Rachel Getting Married

I often cry in movies, at the sappy parts, exactly the parts where the movie is designed to make you cry. TV shows, too. Actually, I often cry in previews. This is embarrassingly unmanly. I'm pretty comfortable with myself, so I can confess certain embarrassing things. Consider, though, that even though most sane adult men will admit to, just for example, the sort of embarrassing fact that they watch porn and masturbate, most sane adult men are not willing to do this in public.

So with crying in movies, for me. Sure, I'll willingly efface myself a bit and admit that I teared up during numerous protracted gooey lovelorn longing scenes in A Very Long Engagement, a movie I loathe. Had I seen it alone in the privacy of my home I would likely have been blubbering, but I saw it in a theater with three friends, so I choked back the tears. If you suffer a similar affliction, you may recognize some of the strategies: look away from the screen, take a deep breath, have a sip of your soda, think about what you have to do at work tomorrow, pull your damn self together, man, and back to the movie. Frequently, though, the sorts of scenes that reduce me to a quivering-lipped boob are drawn out over at least several minutes, so a couple lines of confessional emotional dialogue or a couple lingering sad-faced camera shots later it's the whole song and dance again. The worst is when, like Engagement, it's movies or shows I don't much like that cue the waterworks. I feel so duped, like such a rube. Like a duped rube.

As the buzz started building for Rachel Getting Married a couple months ago, I was excited for a number of reasons, just one of which was that the movie is loaded with the sort of emotional crap I'm a sucker for: family trauma and bonds, people coming together across social boundaries, addiction and recovery. Love conquering all. (Well. Not really. That is something I'm a sucker for, but more on it's role in Married below.) My only trepidation going to the movie was that there would surely be a lot of fighting back my very unmanly tears.

It is directed by Jonathan Demme, who, despite directing a lot of probably sucky movies I haven't seen and despite a four year hiatus from fiction filmmaking, was responsible for the exemplary Silence of the Lambs. It is also being compared extensively to The Celebration: it's shot in the same verité style, has the same democratic, Robert Altman-style group character story, the same efforts in the script and performances to capture an emotional naturalism, and is similarly about an extended family gathering and the inevitable demon-confronting there. Demme has the ability to tell nuanced stories, which is exactly what's needed in a movie like this.

Anne Hathaway plays Kym, who at the opening of the movie waits with another patient and a nurse at a residential clinic. There's an implication that Kym and the woman have a relationship beyond nurse-patient. Her dad picks her up to take her home for her sister Rachel's wedding. On the drive to their family house (or better, estate) he is hesitant to say when Kym, who has clearly not seen the family in a while, will see her mother. They arrive, and he tries to feed her as she ignores him and wanders around the house.

The nervous energy Hathaway exudes in these opening moments is appropriate to the situation and the character, so it's only in retrospect that I can see it's the actress who is uncomfortable and awkwardly bombastic. Her association with kiddy movies (Princess Diaries) and recently with crappy movies (Devil Wears Prada, Get Smart) is a reason a lot of people may skip this film, though her alleged coming-out party as a qualified serious lead actress will draw a lot of others. Neither camp is fully justified; her performance down the stretch is inconsistent, as she truly shines at times, but delivers plenty of groaners. When you see that from an actor, it is my opinion that the fault lies with the director, who is responsible for guiding the performer's interpretation of the role during shooting and, perhaps even more importantly, choosing the best takes in the editing room later. Demme fails to assemble a quality performance with an actress who seems equipped to deliver one.

His other big failure as the movie proceeds is apparently an inability to differentiate when subtlety is and is not called for. The little scenes described above that begin the movie work because the sketchy delineation of the characters and their relationships is nuanced. Though the movie continues to present itself matter-of-factly, some themes are driven pretty deep into the ground, while others are brushed over or feel tacked on.

Bill Irwin's father character, Paul, is a perfect example. His parental desire to feed Kym in the opening sequence is a nice character touch which is soon made into his defining, annoying characteristic. At risk in any indie movie or in any ensemble movie is real character depth, often mistaken or sacrificed for character quirks. For the entire film, any time anyone arrives or departs (or sometimes just because), Paul tries to feed them. Some of the audience laugh, but the rest of us go "OK, we get it."

(Minor spoilers next two paragraphs.)

He is defined by "domesticity" rather then by complicated human traits, so we are amused and find it plausible when, in a lovely scene that springs from nowhere, a confrontation between him and Rachel's fiancé, Tunde Adebimpe as Sidney, over how to most efficiently load a dishwasher transforms into a raucous timed spectator competition. Cheered on by his family and guests and exuberant with braggadocio, Paul demands more dishes, and from a pile grabs a plastic plate. He stops in his tracks, and the tone in the room turns from joyous to awkward as he leaves without a word or an expression on his face, turning again to morbid as we see it is a plate hand-drawn by his young deceased son Ethan.

The moment ruins the scene not just for the characters, but for me. It's a very cleverly arranged trick, and as the evident calling card of the script it may earn writer Jenny Lumet a few awards, and will certainly be screened in classes and workshops for years. The problem is that, more than an hour into the film, I've been given no reason to believe Paul would do that. Much is made throughout the movie of Ethan's death and its relation to Kym's addiction and the family's dysfunction, such that Paul has already been given numerous opportunities to react strongly to reminders of Ethan, and not done so. Why now?

Married is a good movie, but not a great one, and it's weaknesses are prominently displayed. The fairly effective naturalism does a lot to obscure that the plot itself is pure melodrama, cast from the Lifetime movie or daytime television mold, but that same naturalism pushes bad dialogue and/or rough dialogue delivery right in your face. Furthermore, it only takes a small step back to see that the world portrayed here is a utopian fantasy: the families of the black groom and the pregnant white bride meet for the first time at the white folks' Connecticut mansion, and they have a joyous, multicultural celebration for the wedding as talented musicians wander about the grounds, constantly playing their folksy multicultural instruments. (Robyn freakin' Hitchcock shows up to play the reception.)

But I am always compelled when examining things closely to enumerate their flaws, as it's more interesting (and easier) than praising their admirable qualities, of which Married has plenty. There is pure viewing pleasure in a movie so willfully focused on humans celebrating each other and all their love and such. The attention to the details of the wedding ceremony, reception and subsequent party is pornographic; watching it actually feels a lot like going to a wedding, but a really good one where you know and like almost everybody there. That kind of immersive real-world-but-better atmospere is the raw escapism many of us go to the movies for, and an accomplishment of craft that shouldn't be discounted. The aforementioned unrealistic utopia where this movie is set is a fantasy, but a tremendously joyous one, and joy is a difficult thing to capture in narrative without resorting to cliché. Married does so expertly.

The movie also acknowledges that the problems presented in this story, however shaky their presentation, are not resolvable. It lays out the structure of familial love in all its complexity, and then concludes that in the face of tragedy and the inevitability human weakness, those bonds are not enough. The script and production resist the urge to resort to the inherently conservative but, in movies and especially in drama, prevalent message that Love Conquors All while also not caving to the reactionary juvenile pessimism that can be found in many indies and/or "art" films.

So I got suckered into the wet-eyed stuff by the emotional turns of the script and the sometimes brilliant, largely extemporaneous, and sometimes overwrought performances, but I didn't feel duped by an inferior film, and rather enjoyed the whole experience. I can't unconditionally recommend the film. It's melodromatic and shrill, and I can't hope for any intelligent, discriminating viewer to see much past that, but it's the sort of film where I wish they could. I wish they could disregard the many flaws and revel, as I did at times, in the unabashed optimism and celebration of love, and, you know, have a good cry.