Rachel Getting Married, the brilliant film from Jonathan Demme, is a layered story that unfolds like a home movie — one that we can’t take our eyes off. We know the actors are just actors, many are clearly recognizable from many other films, but gosh they are so real. With little dialogue, the characters are well drawn showing emotional complexity and intelligence. I am most struck by the depiction of Rachel and Kim’s father, Paul, and how he is one of the most realistic movie fathers I’ve seen.
Movie parents typically appear as caricatures at worst and archetypes at best. When done right, parents in movies fully realized characters — at least in the world of the screenplay —they make plausible, often emotional decisions about their children. Independent filmmakers tend to concern themselves with this kind of detail — Juno, Little Miss Sunshine. Here, Jonathan Demme, Jenny Lumet (screenwriter) and Bill Irwin (Paul) create a father who loves, trusts, mistrusts, worries, mourns, suppresses and acts like a real person. Much of this is done using shots that only show us his facial expressions. But some of the best stuff that these three do in concert with a dynamic and wonderful cast and crew is in Paul’s interaction with other characters.
My favorite scene is the dishwasher-loading scene. Paul and Sydney, Rachel’s fiancé, enter the kitchen to find that a relative has been overloading the dishwasher. After Paul announces that he'll need to reload everything, Sydney challenges him by suggesting that he could do it better. They have a race...
Bill Irwin, in this scene more than any other, appears so fully to exist that it is almost painful. Sydney loads the dishwasher first, during which time Paul taunts him and comments on his technique. He’s trash-talking him. At first, it’s a little disconcerting to see a father talking this way — letting the f-bombs fly — but he’s the father of two women who were teenagers not that long ago. Given the family environment, loving AND liberal, it is more realistic that he picked up talking like this as a way of fitting in. It’s clear that he had plenty to compete with in their lives. Though he talks this way, a way that I can’t imagine my father-in-law who’s a father of two women talking, he is also still their father. He avoids the mistake most movies make by being too much of a buddy and not enough of a parent. In fact, his gravity is strong enough to pull the scene apart just when the cheering and the relief is at a fever pitch.
Paul’s discovery of his drowned son’s dinner plate drains the scene of its joy in an instant. That his reaction and sudden departure from the kitchen is respected and met with silence and lowered heads is a testament to the difference between Paul and everyone else. He is the father of the house. He might have been down in it with his future son-in-law, talking trash and showing him a thing or two, but he’s not a peer. That’s amazing.
This snapshot of Rachel Getting Married and of Paul only illustrates part of what is so amazing about the film and Bill Irwin’s performance — about all the performances. See it for yourself. There are some mighty uncomfortable moments, but hang in there. This is the kind of film that reawakens your senses and reaffirms your faith in the goodness of others.
I also happen to think that I can load a dishwasher better.
