[CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Weddings are purported to be when people are at their best. The reality is that weddings are pretty intense events. Anyone who has ever been part of a wedding party knows that all of the preparation and stress got to be a little too much at times.
I just saw Rachel Getting Married at Cinema Center, my local art house theater. This was a truly engaging film, mainly with all of the entrancingly claustrophobic hand held cameras capturing the action. I was transported into the fray as a guest at the wedding, privy to what happens backstage as well as at the altar.
Kym (Anne Hathaway) is a troubled woman damaged by a lifetime of drug abuse who has come home from rehab for her sister's wedding. She is deeply flawed and manipulates every situation she is in because she is desperate for attention. She seems to be suffering from loneliness and isolation even though she's with the people who know her and love her best. She twists her sister's metaphorical arm (almost to the point of metaphorical amputation) into making her maid of honor, even though she clearly has little honor left.
But something strange has happened. Rachel (Rosemary DeWitt) is grown up and is getting her PhD in Psychology. (I can't imagine why she would have an interest in helping troubled people.) Rachel is no longer willing to put up with her sister's personality flaws, and with the major exception of making her maid of honor, Rachel calls Kym's bullshit for what it is. Through several events, it's revealed that Kym is directly responsible for the death of her toddler brother when she was a teenager. It's hardly a spoiler to say this, as it's mentioned fairly early into the film. This is quite obviously the reason everyone around her secretly loathes Kym. Their visceral disgust with her is almost palpable as she makes an awkward toast slash twelve-step amend to her sister in front of everyone at the rehearsal dinner.
The fights ensue following a post-rehearsal recap of Kym's manipulations back at the family house of their father and stepmother, played brilliantly by Bill Irwin and Anna Deavere Smith. Rachel preempts Kym's further attempts to manipulate the situation by announcing her pregnancy to everyone in the room. Everyone moves on to Rachel and leaves Kym in the cold.
The film's prime example of cold is Debra Winger, playing Kym and Rachel's mother, Abby. She is noticeably absent at the wedding rehearsal and arrived very late at the rehearsal dinner with her husband Andrew. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that although she loves her daughters, the loss of their little brother was something she never quite got over and has transformed into a cold and quiet housewife. She seems to be bothered by the hassle of Rachel's wedding and is positively, yet quietly, unnerved by Kym's reemergence at the festivities.
Kym meets a former fellow rehab patient at a salon when she and Rachel go to get their hair done for the wedding. He retells his inspiration he got from Kym's story in a rehab exercise about overcoming what Rachel knows is nonexistent child molestation and anorexia. Rachel is set off and tears out of the salon, leaving Kym to bask in the adoration of her former friend at rehab.
Another fight breaks out back at home when Kym calls out the family for not really forgiving her and she takes the station wagon to her mother's house to get away from the wedding madness. She finally asks her mother why she left the brother (Ethan) in Kym's care when everyone knew Kym was high all the time. Abby tells her that Ethan made Kym better and that Kym was the best she ever was when she was playing with Ethan. The two become hysterical with grief and rage and hit each other with fists instead of words.
Kym runs out to the car sobbing and bleery-eyed runs off the road and crashes on a boulder in a small glade of trees. She crashes emotionally and physically and we next see her in the fetal position in the driver's seat the next morning as a police officer knocks on the window.
Kym makes it home and has a very intimate moment with Rachel who bathes her and tends to her black eye as they prepare for the wedding. The next twenty or so minutes are finally uplifting as Rachel puts the getting married into the movie with a beautifully schizophrenic ceremony and party with everything from samba drums to african signing and belly dancers straight from Carnivale in Brazil. Kym finally is at her best and is content to skulk on the outer reaches of the party throng and looks desperately for her mother, trying to make amends for the fight and Ethan's death.
Rachel and Kym are dancing on the home's porch when Abby and Andrew try to make a quiet exit. Rachel laments her mother's departure and trip out of town that will make her miss the "post-wedding gossip reconnaissance" they planned to share. Rachel presumably knows about the fight and brings mom and Kym together in a three-person hug in a desperate attempt to get some closure for all three of them. But at the same time she knows her family will always be psychically fractured on an epic scale.
The film is simply a brilliant study of people who are at their worst when they are striving with all possible strength to be better. Where the film goes right is at the end when all three women finally admit to themselves that their best may not be possible.
