By Christopher Stipp

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RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

I think if I explain everything I just could not, in good conscious, recommend about this little film that’s completely overrated, overexposed and represents everything wretched about art films that try and be too clever without giving the audience anything for their patience in sitting through this dreadful slop I might just be able to tell you why the good money should be on HAPPY-GO-LUCKY.

When we meet Anne Hathaway, starring as Kym, in RACHEL GETTING MARRIED she is on the rebound. Rebounding from the dark floor of drug addiction she is trying to right her own personal plane from completely decimating any little humanity she might have left as it careens towards an ultimate crash course. She is saved, however, by a 12-step program. She seems committed to her recovery and to making amends for past abuses that we aren’t really let in on as an audience until it’s theatrically appropriate. You see, the whole film is supposed to be, as the title says, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED. Rachel. Instead, what we get is the impish and selfish behaviors of Kym as she desperately seeks attention, any attention, from those who have no doubt been through an emotional corkscrew as we learn even more about her past transgressions against her family. This is one of the problems that suffers at the hands of Jonathan Demme’s overwrought, overacted, melodramatic, bombastic piece of stillborn cinema.

The reason why no one seems to be pointing out that this emperor has no clothes is that the movie seems steeped in a artful sheen that, itself, is screaming to be loved. The entire movie almost all takes place at Kym’s childhood home and the bizarre events that transpire there for their wedding weekend should be enough reason for you to steer clear of this film. Case in point, never mind that the movie’s best man to the dreadfully acted husband-to-be, Tunde Adebimpe, who looks like Kanye West but without the swagger, charisma or anything else endearing, fucks Kym in the basement of her house just hours before the rehearsal dinner moments, just moments, after formally introducing themselves to one another, both attending the same weekly 12 step meeting. We don’t know for sure whether he’s romantically linked to the bridesmaid who was, moments before Kym decides to have a meltdown about it, supposed to be the maid of honor but the casualness of this intimacy which isn’t is exactly what’s wrong with this picture.

We’re supposed to somehow care for these characters, I think that’s the point of a good story, connect with one of them at least, and be happy for the couple getting married, but it is one strange person after the next that we’re introduced to in this movie. We have a live band, friends of the bride and groom, that keeps playing all weekend in anticipation of their big day, at the house. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a running joke but they are the most grating, annoying musical group put to celluloid this year. Their playing borders on unbelievable, unbelievable that any normal person would oppress everyone else in the home, seemingly throughout the whole film, with their practicing. You have a rehearsal dinner, the likes of which I have never even remotely come close to experiencing, that literally takes its time getting through to the end.

I don’t know if Demme forgot to pay his editor, thus feeling like he didn’t cut an ounce of material from this scene, but since brevity wasn’t a chief concern of his and decided to treat this dinner as if it were one long tracking shot it is tough to sit through. As well, almost a companion piece to this, we get an obnoxiously designed and executed wedding reception that is so pretentious and unbelievable in its scope and size that I am loathe to even praise it for trying to be different. There’s a difference between different and interesting and these moments, filled with all sorts of hipsters, people much too cool for anyone’s school (especially one of the groom’s buddies who gives his toast rocking a pair of sunglasses) but, frankly, it is hard to get past the forced bohemianisms many of these players exude.

Specifically, one of the more surprising disappointments is Bill Irwin. He’s so adept, and could run circles around some of the youthful screen actors who wouldn’t know how to carry themselves appropriately on a real stage like Bill has over the years, but yet he turns in a performance that is overwrought and melodramatic at moments that you wonder if we’re supposed to laugh or be horrified by what he considers to be dramatic acting during some key moments in this film. If this serves as any indication of his strengths on film maybe he should just stick to playing Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street. As well, Debra Winger is the real disaster of this film. Playing the part of a disassociated mother who wants us to believe that her wayward daughter Kym is less deserving of the affection she gives her “successful” daughter Rachel doesn’t work. By the end of the film she’s merely a skid mark on a disaster of what should have been a movie about how one family turns tragedy into something new, something worth making a film about. But, instead, the film grates and limps towards its final minutes, oppressing the audience through a long, drawn out wedding reception that, if anyone is being honest, no one ever wants to see unless you’re the bride and groom. The reasons for including such a long sequence are not valid if the point is to illustrate something more than letting the audience sit through a fake reception, with fake people, with no real point but to be lengthy and self-indulgent.

