Some cliché background and premise: Rachel and Sidney are getting married, and the wedding venue is chosen at Rachel's father Paul's house, a huge old house in Connecticut, and they invite all family and friends, including Ray Chell's addict sister Cam. As you can imagine: this drug addict and problem girl will use all kinds of bad behavior (she has sex with the best man within five minutes of her appearance), which will push the wedding to the brink of destruction, and the long-standing conflicts in the family will also be destroyed. Will explode at all the most inopportune times. If so, Rachel's Wedding is nothing more than a satirical family drama, but director Jonathan Demme takes it a step further.
The film was shot on DV, and the shaky footage and crowds made it feel like watching a documentary. The final effect is: the film gives the environment (wedding) and characters, and then, driven by people, the events unfold naturally, without any trace of coincidence and careful construction, and the seemingly inadvertent narrative is like A spinning coin, and you don't know if the whole thing will be a ludicrous black farce or a warm reunion when the coin hits the ground (that is, when the wedding begins).
Back to the wedding itself. The wedding is a process of "acceptance" and "integration", but there are so many conflicting threads buried in the film: Cam's surly, Rachel's sensitivity, father Paul's failed marriage, and what seems to be the root of all tragedy— Kem once accidentally caused the death of his own brother. But Jonathan Demme's films always have a warm shimmer, and family love and mutual tolerance (even if it's hypocritical) have brought this must-failed wedding back on track time and time again.
Wedding opening: white bride, black groom, bridesmaids wearing sari, jazz, rap, samba played successively. Memories of the past, the noise of modern times, racial differences and family conflicts... All kinds of discordances naturally merged at this time. At this moment, the film has become a microcosm of American society: it constantly absorbs foreign cultures, balances the contradictions of the original cultures, and maintains its fullness and hope amid countless struggles and pains. People of different classes and races sang songs, smiled and accepted each other.
Sure, you could argue that "Rachel's Wedding" just showed a family attitude, but the film came out in the public eye as Obama took office and inevitably became a Democratic political manifesto. In any case, when the music played, we forgot all the unpleasant things before, and everyone seemed so quiet and so nice.
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