MwP Celebration film: Rachel Getting Married
Jonathan Demme, 2008, USA, Colour, 113 mins, Certificate: 15
This month, we are celebrating Parkinson’s official Awareness Day (11 April) with a special tribute to our Moving with Parkinson’s (MwP) group.
Followed by a nod to the unofficial Siblings Day (10 April) with Rachel Getting Married – a raw, tragicomic, but ultimately endearing and comforting slice of real (family) life, captured on film.
The great, fearless, always searching, always experimenting, Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), whom we lost to cancer 7 years ago (on April 26 2017, almost to the date of our screening) directs – the still, somehow, inexplicably underappreciated – Anne Hathaway in her first Oscar nomination as the younger, troubled sister who wreaks havoc to her sibling’s wedding.
And while Hathaway truly shines, holding her own among an exceptional, powerhouse cast, (including the unsung acting legend that is Debra Winger, Bill Irwin, Rosemarie DeWitt and even this year’s Berlin Film Festival winner, Sebastian Stan in a small role), she is anything but the only reason to (re)discover this gem of a film.
Effectively utilising mostly hand-held cameras, employing friends and family as background actors, and with no prerecorded soundtrack (all the music heard in the film is performed live on-screen), Demme brings Jenny (daughter of legendary Sidney, director of such classics as Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico) Lumet’s screenplay to life as if it was a documentary.
Consequently, he instills this family’s intimate portrait, in all its toxic dysfunctionality and yet empowering togetherness, with a gut punching honesty and hilarity, as well as genuine, well earned hope.
So join us for a film(s) celebration of all the ways we deal and negotiate with all the small or really big curve-balls life throws at us. Together.
And cheer with our MwP participants’ favourite cocktail!
Reviews:
“Jonathan Demme is a hard man to pin down. Throughout his Hollywood career he’s flitted from genre to genre — dippy comedy (Married To the Mob), grim thriller (The Silence Of The Lambs), issuey tear-jerker (Philadelphia), concert documentary (Neil Young: Heart Of Gold). His latest, family drama Rachel Getting Married, at first seems entirely fresh ground again, but reveals itself to be a kind of amalgam of all those previous works. It has laughs, sadness, a handheld camera style, excellent music and a spiky, complex heroine worthy of Clarice Starling.” Nick de Semlyen, Empire
“I’ve been to a fair few weddings, and wedding movies, in my time, but I’ve never seen a movie that has felt so like a wedding as Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married.The way in which his camera noses through rooms, down corridors, round corners, all in wobbly wedding-video vérité, turns us, the audience, into a guest, one who doesn’t quite know anyone’s name but feels absolutely enthralled by the unfolding spectacle.” The Independent
“Hathaway, as the damaged Kym, is as good as all the critics suggest. But what strikes me most about her performance is her strength. Kym might be an addict in the precarious early stages of recovery; she might use sex promiscuously for quick and superficial emotional connections; and she might be the dark presence that reminds her family too dearly of all they’ve lost. But played by Hathaway, Kym is also a woman strong enough to be the architect of her own redemption, not too broken to reach out with an unspoken but deeply felt hope that a new path to love is possible.” Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator