Sometimes it's weird to watch movies about dysfunctional families because I feel like they're so close to my own memories that they make me connect and sympathize with the characters even more. With Rachel Getting Married, Jonathon Demme pulled me in right away into this very intense, emotional home video type movie that is so realistic in the way it portrays the drama surrounding a wedding that it's hard to imagine that it was once a script. What's cool is that we're introduced to the various family members and their pasts through multiple hand-held cameras that are shooting simultaneously, giving the actors and background a theatre-like atmosphere where everyone has to be focused in the roles b/c they don't know if they're on screen. The soundtrack in the movie is interesting too as Demme explains he wanted the music to happen in the moment and recorded on set while the actors were saying their lines, making it almost another presence in itself affecting the scene. With true to life dialgoue and multi-ethnic relationships, this movie shows a different kind of realism in which we are meant to belive they are flawed, ordinary people who are celebrating a wedding but in bringing people back together, bring out the worse. I like how they were allowed to improv scenes that weren't in the script which kind of help feel like anything could happen. In the end, I ended up feeling sorry for Anne Hathaway's character but glad that their family could say what they wanted and would be better for the experience they shared. It's refreshing to see a director take a chance when they know they have a good script and cast to kind of let the magic fly on set rather than be planned out to the exact detail. With family movies like this, it's always a good reminder of how lucky I am to have a great familiy and know what's important in life.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Rachel Getting Married (2008) (Blu Ray) - 8/10
Sometimes it's weird to watch movies about dysfunctional families because I feel like they're so close to my own memories that they make me connect and sympathize with the characters even more. With Rachel Getting Married, Jonathon Demme pulled me in right away into this very intense, emotional home video type movie that is so realistic in the way it portrays the drama surrounding a wedding that it's hard to imagine that it was once a script. What's cool is that we're introduced to the various family members and their pasts through multiple hand-held cameras that are shooting simultaneously, giving the actors and background a theatre-like atmosphere where everyone has to be focused in the roles b/c they don't know if they're on screen. The soundtrack in the movie is interesting too as Demme explains he wanted the music to happen in the moment and recorded on set while the actors were saying their lines, making it almost another presence in itself affecting the scene. With true to life dialgoue and multi-ethnic relationships, this movie shows a different kind of realism in which we are meant to belive they are flawed, ordinary people who are celebrating a wedding but in bringing people back together, bring out the worse. I like how they were allowed to improv scenes that weren't in the script which kind of help feel like anything could happen. In the end, I ended up feeling sorry for Anne Hathaway's character but glad that their family could say what they wanted and would be better for the experience they shared. It's refreshing to see a director take a chance when they know they have a good script and cast to kind of let the magic fly on set rather than be planned out to the exact detail. With family movies like this, it's always a good reminder of how lucky I am to have a great familiy and know what's important in life.
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