Anyone who reads this blog with any frequency knows that basically all we do is consume middlebrow culture and discuss it. so here goes:
I saw Rachel Getting Married a few days ago. You remember that movie, it came out basically at the same time as Margot at the Wedding and you got them confused. well, you should have, because in premise they are largely the same movie. Emotionally destructive sister parachutes into slightly more stable sister's wedding run-up, fraught, neurotic family misery ensues.
I am a sucker for these sorts of family dramas. "Unaccustomed Earth"'s portrayal of middle class family alienation and sadness has been getting me down as well (middlebrow cultural allusion #2).
Rachel is more realistic and less self-consciously quirky than Margot, but not much. (This is largely accounted for by the absence of Jack Black). The family relations are raw and effecting. Anne Hathaway is actually awesome in her first attempt at the role of "NotPrincess".
The movie requires a lot of unspoken shifts in emotional tone which is tough sledding. All the characters have to carry around a lot of unsaid things, and ultimately reevaluate their relationships to one another without any dialogue to make it clear that has happened. Hathaway's character has to show the imperfect vulnerabilty of recovering addicts without devolving into stereotype. The movie is not quite perfect (there are some points where the motivations get fuzzy), but it is very very good.
The multi-cultural wedding is charming until it overstays its welcome and devolves into a charicature of a "cool" celebration. But the deployment of Neil Young's "Unknown legend" is absolutely classic and beautiful.
Overall, a lovely movie.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Rachel is oddly close to something my family went through last year, and I was astonished at how much raw emotion they were able to convey. Portraying a family going through recovery isn't easy to do so truthfully usually. All in all, very well done (though I think they could have made the premise less over the top and still had the same emotional reactions)
I liked this movie more than I was expecting, particularly Bill Irwin as the patriarch. If you like this you should check out "I've Loved You So Long," which doesn't have a wedding in it but covers some of the same territory.
Post a Comment