Rachel Getting Married

[Gamblour.]

And that's sort of what I meant in that second paragraph. I guess the reason it bothers me is because things aren't like that in Atlanta. This city, this state are both ridiculously segregated, and I guess everything must be hunky dory in Connecticut. It's not that I don't like it because it's a positive portrayal. I kept thinking how a wedding like that would never happen here. So yeah, it bothered me.

And then the whole Kym character, knowing someone like that growing up, the hug at the end was too easy. The film was too optimistic when it needed to be honest.

[pete]

I know what you mean by segregation, but wealthy privileged people are quite savvy these days.  everyone's going to india and taking up causes in africa and road tripping through central america.  things are obviously not rosy in CT, and the two times I partied in ATL I've seen a fun enough mix and thought about moving there.  socio-economic segregation is getting worse, but people are getting hipper too. 

[pete]

oh and by the way.  this is my favorite of the year.  so many beautiful scenes.  it's like the celebration without the plot or in america that's dysfunctional.

[Stefen]

I have a very hard time connecting with rich upper class white people. Everything about this movie is so great except the problems that the rich white people were having. I found myself chuckling anytime Kym went off on one of her self-indulgent rants or anytime Rachel pulled the, "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!" card. It was just silly. It's like rich white people make themselves have problems because their lives are too easy. Their big problems are never real problems -- they're just problems they created for themselves on purpose and made bigger because their life is too easy and boring. Driving off in your Prius and then realizing you grabbed the wrong latte at Starbucks can really ruin your day if that's the biggest dilemma you're facing in your life.

Jenny Lumet probably lives in some sort of rich white people bubble where problems like the ones she wrote about in this screenplay are common occurrence. When you don't have to worry about money or paying your bills on time, the big problems you have in your life are usually the type that can be cured with a prescription for some weird experimental drug that's only covered by the best health insurance which she and the people in this movie most likely have. Normal people don't have problems like attempting to eat healthy or get to spin class on time. That's not a problem to a normal person. Rich white people start smoking because they want to be rebellious. Normal people start smoking because it's a product of their environment.

Kym was annoying as fuck. I hate girls like her. Her problems weren't even that interesting. The only reason they were interesting is because they were happening to a rich white girl. At least in Traffic, when the rich white girl was going through her rebellious drug phase she ended up ass naked on a pimps bed sans sheets blazed out of her mind. Kym's never been pimped out for $20 so she could support her drug habit. Why? Because she's a phony. All her problems could be attributed to a subconscious wanting of attention.

The reason I enjoyed this movie so much has everything to do with Demme's direction and Tim Squyres editing. Everything is very ambient and flows very well. The whole film felt alive. If Demme didn't film it handheld style, it wouldn't have had the certain charm that it has. I didn't notice any of his patented close-ups, which was a bummer, but I liked the style and he executed it brilliantly. I haven't read the script, but I want to because I want to know if the screenplay comes off as free flowing as Demme's eventual directing does.

All the acting is top-knotch. Anne Hathaway goes overboard a bit, but with the character it's to be expected.

Overall, I found it highly enjoyable. Rich white people with stupid rich white people problems always get on my nerves and will continue to get on my nerves until I get some money of my own, but Demme's direction makes this a really spectacular experience. 8.3/10.

[Ravi]

I have a very hard time connecting with rich upper class white people. Everything about this movie is so great except the problems that the rich white people were having. I found myself chuckling anytime Kym went off on one of her self-indulgent rants or anytime Rachel pulled the, "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!" card. It was just silly. It's like rich white people make themselves have problems because their lives are too easy. Their big problems are never real problems -- they're just problems they created for themselves on purpose and made bigger because their life is too easy and boring. Driving off in your Prius and then realizing you grabbed the wrong latte at Starbucks can really ruin your day if that's the biggest dilemma you're facing in your life.

Jenny Lumet probably lives in some sort of rich white people bubble where problems like the ones she wrote about in this screenplay are common occurrence. When you don't have to worry about money or paying your bills on time, the big problems you have in your life are usually the type that can be cured with a prescription for some weird experimental drug that's only covered by the best health insurance which she and the people in this movie most likely have. Normal people don't have problems like attempting to eat healthy or get to spin class on time. That's not a problem to a normal person. Rich white people start smoking because they want to be rebellious. Normal people start smoking because it's a product of their environment.

