Rachel Getting Married (2008; Rated R)

“Hi, I’m Shiva the god of death and your harbinger of doom for the evening,” says Kym (Anne Hathaway) by way of introduction at her sister Rachel’s rehearsal dinner. This is probably the best summation of Hathaway’s performance in Rachel Getting Married (directed by Jonathan Demme). She is by turns both beautiful and terrible. Vicious one second, vulnerable the next, she commands the screen in a way that she never has before. Her nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars was well deserved.
Credit for the quality of this movie can’t go to Hathaway alone, though. The rest of the cast, which is made up of mostly small-time actors, more than carries their weight. They add to the family dynamic with completely realistic and effective performances. Only Bill Irwin, who plays Kym and Rachel’s father, strikes any false notes. At some points he seems over the top, but even that doesn’t really detract.
Something should also be said for the cinematography. Rachel Getting Married makes use of the handheld technique made popular by the Bourne franchise and Cloverfield. The verisimilitude that this approach creates makes the entire film feel like a real home movie. You could be sitting at a family reunion years later remembering this particular weekend.
The title alone can tell you the basics of the plot. Rachel is, indeed, getting married, and Kym has been allowed out of rehab for the weekend. Her arrival at home, however, allows all sorts of hidden problems in her family to boil to the surface. As the interactions between Kym and her family escalate in intensity, we see that there is much more going on here than the plot lets on. Part of the power of the movie is the way that it takes such a mundane event and uses it to peel back the layers of one family’s problems.
Since I’m writing for an Asbury audience, I will caution that Rachel Getting Married is rated R and contains a fair amount of raw language. But the language is necessary to show the dynamics of a dysfunctional family. I was pleasantly surprised by how excellent this film was and I give it a full recommendation. You can either see it at Lexington Green or rent it when it comes out on video on March 10.