Movie Review: Rachel Getting Married

Last weekend Cindy/BB and I were having a quiet Saturday at home, and I suggested we go to a movie.  We have radically different tastes (think "W"=BB and "Quarantine"=Jennifer) so we settled on Rachel Getting Married.  Our great friend Hope did not like the movie and wanted someone to discuss it with and that seemed as good a reason as any to choose it.  So BB got in the shower to prepare but got stalled afterwards.  I found her sitting at the computer in boxers and a sports bra.  I joked, "Honey, you can't go out in that.  It's in the 50's!"  Without missing a beat, she deadpanned, "And I'm in my fifties."  

We did make it out the door eventually, going to Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on the Upper West Side to see the movie.  We ordered the tickets ahead of time on a credit card which was lucky because the movie was sold out.  That makes a movie good automatically seeing the "sold out" headline and watching others get turned away.  Suddenly there is a feeling of being special.  We got in line for our popcorn (what my mom refers to as the real reason to go to any movie).  This theater is full of UWS older Jews and the concession stand even sells smoked salmon (never great for sitting next to in the theater).  When we got into the theater itself, the only seats left that were together were front row.  I had forgotten my glasses so this was actually good for me.

The movie started out better than it finished, in my opinion.  As it progressed, it seemed to get too excited about itself, and the scenes became more pretentious.  The star of the movie is Kym (played by Anne Hathaway), a young woman who accidentally killed her little brother when she was young because she was out driving with him when she was high.  Now she's in and out of rehab and on her way to her sister's wedding.

This movie was written by Jenny Lumet, and I read some interviews of her regarding the script.  She comes from an interracial family (with a number of famous people including Lena Horne, Sidney Lumet, and a few others).  The couple getting married is also interracial.  Rachel (the bride) is Caucasian, and the groom is African American.  In the movie there are also a few Asian people present throughout the rehearsal events.  BB got caught up in wondering who the Asian people were, so it may interest her to know that Jenny addressed that in one of her interviews, explaining that she had a few Asian cousins in her family.  She said that one of the things she has loved about her family and that she wanted to present in the movie is ethnic diversity without explanation. 

My favorite scene in the movie was the scene in which toasts were being given at the rehearsal dinner.  The awkwardness, strangeness, and forced love mixed with real love that we experience during such toasts was captured well.  This was a movie that was very focused on verbal exchanges in a dark, intense, chaotic, conflict-laden, at times thought-provoking way.  I'm a fan of this style of movie (lots of talk with not much real action), often seen in Woody Allen's great films, such as Hannah and her Sisters, Manhattan, and Husbands and Wives.  In reviews "Rachel Getting Married" is often compared with the movie "Margot at the Wedding," another dark chick flick with a borderline personality disordered woman at its center.  Reviews have described "Rachel..." as the better of the two movies but, while I liked both, I was a lot more fond of Margot at the Wedding."  It was less pretentious, more down-to-earth, and I could identify with more of the characters.  It was also lighter, funnier, and made more sense to me.

In interviews Jenny Lumet has said that the character of the father is based in part on her own father (Sidney Lumet).  In the movie whenever anyone is upset the father offers them a sandwich, and he is obsessive about loading the dishwasher.  Jenny said that these are taken right from her own experience growing up with her father.  There is an extended scene involving the dishwasher in the movie, and frankly I thought I'd pass out from boredom.  The other scene that I'm sure many others enjoyed but which I didn't involved a loooonnnngggg musical/dancing scene at the reception of the wedding, filled with "beautiful" and "multicultural" performances and guests enjoying themselves.  Oy vey.  I was so bored I was thinking of going into the lobby for some smoked salmon (Just kidding about the salmon.).  

In interviews Jenny said that she wanted to show an amazing, interesting wedding so that people wouldn't over-identify in a positive way with Kym, the rehab fuck-up,  often almost ruining the wedding.  She said that had the wedding been seen as formal and plain that she would not have been able to capture how Kym was both a character with whom to empathize but also one who was causing upset in a truly beautiful event.  

I very much identified with Kym, the one in the family who is full of drama and always turning the attention on herself.  I saw my brother in Rachel, who missed out on her parents' attention because she was too much of a good girl.  

I liked how the movie captured the weird feelings of family members drawn together for an event such as a wedding, a funeral, or a parent's illness.  By drawn together, I don't necessarily mean it in a positive way.  It just is what happens during life's big events.  It reminded me of the good movie "The Savages" in which a brother and sister come together as adults to place their father in a nursing home.  It's always such an indescribable feeling to be faced with a big life event and to be spending such extended time with family members who we so often avoid spending prolonged time with in our everyday life.

All in all, the progressively overly dramatic scenes made me think of the so often ineffective yet manipulative emotion jerking elements of chick flicks, but I'd take this movie over "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" any day!

*To find out what type of cuisine we had for dinner afterwards, please go to the "Comments" for this special bonus information.