Kym was annoying as fuck. I hate girls like her. Her problems weren't even that interesting. The only reason they were interesting is because they were happening to a rich white girl. At least in Traffic, when the rich white girl was going through her rebellious drug phase she ended up ass naked on a pimps bed sans sheets blazed out of her mind. Kym's never been pimped out for $20 so she could support her drug habit. Why? Because she's a phony. All her problems could be attributed to a subconscious wanting of attention.

The reason I enjoyed this movie so much has everything to do with Demme's direction and Tim Squyres editing. Everything is very ambient and flows very well. The whole film felt alive. If Demme didn't film it handheld style, it wouldn't have had the certain charm that it has. I didn't notice any of his patented close-ups, which was a bummer, but I liked the style and he executed it brilliantly. I haven't read the script, but I want to because I want to know if the screenplay comes off as free flowing as Demme's eventual directing does.

All the acting is top-knotch. Anne Hathaway goes overboard a bit, but with the character it's to be expected.

Overall, I found it highly enjoyable. Rich white people with stupid rich white people problems always get on my nerves and will continue to get on my nerves until I get some money of my own, but Demme's direction makes this a really spectacular experience. 8.3/10.

Jesus, Stefen, did rich white people kill your entire family or something?  This film isn't trying to make you feel sorry for a group known as "rich white people."  Can't a film just be about its characters without having representation of their entire socio-economic class thrust upon them?

[pete]

how is losing a family member a rich white people problem?

[Stefen]

It's not like the kid died of leukemia.

[©brad]

Hahah so apparently Demme wanted to cast PTA for the role of Sydney! Check out this bit from a somewhat poorly transcribed Demme interview:

All the other elements: the Indian wedding, the Brazilian dancers...

Well, that's Jenny Lumet's fault. But, the thing I wanted to say there just in conclusion, that point that was Tunde Adebimpe who plays Sidney was the second person that I offered the part to. The first person I offered the part two was the American filmmaker who should be in movies because he's so good looking and fabulous. And that is Paul Thomas Anderson. He came in and read the script at a table read with us. He was working on finishing up There Will Be Blood in New York. He was wonderful. And he passed the likeability test in a big way. I wanted, again because Jenny writes characters without regard to making them likable, and rooting interests and stuff. She tries to makes them real and fascinating and complicated.??We needed not only terrific actors, but I thought people in the audience would like despite their vagaries. So, Paul was adorable as Sidney. I offered him the part and he said, "Jonathan, you've got to be kidding me. It was fun to do the table read, but a) I'm shy, and b) I've got this little movie I'm trying to finish and stuff.?? So, our casting directors I asked them to please, please, our whole movie was cast from New York. And I asked our casting directors to bring in our most gifted, likable actors.

(Full interview here)

I wish they taped that table read!

Oh and this might be my favorite movie from last year.

[Convael]

I never got the impression from seeing clips of him that he was shy...

[MacGuffin]

'Rachel Getting Married' Director Jonathan Demme On Not Making His Movie 'Too Entertaining''
Source: MTV

A psychotic killer who fashions suits out of human flesh. Traumatized war vets programmed to execute nefarious government conspiracies. A man slowly, painfully dying of AIDS. From "The Silence of the Lambs" to "The Manchurian Candidate" to "Philadelphia," Jonathan Demme has made a career out of making the grim or unpleasant somehow entertaining. So when he started mapping out the approach to his latest film, about a recovering drug addict who reunites with her traumatized family before her sister's wedding, the Oscar-winning director had a slightly odd operating principle.

"One of the challenges was not trying to make it too entertaining," Demme told MTV News about last fall's indie darling "Rachel Getting Married."

Nor did he want any aspect of the movie to be appear too flawless to the audience. In fact, Demme went so far as to scrap the first acting-intensive scene he shot, an important moment in which Kym (Anne Hathaway) first comes home from rehab to see her soon-to-marry sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). "It was perfect," he said. "And I thought to myself, 'Hmm, that was too easy.' It felt too much like a proper, polished movie. In a rare moment of direction, I encouraged the young women to forget they were in a movie with clever dialogue and asked them to live it instead. And man, in the next take they went at each other. That's when I started to see the movie come alive."

