Review: Rachel Getting Married

Let us not go against the grain merely for the sake of doing so, being a contrarian when it comes to cinematic criticism. When a movie receives not only multiple film festival nominations and awards, is referred to with glowing terms such as a "triumph of ambiance", and appears on dozens' of critics lists as one of the best films of 2008, it at least deserves a bit of one's attention. In the case of "Rachel Getting Married", featuring Anne Hathaway's Oscar-nominated turn as a recovering drug addict, it would be understandable if one were simply swept away on a wave of breathless enthusiasm like everyone else. Yet as my gentle reader knows, I am hardly like everyone else.

Director Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married" is a disastrous, boring, orgy of multi-cultural film-flam that resembles nothing so much as a 2-hour-long Benetton advert. I believe I can pinpoint my saturation and overflow point from this towering pitcher of dreck at the moment when the Brazilian samba band arrived at the reception to the Hindi wedding (performed by a Rabbi with no mention of God) of the Jewish psychiatry student and the black jazz musician to jam with the electronica DJ/metal band/Palestinian violinist. Spending a good part of the time fast-forwarding through scene after scene of the type of Globe Trekker "aren't weirdos and third world customs wonderful" perspective held by the middle class East Coast liberal intelligentsia is never a good sign of the strength of a film.

What did I hope for, you might very well ask. Truthfully, based on the premise of the film, I was hoping for something a bit more revelatory and bitter about long-standing disagreements between family members - perhaps not as histrionic as the towering "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", but something more like Bergman's "Höstsonaten". I find it difficult to believe I find myself writing this, the sisterly relationship explored by Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz in the chick-flick "In Her Shoes" is far more compellingly bitter and well-managed than this utter mess.

Hathaway does her best to broaden her range as an actress, and she does not fail in this regard - though truthfully Debra Winger should have been nominated for an Oscar, if anyone in this film. There is a spectacularly unexpected confrontational scene between these two actresses where they come to blows that is one of the best sequences in the film. Unfortunately there are so few good sequences, so many lost opportunities, and so much time lavishly wasted on the details of the wedding, that the film takes the reader through a grinder coarser than any grist mill. The resolution - if indeed one can call it that - is so unbelievable after everything that has occurred, that it feels tacked on; it cheapens the (few) moments of meaningful dialogue that have taken place during the course of the film.

While I have no doubt that Ms. Hathaway will have more films to explore in her future, and certainly her moments on screen in this one prove that she is more than a comedic actress, this film does not showcase her abilities in the way that I had expected. It is not an Oscar-worthy performance, merely a good performance. Perhaps if the director had focused more on the story and less on the enormous cast of disposable characters seen through a shaky, Soderbergh-type lens, I might have seen something other than what I did, and something far more worthy of accolade.