this review, I relied heavily on A Timeline of AIDS found at http://www.aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/aids-timeline/

Ø  The excellent makeup work got across the progression of Andrew’s illness very well.

Ø  I tried not to explain this movie to you like you were a four-year-old.