Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jonathan Demme
Produced by	Jonathan Demme Neda Armian Marc E. Platt
Written by	Jenny Lumet
Starring	Anne Hathaway Rosemarie DeWitt Bill Irwin Anna Deavere Smith Tunde Adebimpe Debra Winger
Music by	Donald Harrison Jr. Zafer Tawil
Cinematography	Declan Quinn
Editing by	Tim Squyres
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s)	October 3, 2008 (2008-10-03)
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$16,020,184[1]

Rachel Getting Married is a 2008 drama film directed by Jonathan Demme, and starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin and Debra Winger. The film was released in the U.S. to select theaters on October 3, 2008. The film opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival. The film also opened in Canada's Toronto Film Festival on September 6, 2008. Hathaway was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actress for her role, but lost to Kate Winslet in The Reader.

Plot

Kym (Hathaway) is released from rehab for a few days so she can go home to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (DeWitt). At home, the atmosphere is strained between Kym and her family members as they struggle to reconcile themselves with her past and present. Kym's father shows intense concern for her well-being and whereabouts, which Kym interprets as mistrust. She also resents her sister's choice of her best friend Emma (Anisa George), rather than Kym, to be her maid of honor. Rachel, for her part, resents the attention her sister's drug addiction is drawing away from her wedding, a resentment that comes to a head at the rehearsal dinner, where Kym, amid toasts from friends and family, takes the microphone to offer an apology for her past actions, as part of her twelve-step program.

Underlying the family's dynamic is a tragedy that occurred many years previously, which Kym retells at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. As a teenager, Kym was responsible for the death of her young brother Ethan, who was left in her care one day; driving home from a nearby park, an intoxicated Kym had lost control of the car, driving over a bridge and into a lake, where her brother drowned.

The day before the wedding, as Rachel, Kym, and the other bridesmaids are getting their hair done, Kym is approached by a man whom she knew from an earlier stint in rehab. He thanks her for the strength she gave him through a story about having been molested by an uncle and having cared for her sister, who was anorexic. Rachel, hearing this, storms out. The story, it turns out, was all a lie — an apparent attempt by Kym to evade responsibility for her addiction.

The sisters' fight comes to a head later that night at their father's house, when Kym comes home. As it turns out, Rachel still blames her for Ethan's death, despite their father's attempt to calm them down. This causes Kym to leave, after eventually admitting to being high while she was a teen. She heads to their mother's house, hoping to find solace with her after a fight with Rachel. However, a fight breaks out between them when Kym learns the truth about her mother also being responsible for Ethan's death. She confronts Abby and demands to know why she left him in her care while she was under the influence instead of leaving him with Rachel. Kym soon realizes that Abby is denying any responsibility she has for his death. She tells her that she was good to Ethan and that Rachel is wrong in accusing her for his death. Once Kym tells her mother that she was also responsible for Ethan's death, Abby is furious and slaps Kym in the face. Furious, Kym hits Abby back and runs off again in her father's car. While driving away, Kym is seen crying because, while she started to accept responsibility for what she has done under the influence, her mother has failed to do the same. This time, Kym intentionally crashes her father's car into a giant rock, and spends the night in the wreck.

The next morning, the day of the wedding, Kym is awoken by police. After passing a sobriety test, she gets a ride home. She makes her way to Rachel's room, as Rachel prepares for the wedding. Seeing Kym's bruised face from a fight she had with their mother prompts her anger of the previous night to vanish, and Rachel tenderly bathes and dresses her sister.

Amid a festive Indian theme, Rachel and her fiancé are wed. Kym is the maid of honor, and is overcome with emotion as the couple exchanges their vows. Kym tries to enjoy herself throughout the wedding reception but continues to feel out of place and is nagged by the unresolved dispute with her mother. Ultimately, her mother leaves the party early, despite Rachel's effort to bring the two together, and the gulf between Kym and Abby is left unreconciled.

The next morning, Kym must return to rehab. As she is leaving, Rachel runs out of the house to hug her.

Production

The screenplay was written by Jenny Lumet, the daughter of director Sidney Lumet and granddaughter of Lena Horne.^{[citation needed]} Lumet, a junior high school drama teacher,^{[citation needed]} has written four earlier screenplays,^{[citation needed]} but this was the first to be produced.^{[citation needed]} The film is directed by Jonathan Demme, and was shot in Stamford, Connecticut in a naturalistic style. The working title for the film was originally Dancing with Shiva.^{[citation needed]}

Lumet himself approached Demme about his daughter Jenny's script. Demme has commented that he loved Jenny's flagrant disregard for the rules of formula, her lack of concern for making her characters likable in the conventional sense, and for what he considered to be her bold approach to truth, pain, and humor.^[2]

Filming took 33 days and occurred in late 2007.^[3]

Cast

Casting

Demme had wanted to work with Anne Hathaway ever since he spotted her in a crowd at a screening five years earlier. He immediately took her in consideration for the lead role.^[2] Hathaway later said of her first reading Lumet's script: "I was in my old apartment in the West Village Manhattan, just pacing back and forth between the kitchen table and the couch. I somehow wound up on the floor sobbing by the last page."^[3]

Rosemarie DeWitt was considered by the film's casting directors. Demme and the rest of the crew were impressed and immediately wanted her to play Rachel. Bill Irwin is a personal friend of Demme's.

