Friday, October 24, 2008

Rachel Getting Married (Kind of a Movie Review #5)


Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy

I know I can’t be the only whatever I am in the room....
Ani DiFranco

...went to see this movie last night called Rachel Getting Married, in which Anne Hathaway comes out of rehab and in to the heaving bosom of her painfully fractured family for a wedding....really captured the dynamics of dysfunction...the deep, festering wounds that only those within the circle can see...the ways something that might seem so harmless to any onlooker can explode so suddenly...as well as, even in its brightest moments, the excruciating awkwardness of always being the most fucked up person in the room, even in the midst of such of a family...or at least to feel that way...even in a wedding hip enough for the groom to start singing Neil Young songs in the midst of self-written vows...to feel like nobody else there is or ever was or ever could be so out of place...to simply wanna, needta get out...

Another time or place, another civilization
would really make this life feel so complete....
Neil Young

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
Miranda (The Tempest, Shakespeare)

...apparently, the movie was originally supposed to be called Dancing With Shiva...after the figure in Hindu mythology who, according to yoga teachers I've known, dances in fire without being burned....this morning was in yoga class, where, like in every really good yoga class, I found myself going into surprising new areas of this place where I’ve been so long but have never, as long as I can remember, ever felt very comfortable...that I’ve never really gotten to know in 42 years...and that’s the real issue, isn’t it? That, often, the only place we really need to go is in....

12 comments:

Brooks Hall said...

"the excruciating awkwardness of always being the most fucked up person in the room, even in the midst of such of a family...or at least to feel that way..."
OhMiGod... I have to see this movie! Some students told me about it this week, thinking I'd be into it. And I was thinking, "yea, yea. I'll think about it." Oh well, I guess they know me...

Anonymous said...

I've been in but I've seen better places, really. I love the Ani DiFranco quote, too.

kw said...

I've had to leave my nuclear family and create my own. When I started getting really ill, my sister decided to write me off in a painful letter. My Bipolar II Disorder was no longer fun for her.

My father let me know this year, that he thought it best if we never see each other again. His reasoning was that "ever since you were a young child, you have gone out of your way to be provocative, irritating and enraging".

That was a shocker. I replied that I was glad he was able to speak his mind. That children who've been molested (his step-brother when I was three to four years old), and those with mental health issues tend to act out.

He is a man terrified of emotions. I represent so many aspects of his early life, that I believe I terrify him. The thing is, I'm not sure if he knows how truly alike we are. Or maybe he does, and that's what scares him.

Unknown said...

The only perfect lives, marriages, romances and careers are in Hollywood movies, and that's just because they are only 2 hours long. As for the rest of us we are just different levels of dysfunctionality.

Lydia said...

Another miraculous post. The movie is a must-see for me, given that you described how I felt much of my life and most definitely always feel at weddings, and certainly felt just after leaving rehab.
The only relative left from my family of origin is my sis, who lives half way across the country and emails infrequently (but I love her). My husband's horrid family...well we've stayed away from them for three years and they all live 40 miles from us. Speaks volumes.
Love the Miranda quote and the artwork titled same. Love the use of "out" and "in" used significantly here.
My 15-pound, one-year old cat is named Shiva. She practiced yoga with me yesterday morning.
Jay, I so love the ending of the post. It's a gift.

Roxanne said...

interesting, we always think the way is "out" and sometimes it's the way "in". Isn't it crazy - when I'm with my family, sometimes I feel like there's nowhere else in the world I could feel more out of place - and other days, I feel like it's the place where I feel most connected to something else in the world ...

Ed T. said...

dude, kudos for quoting Neil Young, I am a huge Neil Young fan, (have tickets for a show that was supposed to be on election day Nov. 4th but got postponed till March, first time I'll have seen him live). And it's very interesting how family relations can explode in odd ways at any time, so true, and I always feel like the most alienated one, I wonder if this is true or just an illusion everybody feels?

Don't Feed The Pixies said...

Hollywood encourages us to believe in perfection and so we chase it forever and keep ourselves miserable because we can never reach it.

But then why should we settle for what we have? Surely the benchmark of humanity is our desire to push forward boundaries?

An interesting blog, but not sure if i will see the film or not

human being said...

so true...
but whenever i tell this to a friend, s/he prefers to go IN my world... instead of his/her... and i wonder how i can make them understand they have an IN and they are not the center of the world with all others orbiting them...
:)
thanks for that quote from Miranda...
The Tempest is one of my favorites...

Erik Donald France said...

I've wanted to see this and now will do so "at" the weekend.

Are you in Mayberry, RFD? High Point as in the Old North State?

Anonymous said...

That Ani DiFranco quote... holy cow I've been to enough parties where I've scanned the room and felt like I was invited purely as the dancing-bear eccentric.

Rhiannon said...

I was scrolling down your post and saw this lovely Artwork in this post. I have this same Artwork in a poem post in my blog which fit the theme to the poem I wrote "The Enchanted Storm"! I added my poem title text into this Artwork in that post. It's in my blog archive for March 24, 2007. I just love this painting it's so beautiful and such a sense of freedom in that wild wind with the swirling ocean waves and her hair blowing. I love the "feeling" of it.

I want to see this movie with Anne Hathaway also. She's really becoming quite an actress of late.

Blessings,

Rhi