Rachel Getting Married

Pay close attention: Rachel Getting Married is NOT to be confused with Anne Hathaway's other recent film, Bride Wars. I think the people in row in front of me at the theater were confused by the art house nature of this film, because something inspired them to get up at leave during the film. This independent movie tells the story of Kim (Hathaway) as she leaves rehab for her sister's wedding. Most people, according to the film, take a long time before they're ready to see their families upon leaving rehab, but Kim takes a weekend away to be thrown right in the middle of a big family wedding being put on in their home. The film mainly revolves around the dynamic of the two sisters fighting for attention, acceptance, and understanding.

The film is slow. The audience looks on from a handheld camera's perspective almost as if we are one of the relatives in for the wedding. We see the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, the fights, and the spontaneous games between the family. The film shines for the honest way it captures the interactions of the family--it feels like a real family with big problems but the same emotional struggles of any family.

As far as a narrative, the film carefully doles out exposition in dramatic spoonfuls as the audience becomes initiated into the family's history. Resolutions are not sweeping and final, but the characters try to work out their issues and confront their pasts. Rachel Getting Married is not your typical fare for Friday night at the movies, but there is one scene near the end of the film--you'll know if if you've seen it--that so beautifully depicts the sisterly connection between Kim and Rachel that the entire film becomes tinted with a sort of honesty and hope that makes the boring family speeches and shaky filming worth the time.

I left the theater thinking how much I would love to attend a wedding like the one depicted there. Rachel's family has a lot of issues, but these things get put aside as much as possible to celebrate a simple but true love. The wedding is strange but intimate, and though the reception was foreign to anything I've experienced, I felt the happiness of the people dancing there. Being happy doesn't erase their pain, but there is the sense that happiness is something that exists even in the midst of turmoil.

Alphaville

Yes, when I'm taking a class on foreign film that focuses on the new wave in different countries it means I review a bunch of weird movies. Enter: Alphaville.

French New Wave films feature a self-conscious rejection of what was previously the standard cinematic technique. Basically, instead of focusing on adapting literary stories new wave directors stepped in with non-linear narratives, understated acting, jump cutting, tracking shots, and plenty of intercontextual film references.

Alphaville is some bizarre mix between a sci-fi thriller and a noir detective drama. Lemmy Caution arrives in Alphaville from the "Outlands" as a reporter who is chasing some big story. Alphaville is a city on a far away planet, though it is clearly recognizable as Paris. As the film develops we learn that Alphaville prohibits all things illogical. Excessive emotion, love, independent though--anything that does not fit in with alpha 60, the computer voice of the city.

If you think the premise of the film sounds strange, it is nothing compared to the particulars. While director Goddard maintains some elements of narrative plot structure, the film is much more interested in communicating its themes than in presenting a story. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the themes of many New Wave films stem from Deconstruction, so Alphaville serves as an argumentative essay of sorts about the arbitrary nature of representation. Signs never only mean what they appear to mean, so they have not inherent meaning at all. Sound cuts out when the characters realize their communication is fruitless; assassins appear from nowhere, are killed, and then never mentioned again; women serve only to be looked at--an idea both promoted and criticized by the mise en scene of the film; unlabeled arrows point in all directions. All these things work together to create a film world where signification becomes a real problem.

All that is very interesting and well though out, I'm sure, but it makes Alphaville a terribly frustrating film to watch. It does not make sense on first viewing, and it becomes more muddled the more I try to think through it.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Who hasn't experienced, at least indirectly, a difficult break up? Awkwardness, regret, mind games. Oh yes, people revert to Jr. High social politics when it comes to broken hearts, and that is the subject matter for this comedy.

When television star Sarah Marshall breaks up with Peter he doesn't know what to do with his life. In an effort to get over her, he takes a solo trip to Hawaii only to run into Sarah immediately after arriving at the luxury hotel. Peter stays at the hotel to save face, but naturally, things become a jumbled mess thanks to the presence of Sarah's new eccentric British musician of a boyfriend.

Most new comedies that are sweeping the cinema these days rely on dumbed down jokes and sexual humor. This certainly has a taste of that new comedy (warning: the nudity in this movie is pretty rough), but the main drive of the laughs in this film are dialogue and situational based--a return to the screwball comedy in many ways. The guy is the pathetic screw up, but he's also the good guy. It's refreshing to see a film where people can be flawed and still fall in love. He's not perfect, she's not perfect, but compromises can be made.

I prefer comedies with character actors rather than characters that attempt to be realistic. These people are meant for this movie. This movie takes a common situation and makes it absurd and entertaining enough to be a good way to spend 2 hours of a Friday night. I enjoyed it.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

This film, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, straddles the border between Mexico and the U. S. Segmented into chapters by interetitles, the film depicts what it calls the three burials of a Mexican immigrant named Melquiades Estrada (though I'm not sure the last name is ever mentioned anywhere in the film aside from the title). The story moves non linearly through time. Set in a border town in Texas, the film spotlights a kind of Americanness that we all hope never to have to experience of hot dogs, trailer parks, and greasy diners that function as old western saloons complete with a resident woman for sale.

The opening titles appear in English as well as Spanish creating the feeling that this American film is being translated for another audience, though many aspects of the film feel distinctly opposite: that an American audience is allowed to look in on this Mexican film. Featuring many characteristics of the classic American genre--the Western--this film witnesses the breakdown of many of the traditional forms. Women are still framed indoors, but instead of a front porch looking into the vast Western wilderness, they peer through windows at obese neighbors sunbathing in lawn chairs. The independent male lead sets off on a journey through the desert, but masculinity just isn't what it used to be. In fact, the film supports the notion that perhaps the ideals of the American West haven't vanished, but they were fictional constructs to start with.

Nevertheless, the film does have a redemptive ending. Though not entirely settled, much of the tension between old and new, wild and civilized, lessens into a suitable compromise that still requires pondering from the audience.

It takes a while to figure out where this film is going, and as a fair warning there are some horrendously disturbing scenes, but the arc of the movie is interesting and enjoyable.

Pulp Fiction

Despite my high school film teacher's assurance to parents that this film would not be in the class curriculum, Pulp Fiction is really difficult to escape in the film world. It is one of the most referenced movies of the 90s. Three stories--independent of one another but sharing in many circumstances and characters--play out on screen. The stories move forward and back in time with no distinct clues, but the path of the movie and its chronology remain easy to follow, probably because the timeline is not all that important.

Two strange hit men complete jobs for their mob boss, who asks one of them (Travolta) to take out his wife for the night. The night is half fun and then takes a very serious turn. A boxer (Willis) fails to throw a major fight for the mobster, but must turn back during his escape to retrieve a very special watch that he inherited from his father. The hit men must clean a car... quickly. Two amateur criminals decide that there is a lucrative future in robbing diners. These are the major stories.

This is not the kind of film where everything is so intimately connected that following one path of a story sheds critical light on how another of the story perspectives plays out, but nothing is entirely independent either. Ultimately, the film doesn't come to much. Because director Tarantino isn't trying to progress some weighty plot, the dialogue and situations do not all have to have some higher purpose, which frees them to be hilarious and strange of their own right. Tarantino revels in every story and shot. It's enjoyable and memorable, not life changing--but that's not what it's aiming for.



The title is self-referencing and accurate. Pulp Fiction is full of the grittier side of life--much grittier than I ever expect from mine or most people's lives. It's a different world that deals with drugs and mobs and sex and death with some witty dialogue and clever direction. It's an escape, and a funny one at that.