Tunde Adebimpe's role, Sidney, was originally offered to American film director Paul Thomas Anderson while he was working on the post-production of the movie There Will Be Blood.^[4]

Demme was concerned about Debra Winger's interest in doing the film, but he pumped up his courage to ask her because they had met several times before at the Jacob Burns Center, a film center close to their homes. Winger later accepted the role of Abby.^[2]

Reception

Critical response

The film received critical acclaim and appeared on many "Best Film of 2008" lists. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune called the film "a triumph of ambience," and that Hathaway, DeWitt, Irwin and especially Winger are working at a very high level.^[5] Roger Ebert's four-star rating added, "apart from the story, which is interesting enough, 'Rachel Getting Married' is like the theme music for an evolving new age."^[6] Other critics praised Jonathan Demme. Andrew Sarris noted in the New York Observer "his career of cinematic good works"^[7] and Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly observed "a fight scene that's as raw as Ingmar Bergman and as operatic as Mildred Pierce" . . . and "Demme's finest work since The Silence of the Lambs.^[8]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone noted that Rachel Getting Married is "a home run . . . [it goes] deep into the joy and pain of being human."^[9] A.O. Scott of The New York Times said that the film "has an undeniable and authentic vitality, an exuberance of spirit, that feels welcome and rare".^[10]

Many reviewers praised the film for its organic feel; Salon reviewer Stephanie Zacharek noted that "with 'Rachel Getting Married,' Demme has once again scaled back, making a picture that has some of the ease and warmth of his earlier movies, although it also feels stripped down and direct in a way that's new for Demme."^[11] USA Today proclaimed: "After a foray in documentary films, director Jonathan Demme has returned to narrative storytelling, assuming a decidedly cinéma vérité style that has echoes of Robert Altman. The film's greatest asset is the sense of cringing realism in portraying dinner parties and interpersonal encounters that can throw family members off-kilter."^[12] The Los Angeles Times noted:

Helping give this story its essential air of reality is the decision Demme and cinematographer Quinn made to shoot it as what they call "the most beautiful home movie ever made." The director chose not to plan shots in advance, instead giving Quinn (whose credits include Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding") the ability to respond in the moment to what was going on with the actors, and it's a tribute to his ability (and that of editor Tim Squyres) that his camera always seems to be in the right place at the right time.^[13]

Anne Hathaway won raves for her work as Kym. USA Today found her wonderful in the role and wrote "Her nervous laughter, edginess and quick temper blend convincingly with her need for attention and vulnerability."^[12] Newsweek commented: "Kym is a major pain in the ass, and Hathaway's raw, spiky performance makes no attempt to ingratiate. Yet she makes Kym's inner torment so palpable you can't help but feel for her, however insufferable she may be. It's a terrific performance . . . ".^[14] Empire felt that "Kym is a peach of a role — she sleeps with the best man, fights with the maid of honor, quips, 'You're so thin, it's like you're Asian' — and Hathaway squeezes it for all the juice it's worth, making this raw-nerved, narcissistic Tasmanian Devil not just believable, but somehow likable." ^[15]

As of February 13, 2011 (2011 -02-13)^[update], the film holds an overall 86 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes^[16]

Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008.^[17]

Music

The music-loving director Demme invited musicians to compose the score live on set, to support the film's storyline.^{[citation needed]}

"For the longest time," Demme has said, "I've had this desire to provide the musical dimension of a movie without traditionally scored music. I thought: wait a minute; in the script, Paul [father of the bride] is a music-industry bigwig, Sidney's a record producer, many of his friends will be gifted musicians, so of course there would be non-stop music at this gathering. We have music playing live throughout the weekend, but always in the next room, out on the porch or in the garden."^{[citation needed]}

Throughout the unconventional filming and loosely staged scenes, a New York-based Middle Eastern ensemble, including the Palestinian musician Zafer Tawil, and Iraqi Amir ElSaffar, who played the score of Demme's documentary Man from Plains, compose the score on set. Always present at the filming, the musicians had the freedom – and were encouraged – to play whenever they were inspired to, and to ignore the camera.

According to Demme on the DVD, during filming of a dramatic scene, Hathaway complained about the music interfering with the mood, to which Demme responded "Tell her to do something about it!" Hathaway, in that scene, responded by improvising the line, "Can you tell them to knock it off?!" to which another actor not heavily involved in the scene went off-screen and told the band to stop.

Well-known acting faces mingle anonymously on-screen with musicians, artists, dancers and acting-novice friends of the director. Among them are the New Orleanian saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., and the Brooklyn-based TV On The Radio's lead singer Tunde Adebimpe.

Singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock plays a wedding guest. At the ceremony Hitchcock, at the request of his old friend Demme, performs the song "America" from his 1982 album Groovy Decay. He also plays "Up To Our Nex", written for the movie. "It's my micro-encapsulation of the movie. The song is trying to be a voice in Kym's head . . . " Filmed in one take at the wedding party, he is spontaneously joined by the hip-hop star Fab 5 Freddy, and the dancehall singers Sister Carol, ElSaffar and Tawil.

Hitchcock recalled,

For Demme, it was about creating evocative music in the moment.^[24]

Awards and nominations

References

External links

• Official website
• Rachel Getting Married at AllRovi
• Rachel Getting Married at the Internet Movie Database
• Rachel Getting Married at Metacritic
• Rachel Getting Married at Rotten Tomatoes
• Rachel Getting Married at Box Office Mojo