Movie Review – “Rachel Getting Married”

I usually stay through the credits of any movie on principle alone. But at the end of Jonathan Demme’s new film, “Rachel Getting Married,” I really wanted to. The lovely, distant final image of the film remained onscreen, floating prettily, as the credits began to roll, and I felt that I was still inside the world of the film. I wanted to stay with the people who had been expressing themselves and interacting in front of me for the last couple hours, to learn more about their lives. Somehow, though, when the credits finished, it was enough; I could leave these beautiful and difficult people to their unresolved lives and be satisfied.

If you saw “The Celebration,” Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 masterpiece, in the Film Series last semester, you may experience some déjà vu during this one. Both films are about occasions that reunite families with troubled pasts. In ’Rachel,” the wedding of the titular sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) brings her sister, Kym (Anne Hathaway), back from rehab to the home that served as the nursery for her various addictions, and to the family to whom those addictions caused irreparable damage and loss. Like “The Celebration,” Demme’s movie is filmed on hand-held digital video, creating jittery visuals suited to the story’s emotional tensions. “Rachel” is not as intense and emotionally hard-hitting as “The Celebration,” which deals with incest and suicide; and it is less visually stunning than that film, which uses its murk, graininess and shaky-cam to produce creepy, baroque expressions of a family’s evil heritage. But “Rachel” treats its characters with more warmth and subtlety and is more willing to let their contradictions play out organically.

The family in question here has a dark past, scarred by divorce, childhood eating disorders and drug addictions, and the death of a teenaged son. You wouldn’t think it, however, looking at the wedding rehearsal dinner, where everyone is smiling and warm, telling wacky anecdotes about the past and toasting each other. It’s a liberal, wealthy family, and their cultural tolerance and eclectic taste are on proud display throughout the tradition-be-damned, New Age-y ceremony, with its splashy mixture of Indian, European and Latin American influences in the decorations. The bride is white and the groom is black, and this is never an issue. A slight off-note is struck when the groom’s mother sincerely tells the group that she prayed for Rachel to come, and everyone chuckles. It’s a very tolerant chuckle, which only emphasizes the condescension: “Oh, she believes that God answers prayers…how cute.” The mother goes on to declare, “This is what heaven will be like.” Everyone in the utopia of tolerance applauds warmly, but Demme’s camera lingers on unsmiling Kym, who has not yet spoken. Kym’s speech is embarrassing and attention-grabbing; she tests the group’s tolerance by talking about her own history of offenses and fuck-ups for too long before finally apologizing and toasting Rachel. At the end, everyone claps and the rosy speeches continue, but the spell has been broken. Later, Rachel upbraids Kym for her selfishness.

Kym certainly is selfish. When, in the middle of an argument, Rachel reveals to everyone that she is pregnant (which, of course, is an occasion for joy rather than shame in this milieu), Kym whines, “This is so unfair!” and berates Rachel for changing the subject. Over the course of the film, we learn just how much Kym has hurt and deceived her family in the past. The film sticks to her with patience, however, and it’s impossible not to sympathize with her, even at her brattiest. Her visits to vaguely religious addict recovery meetings are especially poignant, as she prays and pours out her heart with bracing honesty. The sense of community at these meetings is more intense and binding than the bland pleasantries of the wedding party, but it is also harder to sustain. There is a troubling contradiction between Kym’s submissive behavior at these meetings and her selfish behavior with the family. This is highlighted when another recovered addict from the meetings, Kieran (Mather Zickle), turns out to be best man at the wedding and the two promptly sneak off for casual sex. Still, it helps us understand that Kym’s desperate, needy behavior is rooted in a desire to grapple with her addictions and her past, and it parallels the troubling contradictions in the rest of the family’s behavior.

As in “The Celebration,” the most genuinely sinister character here turns out (arguably) to be the mother. She is a pleasant, warm lady who speaks lovingly of both her daughters and treats Kym like a charmingly mischievous child. Only when Kym confronts her mother privately does the fundamental ugliness of the relationship emerge. The rest of the family eventually comes around and forgives Kym, even embracing her. Late in the wedding night, Kym finds the bride and groom and hugs them; Kieran joins them, completing a big, happy free-love sandwich. Then the mother appears, and everything changes. Kym is no longer happy. She doesn’t need a nicey-nice hug from a group of pleasant people; she needs her mother’s love. Mother smiles and announces politely that she is leaving. Kym stares desperately at her: needing closure and forgiveness, getting only a perfunctory goodbye hug. Maybe this isn’t quite what heaven is like.

It is this tension that tortures the family and the film: the pleasantness of New Age-y good feeling versus the deep-seated pull of heritage and tradition. There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the way this family tries to avoid acknowledging this tension. Still, the film thrives in this in-between space, and that’s where it leaves us. Kym must accept her mother’s distance and learn to value the love she can get. The film’s ending is sad and beautiful; a grim and confused family drama leads to a place of pleasant, peaceful melancholy, and it makes perfect sense. The unresolved ending is enough simply because it has to be.