Of course, Demme must have done something right through his idiosyncratic process, because the film made the top ten lists of two dozen critics and scored an Academy Award nomination for Hathaway. Not bad work for a director who had all but abandoned fictional films after his disappointing 2004 remake of "Manchurian Candidate."

But he decided to give fiction another shot after reading Jenny Lumet's "Rachel" script. "I'm a grown, grizzled veteran and I'm sitting there crying," Demme said. "I just thought, 'I gotta do this.'"

The concept he hit upon to make the film the right way was to do no rehearsal with the actors and to pretend they were all making a documentary. He also spent a year tweaking the script with Lumet. "The work we did had to do with me requesting to weed out some of Jenny's zanier humor that I just didn't know how to do," Demme said.

The finished film is a subtle, brutal examination of one family's simmering tensions, its neediness and compromises, its anger and awkwardness. Life for the family is one fraught with historical traps each member must tiptoe around, lest they all become mired in endless, howling arguments or violent, self-destructive behavior. Put another way, even at its more melodramatic moments, "Rachel" is one of the most honest and devastating explorations of the modern family in recent memory.

[Alexandro]

I have a very hard time connecting with rich upper class white people. Everything about this movie is so great except the problems that the rich white people were having. I found myself chuckling anytime Kym went off on one of her self-indulgent rants or anytime Rachel pulled the, "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!" card. It was just silly. It's like rich white people make themselves have problems because their lives are too easy. Their big problems are never real problems -- they're just problems they created for themselves on purpose and made bigger because their life is too easy and boring. Driving off in your Prius and then realizing you grabbed the wrong latte at Starbucks can really ruin your day if that's the biggest dilemma you're facing in your life.

Jenny Lumet probably lives in some sort of rich white people bubble where problems like the ones she wrote about in this screenplay are common occurrence. When you don't have to worry about money or paying your bills on time, the big problems you have in your life are usually the type that can be cured with a prescription for some weird experimental drug that's only covered by the best health insurance which she and the people in this movie most likely have. Normal people don't have problems like attempting to eat healthy or get to spin class on time. That's not a problem to a normal person. Rich white people start smoking because they want to be rebellious. Normal people start smoking because it's a product of their environment.

Kym was annoying as fuck. I hate girls like her. Her problems weren't even that interesting. The only reason they were interesting is because they were happening to a rich white girl. At least in Traffic, when the rich white girl was going through her rebellious drug phase she ended up ass naked on a pimps bed sans sheets blazed out of her mind. Kym's never been pimped out for $20 so she could support her drug habit. Why? Because she's a phony. All her problems could be attributed to a subconscious wanting of attention.

The reason I enjoyed this movie so much has everything to do with Demme's direction and Tim Squyres editing. Everything is very ambient and flows very well. The whole film felt alive. If Demme didn't film it handheld style, it wouldn't have had the certain charm that it has. I didn't notice any of his patented close-ups, which was a bummer, but I liked the style and he executed it brilliantly. I haven't read the script, but I want to because I want to know if the screenplay comes off as free flowing as Demme's eventual directing does.

All the acting is top-knotch. Anne Hathaway goes overboard a bit, but with the character it's to be expected.

Overall, I found it highly enjoyable. Rich white people with stupid rich white people problems always get on my nerves and will continue to get on my nerves until I get some money of my own, but Demme's direction makes this a really spectacular experience. 8.3/10.

Jesus, Stefen, did rich white people kill your entire family or something?  This film isn't trying to make you feel sorry for a group known as "rich white people."  Can't a film just be about its characters without having representation of their entire socio-economic class thrust upon them?

so, basically, stefen, most woody allen films are hard to relate to?

anyway. the multiculturalism was a little weird at the beginning, but then you realize the boyfriend is a musician so really, that pretty much explains it all.

anne hathaway is awesome. it became almost uncomfortable to listen to her, she's just one true fuck up in this film. when she akes the toast i found myself literally looking away from the screen.  loved the film in general, it was a great surprise.

[Sleepless]

Watched the DVD this weekend. Loved this film. Got to be honest, been a while since I saw something in this style. I have been watching way too many mainstream movies over the past year. The dishwasher scene was fantastic.