Hello, lovelies. Beau here, filling in for Nathaniel on this week's Monday Monologue, featuring a film that is packed full of them.
Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married was, for my money, the best film of 2008. (Nathaniel shared my sentiments, though we don't always see eye to eye: note our complete polarized responses to the masterful Cloud Atlas last year.) That's not a title it earned easily, considering that it was also the year I was exposed to Charlie Kaufman's brilliant Synechdoche, New York as well as Christian Mungiu's Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, a film I lovingly referred to as 'that Romanian abortion picture' to friends who recoiled and cocked their heads at the thought of sitting through something like that.
No, what moved me the most, what hurt me the most was this small, intimate picture filmed on digital with many striking nods to the Dogme movement of the nineties, (filmed on location, hand-held, diegetic music) and providing a piercing, at times intrusive look at the lives of this shattered family. In it, each actor does the best work of their career. [more]
Bill Irwin is criminally underutilized in the film world, and his effusive joy and sorrow here is palpable, naturally theatrical, and magnificent. Rosemarie DeWitt is sublime as the titular Rachel whose attention and focus is being hijacked by Kym, played by Anne Hathaway.
Hathaway, until Rachel, was not considered by many to be a great actress. She was, at best, an intensely charismatic one, one who could carry everything from a Disney flick (The Princess Diaries, Ella Enchanted) and was making a pretty remarkable transition into popular adult fare (The Devil Wears Prada, Brokeback Mountain, etc.) Yet she still had not proven herself. Until Kym. In many ways, it is this performance that defined her career -- at least until Les Miserables -- and arguably changed many minds about her talents.
When I watch Rachel Getting Married, I don't see Anne Hathaway. I see no mannerisms, no tics, no indications of who this person may be other than herself. Kym's damaged appearance lends itself to Hathaway's success, but she is not defined by it. Rare is the modern movie star that can completely disassociate themself from their Hollywood persona.
When I think about Hathaway in the picture, I think of one scene in particular.
Hi, I’m Kym, I’m an addict.I am nine months clean.When I was, umm, 16,I was babysitting my little brother.And I was, umm, I was taking all these Percocet and I was unbelievably high and I,umm, we had driven over to the park on Lakeshore and he was in his red socks and just running around in these pile of leaves and he would bury me and I would bury him,in the leaves,and he was pretending he was a trainand so he was running through the leaves and I was the cabooseand he kept sayingCoal Caboose, Coal Caboose,and umm, umm, we were,it was time to go and I was driving home,and I lost control of the carand drove off the bridgeand the car went into the lakeand I couldn’t get him out of his car seatand he drowned.And I struggle with God so much,because I can’t forgive myselfand I don’t really want to.I can live with it, but I can’t forgive myself,and sometimes I don’t want to believe in a God that could forgive me.But I do want to be sober.I’m alive and i’m present and there’s nothing controlling me.If I hurt someone, I hurt someone, and I can apologize and they can forgive me or not,but I can change.And I just wanted to share that and say, ‘Congratulations that God makes you look up, I’m so happy for you, but if he doesn’t, come here.’That’s all, thank you.