Image and Word

As I headed into the theater to see Rachel Getting Married, the woman working the concession stand I had just left called after me, reminding me to grab some napkins. She then handed me a very hefty pile: “I am giving you a few extras,” she said. “I hear it’s a bit of a tearjerker.”

I hearby nominate that observation for Understatment of the Year.

The tears were not merely jerked from me; they were wrenched from my gut with astounding force and persistence. I was emotionally keel-hauled by this movie.

Rachel Getting Married centers on a pair of sisters: The titular Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), a psychology graduate student, and Kym (Anne Hathaway), a recovering drug addict. When Kym was 16, she got high on pain pills and caused a family tragedy. In the intervening years, her parents (Bill Irwin and Debra Winger) have divorced and found new partners, Rachel has become engaged and Kym has made her way through rehab.

When Kym arrives home in the thick of the preparations for Rachel’s backyard wedding, she is an ethereal, black-clad ball of neediness. She demands to replace her sister’s best friend as maid of honor, complains about the color of her bridesmaid dress, and gives a cringe-inducing toast at the rehearsal dinner. Rachel, meanwhile, tries but nominally to maintain her equanimity as her long-standing frustration with her troubled sister threatens to eclipse her nuptial joy. Rachel is seething and resentful, Kym indignant and defiant.

This drama plays out against the bohemian swirl of musicians and poets who have gathered at the house for the marital celebrations. Long scenes are given over to warm toasts, celebratory music and family introductions. Kym, and her raw, consuming pain, are often pushed to the peripheries, both physically and emotionally, an appropriate approach to framing a woman who is trying desperately to figure out how to move through a world that no longer revolves around her and her addiction.

Perhaps the best word for director Jonathan Demme’s attitude towards the proceedings is “heartfelt,” though not in the melodramatic and treacly ways that that word can evoke. Demme creates a world in which the most unimaginable pain and the most sincere joy co-exist in ways organic, complex, compelling and utterly real.

And that, I think, is why I was so destroyed by the film. More simplistic movies push obvious, resistible buttons. Rachel Getting Married hunts out the more subtle seams, and rips.