Rachel Getting Married

This will be a series of things I see and read and wish to review. It will be a good place to relax and reflect. And if you really want, you can squeeze out the details of my life and put them to misuse.

To start off the list off, I recently saw "Rachel Getting Married," starring Anne Hathaway and directed by Jonathan Demme. Hathaway was nominated for Best Actress for the Oscars. Quite a leap for a girl who used to be pigeonholed into goodie princess roles, thanks largely to The Princess Diary series. Jonathan Demme, as I recalled correctly and just confirmed on wikipedia, is the director for movies such as "The Silence of the Lamb" (all time favourite) and "Philadelphia" (which I didn't see). I did see "The Manchurian Candidate" though, the one with Denzel Washington, which was apparently directed by Demme as well.

Hathaway plays Kym, a drug addict (yes, I know, times are hard when princesses become drug addicts) who is let out of rehab to attend her older sister Rachel's wedding. Kym, according to most critics (not this one though), is unlikable and basically the black sheep of the family because... well, you'll learn soon enough that she did something horrible to the family a long time ago while stoned and the family has never really forgiven her. Moreover, she has never truly forgiven herself. She's self-centered, a fact that is only accentuated by the egocentricity of every member of her family when they all fight to focus the family's attention on their own issues.


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It's no great mystery movie, but Kym did drive her little brother into a lake when she was 16. She got out okay but couldn't get her brother out, and he drowned. She was stoned out of her mind, and as part of her punishment was forced to go to rehab. Rachel is in school to become a psychologist (or psychiatrist, neither Kym nor I can remember the difference, but Rachel's obnoxious racist friend and former Maid of Honour Emma knows the difference and likes to rub that fact in our faces). Rachel is clearly resentful for the attention Kym gets from their father despite the fact that she is the functional sister and the shining role model on a pedestal. Kym, on the other hand, resents this attention because she feels the shackle of the father's watchful and distrustful gaze at all times, to make sure she doesn't do anything else disastrous, to make sure she doesn't drive, she doesn't drink or take drugs again. The parents, having lost a son, could not stay together and got divorced and then remarried to other people. The mother seems really chillax and friendly, and initially Kym really thought of her as a great ally in the family war, but deep down the mother doesn't seem to want anything to do with the two daughters anymore beside a superficial peck on the cheek at the wedding. She wants to run away, to escape from the cruel past, and seeing the daughters can only bring back painful memories of things she wants to forget.


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As you can probably tell, I'm on Kym's side because I find so much of myself in her. Yes, I can be irritating and self-centered and always manage to say the wrong things at the wrong time, but that doesn't mean we don't have feelings or that we are ignorant of the fact we are real screw-ups in life. It is precisely that full knowledge that makes everything so painful, and often the only way we can find to deal with it is to screw things up even more.

But the saddest part, I think, is that despite our deep similarities, if I actually met Kym in real life, I would judge her and decide to stay the heck away from her before I even get to know her.

Being an only child, I cannot know the conflicting feelings of siblinghood that the characters clearly exhibit. But a friend did comment if she did what Kym did, she would not be able to live with herself and her entire life would be ruined. Well, Kym would be glad someone would have made the same decisions as she did.