Anne Hathaway, though, deserves some credit for turning in a performance that is genuinely a highlight to the other roles she’s ever had to play on film and, setting aside some of the more awkward moments (read here: her many outbursts), she does shine. She does. The film is not a complete waste and, if it were not for Anne’s dedication to making this character seem more real than the stiffs she’s surrounded with, is better for her being in it.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

There is something to be said about the power of a positive attitude.

We could talk endlessly about whether people who seem perpetually happy are really delusional or are deluding themselves. In this film, written and directed by Mike Leigh, the real genuineness about Poppy (played deftly and tenderly by Sally Hawkins) when we first meet her is that she has not just a great attitude about life and its cruelties that seem to pepper our daily existence but that she simply has the closest thing to Leibnizian optimism that hasn’t been seen since Voltaire’s novel Candide. Amazingly enough her joie de vivre doesn’t become annoying and isn’t obnoxious. Poppy knows how to navigate through any situation and instead of letting water find its lowest point she elevates everyone else around her. For the most part.

Now, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, Leigh is smart and sharp enough to make Poppy a strong independent woman who doesn’t need anyone in her life to determine how she should feel, and she is equipped with the kind of humor that could be taken a few different ways. In one way, she is a bastion of delight to her friends who love her; she’s the kind of friend who would pick you up anywhere at any time. The other way her soulfully bright outlook on such mundane activities as learning how to drive a car is taken, judging by the reaction of her driving instructor, Scott (played with wicked precision by Eddie Marsan), Poppy acts like a life mirror for those she comes in contact and interacts with. To wit, her humor about things is genuinely meant to soothe, to trigger some sense of ease, but her very being reminds others who find themselves at rotten opposites to Poppy’s positivity that they are not good people. Again, it’s so simplistic to make the observation but for lack of a better metaphor she is like a walking piece of art; people have reactions to it, for good or bad, depending on how they interpret her.

Hawkins’ performance, as I heard one person explain, could be likened to the supposition of what it would be like if the jovial best friend in all the films that have come out in years past were given her own film. In a way that’s a perfectly apt comparison and one I would agree with up to the point where she stops, however brief, being the unstoppably positive person and comes to the aid of a young schoolboy who is getting beaten in the schoolyard. As a teacher she is unmistakably compassionate and the subsequent moments where we meet a social worker, Tim (Samuel Roukin), who comes in to talk to the child, I half expectedly waiting to have this movie turn into usual Hollywood territory where we learn there is something sinister afoot and this social worker guy and Poppy team up to get to the damn bottom of things, things end with Tim finding out the core of what’s wrong and then works off-camera to resolve the issue. It’s in the moment where Poppy shows her sensitivity as a human being, the dedication to the children who have been placed in her care, and Hawkins’ range as a sophisticated actress that understands her role and embraces all its facets. The way that Tim and Poppy come together, and how Tim responds quite favorably to Poppy’s embrace of life, seems perfectly believable in that Leigh earns the moment these two people share with one another.

Conversely, the same dedication and jovialness she displays in her classroom with the young kids she teaches during the week acts like an oppressive force as Scott sees Poppy in a complete and different way. Poppy’s humor and genialness is interpreted quite terrifyingly by Scott who has obvious emotional issues that at first don’t seem like they have anything to do with her. Poppy thinks the things that happen with Scott, for instance when he chats about the miserable students that he has to endure, are simply random. Scott makes his own misery and this is another aspect of Leigh’s movie that is so powerful; it’s not enough to just say “Be happy” but, Leigh seems to be saying, if I could be so bold as to make the assertion, your misery is your own making.

Life is hard and scraggly, yes, and there is a moment that Poppy has with a homeless man that is at the same time tense, scary and completely disarming, but there is just something uplifting about the moment when Poppy enters the homeless person’s world willingly to try and understand, to help. Again, she doesn’t suffer any fools gladly but the response she has to the events that happen to her is what makes this film so different than anything you’ll see this year. You want her to react in ways we’ve been condition to react to tense emotional situations but she gladly disappoints you every single time in taking not just the higher road but the road less taken by many people in the world. She is not the Pangloss from Candide of her day but, rather, Candide himself who eventually looks at the hardships that have happened in life and confesses he must, “cultivate her garden”; it’s the recognition that, yes, these things will happen, and very unpleasant things will continue to happen but let your good soul be the better person.

