Review: Rachel Getting Married

****½ / *****

"I am Shiva the destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening."

Everyone who writes about films (for a living, or just for fun) has described Rachel Getting Married - or at least thought about it - as "Altmanesque." There are dozens of adjectives that can describe this quiet, fine film, but that one is the most appropriate of them all. This is the best Altman film in 15 years.

Of course, it's not by Robert Altman, but by Jonathan Demme, one of America's great filmmakers, a cineaste that came up behind the Altmans and others of the early 70s, who made his first high profile film, Melvin and Howard, one decade after Altman's M*A*S*H. Twenty-eight years later, Demme pays tribute to Altman with the best that he gave cinema: the style of real-life over-talking, silence, and open ends that he has never really emulated before combined with his personal aesthetic of music, wild but loving characters, and unexpected performances that change careers.

The story is simple... kinda. The title character, Rachel, is getting married. But the center of the film is her sister, Kym, who is coming out of rehab (not crisis, rehab!) to be a part of the celebration. Over the course of one weekend, we will meet the family, discover secrets, and see the foibles of ourselves and people we know, even if the storyline doesn't fit like a glove. It is part of Demme's genius that he makes his people - all of his people - relentlessly real and empathetic.

There's a lot of Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration, probably the best of all the Dogma films, in Rachel. But Demme pulls back the layer one level deeper, choosing not to throw quite as severe a curve into the story. His film never reaches that level of a family deteriorating under the weight of a long held lie. This family's pain is no secret. It's much more like most families that suffer tragedy along the path of life. Everyone knows, everyone hopes it won't surface, everyone gets caught up in the petty (and not so petty) roles that they play in either ripping off scabs or trying to heal their... family.

So much of what is great in all of Demme's work is the casting (though I don't remember a Demme film without Chuck Napier before). Here, it is Anne Hathaway's film and she doesn't miss a note. Her Oscar nomination may have been one of the most deserved in years, but her work here is not the stuff that gives actors statuettes, but something much more important: people's respect. She doesn't show off for the camera. And when you hear criticism of this film, that will be the center of the complaint. Not the performance, but the lack of "gotcha" film moments. Every story is different, but this is one of those human stories that feels more real than written (thanks to Jenny Lumet, the screenwriter, and yes, Sidney Lumet's kid.)

And on the few occasions Hathaway isn't on-screen, you have the emergence of an actress who may be one of our next big stars and the reappearance of an actress who was one of our biggest stars... and then walked away. But wait until you get a load of Debra Winger. She just eats the screen every second the camera lands on her. She's not hamming it up, she's just plain magnetic. There's so much going on behind her eyes that as an audience member, you just have to keep an eye on her to see what's going on. She, too, has one "big scene," but it isn't as big, in the script, as you might expect. You don't get the 5-minute speech where she tears down the house. What you get is what the character demanded, and that includes a boatload of subtext. This is an actress who's clearly mad at Hollywood the industry, but you get the feeling that some director with a great script for an adult woman will turn up at her door and talk her into doing the work she's meant to. All these years since she has been a fixture in films and she still has that unmistakable star power.

And Rosemary DeWitt, best known for her work on "Mad Men," shows up big here as the opposite number to Hathaway's reservoir of pain and fear. She's the one who holds the family together, even when it's her day. And she hits just the right notes of selflessness and selfishness... again, from life. There's a scene in the film's final act when Kym returns home after a car ride that goes badly. She goes to her sister's room, knocks on her door, and doesn't say a word. Rachel lets her in, takes care of her, helps her bathing before her own wedding. Hathaway and DeWitt are so good, so in-synch that you literally believe they're sisters. It's heartbreaking stuff. Especially for anyone who has siblings. That unnerving feeling of unconditional love travels from the screen right to you. It was only at that point that I was sure I was in love with Rachel Getting Married.

Of course, Demme has his regular parade of irregulars (the regular ones and others). One of the most fascinating casting choices is Tunde Adebimpe (the lead singer of TV on the Radio who you might remember from Jump Tomorrow). The role of the husband-to-be could be cast in all kinds of ways, but Adebimpe plays it close to the vest, with the clear presence of big ego potential, but very low key, a man who draws people into his world, but also puts out for those close to him when the chips are down. (Many would say the same of Demme.)

Anna Deavere Smith as The Second Wife, Bill Irwin as a father twisted in emotional knots that he fights not to allow to unravel, a new actress named Anisa George as the bitchy best friend, Carol Jean Lewis leading the way as the leading face of Sidney's impeccably cast family, and comedy-guy Mather Zickel, turning in a smooth performance as The Best Man who turns out to be the person who gets Kym the best.

And then there's the music. There's a score (by jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr. and Palestinian musician Zafer Tawil), but the film is floating throughout on a cloud of "live" music around the house, classic music, light music, ethnic music, noodling, infectious music... all kinds of music, life in an iPod of the coolest stuff you'll hear.

By the end of the film, your expectations have been overwhelmed by the world that Demme and all of his collaborators (including Declan Quinn as DP and Ang Lee's regular cutter, Tim Squyres on the Avid) have created. At the same time, what many people expect to get from a film these days is not offered. Sorry. But any detractor - and there will surely be some - should take a breath and think about what they were offered here by Lumet, Demme, et al. When was the last time we saw this kind of intimacy in a film released by a major or a division of a major? It's what Altman was always reaching for, for better and sometimes worse. It's what Soderbergh brings to his more earnest efforts. It's what I yearn for film after film: an intimate human truth.

A wedding is where the family is forced/chooses to come together, as adults, with histories, in an attempt to share a loving event. It's a classic dramatic construct. Rachel Getting Married is a classic deconstruction of cinema at its most natural state - close to whatever it was that those crazy Danish purists were thinking when they came up with Dogme 14 years ago. It's without a doubt one of the ten best films of 2008, and even in a weak film year, that's always saying something.