Rachel Getting Married movie storyline. Kym Buchman (Anne Hathaway) has been in drug rehab for nine months, during which time she has been clean. She is released temporarily from the facility to attend her sister Rachel Buchman’s wedding. During her release, Kym is staying at the family home, where the wedding is taking place. As such, it is like Grand Central Station for the duration of Kym’s stay, which may not be the most conducive situation for her in constantly being exposed to the watching eyes of those who know and don’t yet know her, but know of her situation.
The reunion with her family members starts off well enough, but issues around Kym’s release from rehab quickly surface. Kym and Rachel’s father, Paul Buchman, wants to make sure that Kym is all right at all times, which to Kym feels instead like he doesn’t trust her. Rachel slowly begins to resent Kym’s situation taking over what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, some of which is directed by Kym, some of which isn’t.
One person present but largely not included in the last minute wedding planning work is Kym and Rachel’s mother, Abby, from who Paul is divorced. The two have since married other people. Outwardly, Abby has been nurturing of Kym throughout her life. However, what is one of the key moments in Kym’s drug induced life, and in their collective family’s lives, may profoundly affect the wedding. Beyond how Kym’s presence affects the wedding, the goings-on of the family during Kym’s short stay may either bring them closer together or tear them apart.
Rachel Getting Married is a 2008 drama film directed by Jonathan Demme, and starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin and Debra Winger. The film was released in the U.S. to select theaters on October 3, 2008. The film opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival. The film also opened in Canada’s Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2008. Hathaway received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the film.
The screenplay was written by Jenny Lumet, the daughter of director Sidney Lumet and granddaughter of Lena Horne. Lumet, a junior high school drama teacher, has written four earlier screenplays, but this was the first to be produced. The film is directed by Jonathan Demme, and was shot in Stamford, Connecticut in a naturalistic style. The working title for the film was originally Dancing with Shiva.
Sidney Lumet himself approached Demme about his daughter Jenny’s script. Demme has commented that he loved Jenny’s flagrant disregard for the rules of formula, her lack of concern for making her characters likable in the conventional sense, and for what he considered to be her bold approach to truth, pain, and humor. Filming took 33 days and occurred in late 2007.
About the Production
About ten minutes into Rachel Getting Married, there’s a moment when Kym (Anne Hathaway), newly returned to the Buchman family home, wanders down an upstairs hall and steps into a sunlit child’s room. Violin music drifts up the stairs from the musicians practicing below. Kym looks around the room for a few seconds, and moves on. Nothing happens—but the moment is powerful.
“I wanted something sad floating through there,” recalls producer/director Jonathan Demme. “I had my headphones on, looking at the monitor, and Declan was doing this beautiful shot: Kym turns around, starts from the camera, and that was Zafer Tawil’s cue downstairs to start playing. I heard that haunting music and saw Anne’s face respond. I went running after Zafer and said, “Zafer, what was that beautiful tune?” He said, “That’s what I composed for you.” So this rich musical theme was revealed to us as we were making the movie—and to Annie in character as Kym. It was all in the moment and there it is, onscreen.”
That spontaneity—capturing unrehearsed the moody chemistry of Zafer Tawil’s composition, Declan Quinn’s restless camera, and Anne Hathaway’s bereft gaze—was the guiding principle of the Rachel Getting Married production. “The looseness of Jenny’s script made me feel that this shouldn’t be a tightly directed movie,” says Demme. “At every step of the way, Jenny went to an unexpected place and went further and further off formula and never pulled back. I was really amused and intrigued by the fact that Jenny didn’t try to make you like these characters. They were smart, edgy, irritating and yet halfway through reading the script I felt like I had become part of the family and cared tremendously about all of them.
“There’s terrible trauma in this family, and yet the wedding is beautiful. I wanted Rachel Getting Married to explore both sides of that paradox—the dark struggle, and the celebration of love and family and friends.”
To portray those polarities, Demme, cast and crew took an unconventional approach to every aspect of the film’s production. Long, loosely staged scenes play out accompanied by live music; documentary-style camerawork and editing tell the story; and eminent actors mingle onscreen with movie novices, musicians, artists and dancers in a creative mix.
“We all agreed to let reality happen in front of the cameras without trying to manipulate it from behind the scenes too much. Consistent with that we didn’t do any rehearsals, and nobody, not even Declan, really knew what the shot was going to be until the take started taking shape.” As lengthy scenes played out from start to finish, Director of Photography Declan Quinn and his camera crew prowled the family home with handheld cameras, capturing on the fly the characters’ exchanges, speeches, big gestures, and small sidelong looks. The action moved forward with few takes and as little obtrusive preparation as possible.
“In the intimate scenes,” says producer Neda Armian, “there would be the main characters in gut-wrenching conversation—and Declan. He was almost like one of the actors, part crew and part cast, relying on his instincts, skill and confidence to know where to point the camera. I like to say this movie has Jonathan’s heartbeat and a lot of Declan’s blood.” (Or sweat—“That camera was heavy,” remarks Declan Quinn.)
Quinn relates, “The way we worked was very empowering to the cast, and brought the emotions to the surface. Even the crew had to look at things differently, because we all had to be on our toes and react in the moment. As the DP I don’t usually operate the camera myself, but it gave me the freedom to make immediate choices; I tried to see the action as a viewer in the room would—to put the audience in the midst of it.”
During the long wedding party scenes, strategic cameras were literally placed in the actors’ hands to augment the “pro” cameras: Gonzales Joseph, who plays Sidney’s cousin in uniform, is never seen without a small prosumer camera; indie filmmaker Jimmy Joe Roche is the official wedding videographer, and two of the digicam-wielding guests are Demme’s mentor Roger Corman and ace cinematographer Charlie Libin.
“There was such an atmosphere of trust,” says Anne Hathaway, who manages to bring wounded humanity to the unrelentingly difficult character of Kym. “Since we never knew when the camera was on us, the cast had to listen every second, and achieve a very intense level of focus. One of the lessons that the movie teaches—particularly for people in recovery— is how important it is to stay in the present. To be able to stay in character, and hear and react to the music and the scene around you, is very liberating for an actor. To me, this story is about communication and love—and we were given the latitude to explore that.”
“Something happens where you get to work and every corner of the house feels like a house and not a movie set,” says Rosemarie DeWitt, with a nod to production designer Ford Wheeler’s evocative creation of a beautiful and believable family home for the Buchmans.
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Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Bill Irwin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Debra Winger, Anna Deveare-Smith, Mather Zickel, Victoria Haynes, Annaleigh Ashford, Eliza Simpson, Tamyra Gray
Screenplay by: Jenny Lumet
Production Design by: Ford Wheeler
Cinematography by: Declan Quinn
Film Editing by: Tim Squyres
Costume Design by: Susan Lyall
Set Decoration by: Chryss Hionis
Art Direction by: Kim Jennings
Music by: Donald Harrison Jr., Zafer Tawil
MPAA Rating: R for language and brief sexuality.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: October 3, 2008
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