Is Jonathan Demme about to make me a fan of Anne Hathaway?

And I swore it couldn't be done.

Here's the trailer.

Wait, hold on... the Debra Winger?

AND Bill Irwin to boot!.. haunting me since Popeye and Northern Exposure he rocks his performance in Lady in water was really fascinating and most memorable- this guys is like a swiss army knife and now this.. Definitely looks like a film i could sit through without effort with the wife-eramah and 18 yr old hipcat of a daughter... nice catch.

I have always been intrigued by Demme's love for Africa its culture and peeps carried through out his films... the last line resonates and is lovely...does anyone know of or have info that might elaborate or explain this... would luv to know .

Seeing it tonight, if all goes well at the film festival. In the meantime, Jeffrey Wells quibbles with the fact (as he sees it) that no one in the movie, and virtually no one among the critics who have reviewed it so far, have acknowledged the movie's racial elements:

But a friend has observed that the way Demme portrays the African-American and Jamaican characters --- Sidney, his Army-serving younger brother, his parents and the various musicians and guests who float in and out -- is a form of benevolent reverse racism. He does this, my friend argued, by making certain that only the white characters -- Rachel and Kym and their parents, played by Debra Winger and Bill Irwin -- are the screwed-up ones. Antsy, haunted, angry, nervous, gloomy. But the darker-skinned characters are all cool, kindly, radiant, gentle, serene.

I was a little suprised when I first heard this view, but I'm starting to think she may have a point. It does seem a little phony. I would have invested myself a little bit more in Rachel Getting Married if, say, Sidney has been a wee bit obnoxious or an obsessive-compulsive or a relentless pot smoker -- anything but the dull block of wood that Demme, Lumet and Adebimpe have created. Everyone everywhere has conflicts, problems, insecurities, regrets. Except in films like this one.

All to say that I never really believed Rachel Getting Married. I enjoyed the craft and random energy of it, but I never believed that I watching real-life people. Every step of the way I felt Exiled in Demmeville.

For whatever that's worth.

I saw the film last night, and I take Wells's point -- among other things, once again in a Hollywood movie, the black people have religion and the white people don't (except, maybe, for Anne Hathaway's statement at a 12-step meeting that she doesn't want to believe in a God who could forgive her, so make what you will of that) -- but the film goes way beyond a simple fusion of black and white. There are other races and cultures represented at the wedding, too, and the wedding itself is the sort of multicultural pastiche where everyone says "Lochaim!" when giving a toast, and the bridesmaids wear saris and a musician plays the sitar and the wedding cake is shaped like an Indian elephant, and the bride's family has Coptic Orthodox icons lining the dining-room wall for no apparent reason, and so on. (Brett McCracken discusses this in the context of "hipster" culture.)

This is another one of those films where I wonder if I would have watched it differently, or had less of an emotional reaction to it, if I had seen it before having three kids of my own. There is Kim (the Anne Hathaway character), there is Rachel, and then there is ... someone we never see, except in photos. I hope to dear God my family never has to deal with what these people deal with. It took me a while to "get into" the film, but by the end, there was some pretty potent stuff, all the more so because there are no flashbacks or anything, just people living with the past, and the more you realize what actually HAPPENED in the past, and the more you try to IMAGINE what happened, the more you find yourself wondering about the present and how your future might turn out if such a thing were to ever happen to you. Or at any rate, that's what *I* wondered.

A colleague remarked afterwards that this may be the first Demme film in ages that hasn't used his trademark technique of showing actors' faces in tight close-up as they stare straight into the camera. It's a lot more loosey-goosey than that. Whoever said it was like a Dogma film was absolutely right: the movie even goes so far as to rely mostly or entirely on diegetic music, as opposed to the non-diegetic music that most movie soundtracks have. (In other words, when we hear music in this film, it is almost always being played by characters who are Right There on the set, as part of the story. And yet, often unbeknownst to the characters yet knownst to the filmmakers and the audience, their music serves the same purpose as most movie scores, commenting on the action or providing a sort of musical ambience, etc.)

I was reminded a bit of some of the Romanian films like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu or 4 Months, Three Weeks and 2 Days by the long shots and the uncomfortable intimacy of the scenes. It almost produces a bit of claustrophobic response.

The music is wonderful, even if the setup of a weekend long jam seems a bit of a stretch. It always strikes just the right emotional button. Especially the semi-mournful music being played in the distance while Kym is getting ready to leave.

