Rachel Getting Married: Grade A

A
Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, Rosemarie DeWitt, Anisa George; Director Jonathan Demme.

Hathaway is Kym, the black sheep of the family who gets out of rehab to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding at the magnificently wealthy family home in Connecticut. Kym is intensely self-centered, immature, angry, and disruptive to all. Family members try to be nice to her but really would rather she disappeared and she knows that and lashes back to demand acceptance. All the scenes you expect of a dysfunctional family are played out as we pace through the fitting of the costumes, the wedding rehearsal, the big wedding, the cutting of the cake, the reception, and on and on. There is no plot, although some supposedly shocking family history is inevitably dredged up.

We are not buried under the banality of family muck because Hathaway’s acting is spellbinding. It is a performance equal or better than the one that got Penelope Cruz the Oscar this year. Hathaway is an amazing actor who dominates every scene she is in. Debra Winger also grabs your attention and won’t let go. Those two actors alone make the movie. But in addition, the sets are marvelous around that gorgeous, sprawling house maintained in tip-top condition, as only old money can afford. Then there is Demme’s excellent direction. Most of the camera work is hand-held so you feel you are watching a documentary, or even that you are a participant. That makes the family scenes familiar and compelling, especially when emotions are demonstrated rather than spoken about. Excellent writing gives the principal characters three dimensions and a good deal of wit. Some of the dialog is a little too witty, as if everyone were channeling Oscar Wilde, and most of the wedding scenes went on too long (the movie runs almost 2.5 hours). But overall it is a very satisfying family drama.

Sleepwalking: Grade B

B
Sleepwalking (2008)
Charlize Theron, Nick Stahl, Annasophia Robb, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Hopper. Director Bill Maher (not the comic).

Rarely will you see such fine acting, by every player in the film. Theron (also produced) is a master. Hopper electrifies the screen, as he always does. Stahl, who is in nearly every scene, is totally convincing, as is the amazing young Robb. This is acting at its finest.

However the story is utterly bleak. A deeply troubled single mom (Theron) is suddenly made homeless when her loser boyfriend is busted for drugs. She crashes at her brother’s (Stahl) decrepit apartment. The confused daughter (Robb) is “creeped out” by her uncle. It is a very awkward situation, then the mom disappears, leaving a note that she will be back in “about a month.” The daughter is devastated. Out of emotional necessity, she forms a tentative relationship with her uncle. He loses his job and the apartment so they drive a beat up car to his abusive father’s (Hopper) derelict cattle farm. And so on. There is no plot. It is just a story about characters at the very bottom of the societal food chain, how they cope with life. There is some development in Stahl’s character toward the end, but overall, the story has no point.

The scenery, costumes and sets are unrelentingly desolate. It is the dead of winter in Denver, on the depressing side of the tracks. Everything is cold, gritty, grubby; the characters dull and unknowing. They are all poor, uneducated and unskilled, so they have no choice but to blunder through their lives. This makes the pace of the film slow, and if you stick with it, the effect is a merciless emotional downer. Yet the acting is so good, directing so nuanced, dialog so honest, production values so perfect, that you realize you have just seen a fine piece of American cinema.

Shotgun Stories: Grade B

B
Shotgun Stories (2008)
Michael Shannon, Douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs; Writer-Director Jeff Nichols.

In contemporary rural Arkansas, three adult brothers are notified by their hateful mother that the despised father who abandoned them years ago has died. They attend the funeral where they encounter the three half brothers from the runaway father’s second family. These half-brothers seem to be a little better off economically, but such things are only relative in this poor community. The oldest of the abandoned brothers insults the memory of their father and spits on his grave, starting a family feud that begins as insults and threats, and over the weeks escalates to fistfights, knives and shotguns. It is a sensitive portrayal of character, not the shoot-em-up vendetta movie it is promoted as. You can feel the sweat running down your back in the hot, humid, rural settings. Characters move slowly and talk slowly. The writing is Faulkneresque in the way it portrays the rural south, the naivety and ignorance, yet sensitivity of its inhabitants. I don’t like Faulkner for that reason. It is just not very interesting to watch stupid people behave stupidly. Yet the acting is superlative, directing, sets, costumes are perfect, and the script is engaging and original, so the movie, while a bit too slow for me, never sags.

The Darjeeling Limited: Grade C

C

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman; with Anjelica Houston. Director Wes Anderson.

It’s actually the Owen Wilson Show. Brody and Schwartzman hardly have a dozen lines between them. Wilson does a terrific job as the dominating brother of the trio as they make their way across northwestern India by train. They are apparently wealthy, since they buy their way out of any situation, but they are also slackers, interested mainly in cigarettes, cough syrup, pain-killers and other over the counter meds, sex, poisonous snakes. None has achievements to tout, interests, ambition, or direction. Consequently, they are just not interesting characters.

The brothers are nominally journeying to find their mother (Houston), but the characteristically Andersonian theme is really sibling rivalry and the brothers’ (mostly Wilson’s) attempt at reconciliation. Wilson is intense and comedically sincere. He reminds me in that way of Steve Martin: you either laugh or cringe. Sets and locations are marvelous, the colors bright, and the Indian music enjoyable. There is no point to this light comedy, but it passes the time agreeably.

Margot at the Wedding: Grade A

A
Margot at the Wedding (2007)
Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black. Writer-Director Noah Baumbach.

This case study of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is so faithful to the diagnosis it could be used in a college classroom. Kidman delivers her dazzling magic. She is one of the best actors working today. Leigh also gives a superb performance. Jack Black is good, for Jack Black. Kidman is Margot, a Manhattan writer who visits her estranged sister (Leigh) in country Vermont, prior to the sister’s wedding to a goofy, unemployed wannabe writer/artist (Black).

Margot and her sister both have textbook BPD, a serious psychiatric disorder of hypersensitivity to criticism, huge short-term emotional swings, inability to sustain relationships, impulsive behavior, self-image disturbances, cognitive distortions, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity and other high-risk behaviors, just to name a few symptoms. Wikipedia gives a good overview of the syndrome. The sister’s boyfriend has a different kind of personality disorder, not drawn in detail.

Margot disapproves of Black and lets her sister know it. The sister is pregnant but hasn’t told her fiancé yet. She tells Margot in confidence, but do you think Margot will keep that secret? The infighting and emotional swings are dramatic and often funny. There is something to recognize from anybody's last dysfunctional family reunion. However, because all the characters are “nuts” (to use a technical term), their behavior is arbitrary and seemingly unmotivated, so it is impossible to care about them. There is no plot, just endless bickering. The hothouse of emotions recalls Woody Allen’s neurotic Manhattan films, and especially the 1966 classic movie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The dialog crackles with sophistication but at the price of making the characters mere dialog delivery vehicles. Throughout, the writing stridently calls attention to itself. I give the movie an A because the acting by Kidman and Leigh is so good that I watched helplessly with the morbid fascination one has for a spectacular highway crash.