MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Rachel Getting Married Rated R

Directed by Jonathan Demme.  Starring Anne Hathaway,  Rosemarie DeWitt

Photo © Sony Pictures Classics
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

Kym (Hathaway) has been given a weekend pass from the recovery residence  program to attend her sister Rachel’s (DeWitt) wedding.  On Kym’s “to do” list before the wedding rehearsal is a quick stop at the neighborhood 12-Step group to work on her dependency issues. 

Once Kym arrives at her family’s spacious Connecticut home (where the wedding will take place), it is obvious that there will be plenty of awkward conversations and genuine interpersonal tension between the two sisters, their father, their stepmom, and their mother.  Early in the film it is revealed that there is a family tragedy connected to Kym’s drug habit and mental breakdown.  It is only a matter of time before everything will be revealed.  But – in the mean time – there’s a wedding to celebrate!  And what a wedding! 

Kym and Rachel are part of a well-educated and cultural group of friends (Rachel is marrying a musician) and the rehearsal dinner is filled with speech after speech after speech from friends and family wishing Rachel and her groom all of the best.  The day of the wedding there are a couple of extremely uncomfortable events, followed by a multicultural, interfaith, mashup of a wedding, filled with insipid vows and a huge lineup of musical numbers. 

At this point the film completely derails and I was ready to leave the wedding, too.  I am starting to grow tired of films that use nodal events (weddings, funerals, holiday get-togethers, etc.) as a lazy way to get families to act out their tensions.  Sure, stuff happens at these important occasions, but life goes on after the last piece of half-eaten wedding cake is thrown into the trash can.  That’s called a marriage, and that will take a lifetime to work out, with far more interesting stories to come.

Pitchfork Rating: One halo  (The combination of family dysfunction and feel-good celebration just doesn’t make it, although there are some good performances to be seen.)
Two pitchforks. (A bunch of swearing and a scene of spontaneous sexual grappling.)

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