DEMME DOES DYSFUNCTION
My dissatisfaction with the 2009 Academy Awards has lead me to re-examine the recent Oscar pool, in hopes of understanding what I deem to be a pretty poor outcome. Aside from determining that Slumdog Millionaire was a more than a far cry from Citizen Kane, (heck, it didn’t even touch City of God), I was able to discover hidden gems, such as Johnathan Demme’s refreshing Verité drama, Rachel Getting Married, featuring Best Actress nominee Anne Hathaway. Demme paints a surprisingly real, original portrait of crisis around Hathaway and a cast of others, including Rosemarie DeWitt, in the title role, Debra Winger, as the ominously detached mother, and in a brilliant, yet unsung performance as the well-intentioned, yet tragic father, Bill Irwin. Moments of emotion that typically seem slightly sappy, conventional, and melodramatic are plentiful, but oddly seem to work amidst handheld cinematography and casual dialogue (in a screenplay deftly penned by Sidney Lumet’s daughter, Jenny). A beat of particular poignancy comes during Tunde Adembimpe’s (of TV on the Radio fame, who stars as Sidney, the bridegroom), a capella rendition of Neil Young’s “Unknown Soldier” – if I weren’t so emotionally impervious, I may have shed a tear. At the epicenter is Hathaway, who shines despite a borderline-histrionic subplot; her “Kim” is at once abrasive and empathy inducing. Director Demme’s auteur identity seems to have taken yet another turn, and his eclectic body of work, which now includes the unlikely trio of this film, Silence of the Lambs and Stop Making Sense, seems to signal his mastery. This flick lives and breathes like none other this Oscar season; it is invigorating to experience inventive cinema in the shadow of self-indulgent Hollywood malarkey (you know who you are, Ben Button!)
Link: IMDB
My dissatisfaction with the 2009 Academy Awards has lead me to re-examine the recent Oscar pool, in hopes of understanding what I deem to be a pretty poor outcome. Aside from determining that Slumdog Millionaire was a more than a far cry from Citizen Kane, (heck, it didn’t even touch City of God), I was able to discover hidden gems, such as Johnathan Demme’s refreshing Verité drama, Rachel Getting Married, featuring Best Actress nominee Anne Hathaway. Demme paints a surprisingly real, original portrait of crisis around Hathaway and a cast of others, including Rosemarie DeWitt, in the title role, Debra Winger, as the ominously detached mother, and in a brilliant, yet unsung performance as the well-intentioned, yet tragic father, Bill Irwin. Moments of emotion that typically seem slightly sappy, conventional, and melodramatic are plentiful, but oddly seem to work amidst handheld cinematography and casual dialogue (in a screenplay deftly penned by Sidney Lumet’s daughter, Jenny). A beat of particular poignancy comes during Tunde Adembimpe’s (of TV on the Radio fame, who stars as Sidney, the bridegroom), a capella rendition of Neil Young’s “Unknown Soldier” – if I weren’t so emotionally impervious, I may have shed a tear. At the epicenter is Hathaway, who shines despite a borderline-histrionic subplot; her “Kim” is at once abrasive and empathy inducing. Director Demme’s auteur identity seems to have taken yet another turn, and his eclectic body of work, which now includes the unlikely trio of this film, Silence of the Lambs and Stop Making Sense, seems to signal his mastery. This flick lives and breathes like none other this Oscar season; it is invigorating to experience inventive cinema in the shadow of self-indulgent Hollywood malarkey (you know who you are, Ben Button!)
Link: IMDB
