Rachel Getting Married - A Wonderful Union

Like Zombie did a few weeks ago, yesterday I treated myself to a morning at the cinema and saw Rachel Getting Married. Written by Jenny Lumet, Rachel Getting Married is, as I'm sure you're well aware by now, about dysfunctional ex-junkie Kym, played wonderfully by Anne Hathaway, getting leave from rehab to attend her sister Rachel's wedding. and all that happens over that wedding weekend.

Normally, I'm a little skeptical of heavy family dramas. Don't get me wrong, there are a number of excellent movies of this variety. but there's a certain mood I have to find myself in in order to sit through the ups and downs of a family's crazy roller coaster ride of a relationship on film. however, one of the many things I found interesting about Rachel was that most of the turbulent events already happened - off-screen - well before the movie began. I'd be lying if I said that the family had ironed out all of its problems by the time the film started. On the other hand, though, this seemed, for lack of a better word, to be a very 'normal' family. What Kym has both gone through and put the family through has tested this family, even pulled it apart in some cases. Yet I believed everything that these people said and did. Though I have not personally encountered any of the major ordeals that these people did (drug abuse and rehab, death of a sibling - not a spoiler, as you figure this out pretty damn early on), I believed that the character acted as people in such situations would.

A few other things of note about the film (and script) are worth mentioning. For one, the audience learns a lot, and I mean A LOT about Rachel and the circumstances of her present situation in the first few minutes of the film. This is very much not a movie that, if you decide to wait for the DVD, you could put in and make a sandwich in the kitchen while it begins. There is a ton of information subtly yet noticeably dropped in the first two or three minutes of the picture that explains a great deal about Rachel's character. It's quite interesting, actually, as I'm not used to so much being given at the top of a film - it was sort of the dialogue equivalent of the scroll at the beginning of Star Wars, only it mattered more to the plot.

Also, Rachel Getting Married had some of the most fully realized characters I've seen on the screen recently, in spite of the fact that there were literally dozens of people on camera for much of the film. I felt as though I knew or at least knew of almost everybody who appeared on camera. From the pampered, prissy maid of honor to the groomsman who thinks he's cooler than he really is to the spiritual mother-in-law, everyone on film was a genuine, fleshed out person, not just a stereotype to fill a necessary role. Sure, the prissy maid of honor might sound like a stereotype in some cases, but in Rachel, I felt as though I knew this person, knew who she was and her general life story, and I knew that she belonged. The characters, even those who had few lines or little screen time, were real, and that, more than anything, is a testament to the writing.

Rachel Getting Married, while unsettlingly awkward at times, is a great watch. Jonathan Demme's direction does great honor to what must be, in my opinion, the driving force behind the strength of this picture - Jenny Lumet's script. I'll be looking for this script to give it a read, and possibly, to appear as one of the five nominees at the next Academy Awards.