*Rachel Getting Married serves as an illustration of how what is considered "avant garde" at one time eventually gets incorporated into the mainstream and becomes accepted by it. Demme's new film seems to a large extent to adhere to the Dogme 95 rules adopted in the mid to late Lars von Trier, Tomas Vinterberg and others. Critics of their films typically bitched about getting dizzy watching them. It seems that enough time has passed so that a mainstream American filmmaker with a "hot" actress in the lead can make a film entirely with handheld cameras and off-the-cuff framings without many complaints, not even from multiplex audiences.

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Reading both filmleaf reviews and subsequent comments gives me the impression Rachel Getting Married is being overrated by the critics. The metacritic score (82) seems to confirm this. Chris and mouton are not alone in claiming it to be a "masterpiece" or "one of the year's best American films". I don't suscribe to such high praise. Yet I am moved when reviewers express such passion for a film. If a film makes you feel "disoriented" and feeling you "had to sit down because (you) didn’t feel ready to walk" then your reviewing movies is time well spent.

And this year, calling Demme's film "one of the year's best American films" doesn't constitute quite an overstatement. Even movies "Joe the plumber" watched, like The Dark Knight, are likely to get a Best Picture nomination this year (this should result in better ratings for the Oscars telecast as prescribed by Richard Schickel in Time magazine). W and Body of Lies (and apparently The Changeling) turned out not to be good enough. The Weinstein brothers decided to bump the Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road to next year. Paramount Vantage decided to do the same with the promising drama The Soloist with Robert Downey, Jr. Hunger and Happy-Go-Lucky hail from the UK, not the USA. Which leaves...not that much.

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Armond White is not the only critic referencing Margot at the Wedding. In his review from Toronto, Scott Foundas also uses it to make a point about Rachel Getting Married. Like Foundas, I also think Demme's picture suffers from the comparison (a major divergence from the views presented here by Chris and, I assume, mouton). Here's Foundas' review:

"Toronto's most crushing blows have been dealt by those filmmakers with the longest résumés and most gilded pedigrees, starting with Demme, whose fatuous Rachel Getting Married chronicles the reunion of a dysfunctional Connecticut clan on the eve of the eldest daughter's nuptials. Call it My Big Fat United Nations Wedding: The bride is Jewish (and possibly recovering from an eating disorder). The groom is black. The wedding is Indian-themed right down to the bridesmaids' saris. The maid of honor (Anne Hathaway) has just gotten out of rehab. A dead sibling looms large over the proceedings. And by the time the reception finally rolls around, Robyn Hitchcock (the subject of Demme's 1998 concert film Storefront Hitchcock) and a New Orleans jazz band show up for extended musical interludes, by which point Rachel Getting Married has long ago stopped making sense. How former president Jimmy Carter (star of Demme's 2007 Man From Plains) managed to avoid a cameo is something of a mystery.

Constantly teetering on the brink of hysteria and frequently tipping over into it, Rachel contains one 12-step program, two face-slappings, a car crash, an accidental drowning, multiple scenes of benevolent black folk (are there any other kind?) delivering soulful words of wisdom, and, before the end credits roll, copious tears and reconciliation. Some have likened Demme's film to Noah Baumbach's recent Margot at the Wedding, which is actually more like the kind of movie Demme used to make—the ones where the characters had edges and dimensions, and could be by turns loving and cruel, noble and deplorable. Here, we don't doubt for a second that we're watching a bunch of virtuous, good-hearted people who will manage to work out all of their problems, live happily ever after, and vote for Obama."

I feel, in general, that Foundas' complaints are valid and I love him for his defense of a film I ranked near the top of my 2007 list of favorite English-language films. However I didn't come out of Rachel Getting Married feeling that Kym and Abby "will manage to work out all their problems and live happily ever after". (warning:spoilers) The key is their scene together. It seems obvious to me that Kym is right in that she shouldn't shoulder the blame for the tragedy entirely alone. Given Kym's age and history when the accident took place, Abby is equally to blame but won't accept responsibility. Like mouton insightfully noted, Abby "is noticeably absent even when she’s in the room." This self-imposed absence is a direct consequence of her failure to face the fact that it was wrong to leave Kym in charge of her little brother or, more specifically, of her wish not to confront this fact. Abby slapping Kym and her leaving the wedding prematurely are signs that all is not well inside her. One wonders whether this is what broke up the marriage between Paul and Abby. Anyway, it's also hard to imagine Kym ever being truly happy having to shoulder all the blame and take full responsibility for the death of her little brother. Foundas falters towards the end of his review in failing to acknowledge this. Besides, the limitations and flaws in Jenny Lumet's story and script are somewhat placated by the quality of several performances and a style of filmmaking that's no longer "avant garde" but it's still effective when it comes to making a film feel like an authentic slice of life.