For sure, and as well, you have to credit the performances of Karina Fernandez who chews up screen time with an absolutely gripping scene as Poppy decides to take a flamenco dancing class and gets an introduction that no one has probably ever received and Stanley Townsend as a tramp who manages to shift the whole tone of the film for a few gripping moments.
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Not Worth Revisiting: SALO by Raymond Schillaci

Some Movies You Don’t Have to See

Christopher played a cruel joke on me. He went to Borders and purchased the Criterion Collection of Salo, The 120 Days of Sodom, and dared me as a film lover to view it before him. He herald it with praise – of course, this is only hearsay – he was like a little lemming ready to jump off the cliff. Well, I saved his ass and suffered through 145 minutes of literal torture involving sodomizing, fecal obsession, rape, old men and women getting their rocks off with disgusting stories that could just about turn anyone’s stomach and that is just at a glimpse of this dispassionate piece of psuedo-art.

Why did I see this movie? Not to be unfair to Mel, but I felt the same way when I walked away from The Passion. Two hours of torture. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the religious implications to “The Passion”. So to some (or many – the box office numbers prove that) there was a deep sincerity to it all that really needed no average story-telling techniques. But to those of us not of the religious persuasion it was an exercise in nausea. That is the only comparison that I will draw with those two movies. Many will see the redeeming value in “The Passion” while “Salo” is void of it.

Some movies should just not be made. You feel dirty afterwards and it ruins 2 hours of your life, if not more, for what it has done to your psyche. As well done as some of them may be, they manage to cross the taboo line that makes you feel how unnecessary these people are to the film community. Their talents wasted on something so vile, one wishes to burn the film and ask the artists to go back and create something more palatable. Now don’t get me wrong. I think you may know from some of my reviews that I appreciate deep and avant garde films. I have sung the praises of Jodorowsky, Scorsese and Lynch. But for the life of me I can’t understand anybody putting themselves through the likes of “Old Boy” “Pink Flamingos” or “Salo”. As far as who wins out most disturbing and voted closest to want to burn in hell – Salo takes the number 1 spot and so does Christopher and Criterion for aiding and abetting anyone to try an view this disturbing onslaught on the senses. This is not a movie for one to own, let alone rent.

I’m not in the minority on this one folks. Many have damned this film. Check out the reviews on Amazon.com. A few sickos out there have praised it as a masterpiece for its imagery and daring. I say, “Get a life!” We have seen similar imagery in films from past masters done much better. Any amateur film historian could recognize the influences of Kubrick, Fellini and perhaps Bergman. Yes, the decision to leave nothing to the imagination may be considered daring, but so was getting Divine to eat poodle shit in one disgusting take in “Pink Flamingos”. Is it art? I don’t think so.

This is a story from the Marque de Sade and has all the earmarks of his disgusting fetishes. This is a tale reveling in the history of four powerful fascists men in Northern Italy, during WWII, who kidnap eighteen young people (men & women) and put them through physical and emotional torture. The lucky ones commit suicide early while the others endure stomach-churning stories from perverted old men and women, brutal rape, eating and bathing in human excrement over and over again, detailed visceral torture and eventually death, only to have two young fascist men waltz to the sounds of agony.

There is no redeeming value to this film. It’s four lead characters start off repulsive and go downhill from there. This film makes “Eyes Wide Shut” & “Clockwork Orange” look like a piker for perversion. But those films actually had far more appeal. Yes, the film captures the decadence of the period, but who really wants to relive that. Some may argue the point that such films like “Platoon” or “Schindler’s List” have been labeled as masterpieces exposing atrocities set upon the human spirit. That is correct, but they also had a redeeming value that rose above the events themselves. Pasolini’s “Salo” has no desire to take what it may consider as the easy route. Instead it shoves your face into it, makes you feel like an outsider, forced to subject one’s self to the humility all the actors have put themselves through.

What a nightmare this movie is and I curse Criterion, Christopher and myself for the viewing displeasure. I urge all not to even rent this. And, if you are offered to see it for free, beat the hell out of the person who offers it to you. I have urged Christopher to shred this DVD and rid it from our lives. By the way, it took me 3 sittings to get through this atrocity. I now have to bath myself in lime and get a good spraying of Lysol. Maybe then I will feel half way human again.

God, I hope my family forgives me.

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