It really strikes the right note of a family with an addict. I thought it was also worth noting that at the 12 step meeting, Kym says she's been clean for nine months -- she never uses the word sober. She really is a dry drunk.

I found it a great piece of artistic film making. The looseness of the script and direction let the actors really bring a bit of reality to the screen.

A good shot at being included in my year end list.

Steve Sailer notes that the groom is named Sidney -- as in Sidney Poitier, star of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, or as in Sidney Lumet, father of Rachel Getting Married screenwriter Jenny Lumet (whose grandmother on her mother's side was the iconic African-American actress Lena Horne)?

More interestingly, he also notes that there may be some sort of parallel between the sibling relationship in the movie and the real-life relationship between Jenny and her own sister Amy (who was once married to P.J. O'Rourke, for whatever that's worth).

All very speculative, of course. But fun.

I was at a panel on this film with Jenny Lumet and Jonathan Demme and all the major cast and one of the producers, and Jenny said that the dishwasher scene was directly lifted from something that happened at her house when she was a kid, between her father and . . . someone I can't remember, who was similarly famous and quirky. It was kind of delightful.

I really liked this film, and the music was terrific. I was very impressed by Anne Hathaway's performance. When Kym walked into this wedding for the first time, she was such a tightly wound ball of need that could combust at any time.

The wedding reception seemed like a wedding version of Dave Chapelle's Block Party. Sure, it's hipster to the core, but it embraces it's mishmash of cultures so whole-heartedly it became an exuberant celebration. And how cool would it be to have Robyn Hitchcock perform at your wedding?
I predict that this film will be a big hit with White People

At the same time, the way the music was used through the film fit so well with what was going on with these characters. And the devastating emotional complexity of Kym made such a stark contrast to the "cool" of the rest of the wedding party. She wound up making me care about her.

I don't think one should have watched it differently or had less of a reaction, though I understand one might. Certainly I loved the film and was moved to tears in a couple of places, though I am a single man with no children.

But yes, it is sheer brilliance, emphasizing the film's present-tenseness, that it doesn't show any flashbacks, particularly to Kym's fatal DUI crash that killed the brother, which a lesser film might have included, particularly since the movie's present tense has a mirror scene of Kym deliberately crashing a car while in the depths of despair i.e., the same character doing the same thing.

Pretty much a knockout, but what's with all the focus on Hathaway? I realize she's playing against type, and doing it well, but has anyone else given it up for Rosemarie DeWitt, who I'd never seen in anything, and who has, IMHO, the more difficult role of Rachel, trying to include her basket-case sister in her Big Day, but not willing to accommodate her every request (unlike her dad, Bill Irwin -- and has anyone given it up for Irwin, who isn't as complex a character, but very well played)?

So it's a great ensemble piece. I liked the guy who played the best man as well.

Gosh, there isn't much about this film that I didn't like, a lot. Probably Demme's best since before Silence of the Lambs, which, as good as it is at what it does, doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I knew as soon as Rachel ended that it was a much more meaningful film, if not as precise and focused a work as some of Demme's other films.

I've never been a huge Demme fan; this film has me reconsidering, and wondering if it's time to revisit Something Wild, or some of his other well received, but lesser known works.

As posted in the 2008: Year in Lists thread, the LA Weekly / Village Voice poll has this to say about its ranking of Rachel Getting Married:

Unusual for both building a consensus and stirring ardent feelings, WALL-E scored most passionately. But the poll’s top 10 changes drastically if the movies are reordered by the Passiondex and opened up to the top 25 vote-getters. Now, the cult enthusiasms surface: Jonathan Demme’s Altmanesque ensemble extravaganza, Rachel Getting Married (No. 12), enters the top 10 in second place, while a cluster of more esoteric foreign-language movies, José Luis Guerín’s In the City of Sylvia (tied for No. 21 with The Class), Carlos Reygadas’ Mennonite passion play, Silent Light (No. 13) and Serge Bozon’s musical lost-platoon drama, La France (No. 23), place third, fourth and 10th, respectively. Synecdoche, New York moves up to fifth place, and Let the Right One In to sixth (while Still Life drops to seventh, The Flight of the Red Balloon floats down to eighth, and A Christmas Tale falls to ninth). The prize critical cult film: Rachel Getting Married. Despite generally mixed reviews, Demme’s independent feature received a higher percentage of first- and second-place votes than even WALL-E, meaning that the people who liked it really liked it.