Jonathan Demme has had a rather fascinating career. After spending ten years toiling away in television and B-movies, Demme came on strong in the mid-80s with the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense and the surprising Something Wild. After a commercial peak in the 90s with Philadelphia and Silence of the Lambs, Demme essentially put aside narrative film making in order to concentrate on documentaries. To put this in perspective, this would be like Missy Elliot deciding to leave hip-hop so that she can pursue a career Brazilian folk music. Sure, there's still a career there but on a miniature scale compared to what came before.
Rachel Getting Married is Demme's first feature in four years and it may be his best. While it certainly won't have the commercial appeal of something like Silence of the Lambs, Rachel feels like solid, old-fashioned film making in a vein similar to film makers like John Cassavetes and Samuel Fuller. Filmed on high-res digital stadi-cams, most of the movie takes place in a 48 hour time period inside a house. Within the cramped confines, Demme beautifully unpacks a family's entire history. Walking that fine line between heart-wrenching sentimentality and saccharine melodrama, Demme seems to know when to pull back and let the actors do their thing. There is an authenticity to these performances and while most of the attention will be given to Anne Hathaway, i think Rosemarie DeWitt (who plays the title character) is the true unsung hero of the film. She plays bitchy in a way that doesn't fall into camp. Yes, Rachel can be terribly mean to her sister but that disdain is something borne out of a long history of pain. I think the cast of Gossip Girls could really learn some valuable lessons from watching this performance.
0 Comments
|
Archives
January 2016
|