comment #1

Chris D. says ...

Bravo. And I thought it was just me.

comment #2

dangovich says ...

It's not just Demme though. It's a common weakness among many white filmmakers.

comment #3

roquentin says ...

Actually, critics have mentioned it. Both Anthony Lane and Owen Gleiberman. Didn't you quote AL saying as much?

comment #4

slutsky says ...

Yes, white filmmakers aren't nearly racist enough.

What bullshit. What utter bullshit. One film where a black family isn't portrayed as troubled, or not entirely law-abiding, or dealing with drug problems and you're calling it reverse racism? Sorry, but if that's what you see when you see black characters onscreen—or if you're disappointed in the fact that an interracial marriage seems relatively happy, untroubled, and celebrated by the two families—then you really need to question what you're bringing to the table here.

I'm not calling racism here, but I find this reaction really, really ugly.

This is a really great movie, by the way—one of the best of the year. The fact that it doesn't try and make a grand statement about racist or feature a bigoted character who gets his comeuppance (thus proving the filmmaker's open-mindedness) is one of its STRENGTHS.

comment #5

Glenn Kenny says ...

Hey Jeff, who's this "friend"? Sarah Palin?

Seriously—I'm with Slutsky. On both the "utter bullshit" and "really really ugly" verdicts. And as far as dramatic sense goes—the film's ABOUT the white family. Not the black groom's. So the point of making them somewhat dysfunctional would have been, well, beside the point.

comment #6

nemo says ...

Call me old, but I'm just not ready to see Debra Winger play the mother of the bride.

comment #7

The InSneider says ...

Jeff -- Adebimpe does great, subtle work here and I'm sorry you didn't believe the movie. I wanted to keep watching this extended family. And for the record I'd say that right now, RGM is one of the 5 best films of the year, and if we're not counting foreign films or docs, it'd be #1 or 2. this site pisses me off sometimes. i wish we heard from jett more often. he's not as cranky.

Wells to Insneider: "Great, subtle Work"? Adebimpe's Sidney character is a stiff -- no dimension, no lines to speak of, a cipher.

comment #8

Rod32303 says ...

How is Winger, by the way?

My friends John and Dorothy were an interracial couple who married in the mid 80's. We all went to college together, and everyone just knew...John and Dorothy. John is black and Dorothy is white, and for four years, we knew them as a cool fucking couple. Folk who had issues with them, including their families (his from Florida, hers from Pennsylvania) had four years to get through their bullshit, so by the time their wedding came around, all that were there were celebratory and elated. Not a drunk asshole racist in the bunch.

Guess what? Some of us (African-American man here) ARE good men, honest, tax paying, "dull as wood." No shame in that. The film isn't called "SIDNEY GETTING MARRIED" - if it were, I am sure Demme would have examined the complexities of HIS family, much as he did in Beloved, where Glover, Newton, even Winfrey's characters were pretty three dimensional. Obviously Rachel is attracted to the normalcy of Sidney's brood, as her own is dysfunctional as a mother fucker.

I would never call you a racist, Jeff. You are one of my favorites, but when you get on your high horse, calling attention to your faux bravery in calling out this issue, and issue that is never called out like this IN ALL WHITE films, then you sound ridiculous. Maybe other critics are more like the man we want to be President - maybe they find it REFRESHING that the screwed up folk in the movie are the crackers (no offense). Lord knows there have been enough crack ho/drug addicts/gangsta/prostitute/adulturesses that are portrayed as and by people of color. T Maybe those other critics don't share this view, not because it's not cool, but because it's idiotic.

YOU make that film with the characters you wish were up there, instead of disrespecting the vision of Demme. And know that, thank god, more and more, there are all kinds of multicultural families all over the place.

Props to you for even bringing it up, though, Jeff. We need to talk more about this anyway as a country. Maybe this film will start some of that discussion.

comment #9

MartinBlank says ...

Reminds me of the anecdote about Demme not wanting to cast Morgan Freeman as Hannibal Lecter because he didn't want to cast a black man as a cannibal.

On the one hand, I see Demme's point. On the other hand, Freeman is well-known for seeking roles that could be played by someone of any race (see his roles in Clint Eastwood films), and it would've been interesting to see his take on Hannibal Lecter.

Makes me wish someone like James Lipton would host a show in which actors get to play a particularly zesty scene from a role they wanted but didn't get. That way we'd get to see how Freeman would've played that first scene between Hannibal and Clarice, say.

This further reminds me of the anecdote in one of William Goldman's books where he talks about Rob Reiner getting a call from an agent, who said "Rob, I've got the perfect Buttercup for The Princess Bride — Whoopi Goldberg."

comment #10

slutsky says ...

Debra Winger is amazing by the way. A relatively small part, in terms of how much time she's on screen, but her presence dominates the entire movie and a scene with her right at the end feels like the last piece of a puzzle.

comment #11

BurmaShave says ...

The groom's name is Sidney and you're saying it's not being at least winked at?

comment #12

BurmaShave says ...

Sneider I'm confused how you consider Wells a colleague. You're both named Jeff?

comment #13

Rothchild says ...

Between MiraJeff and the mentally challenged woman that ran the Synecdoche, NY Q and A on Thursday, Variety must hire anyone off the street, the dumber the better. I don't agree with Wells here, but I'm certain your criteria for judgment is based on WWHD (What Would Haggis Do?). I'd rather watch a racist movie than see Crash again.

comment #14

Josh Massey says ...

This is the same director who had a guy with AIDS have a family who was 100% completely unendingly without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt supportive of him and his lifestyle. Which happens, I know, but just as rarely as an interracial wedding without at least a nod toward the taboo.

comment #15

BurmaShave says ...

Massey if you weren't paying attention to that scene with Hanks' family I could see where you got that perspective, but being in an uptight family that has some gays in it, I picked up a lot of 'love the sinner, hate the sin' going on.

comment #16

JD says ...

Jeff, you're missing a pretty giant, incredibly significant rule of filmmaking here: just because something's offscreen doesn't mean it's not there. Every filmmaker injects a personal voice into his or her films. Demme's filmmaking voice is saying, "Sure people might be griping about racial issues, but I don't give a shit." To me, that's an utterly valid directorial standpoint. He doesn't want to make a film about people's prejudiced shortcomings, he wants to make a film about their accepting strengths. Good for him!

comment #17

guylodge says ...

I'm with Jeff here, in that the groom and his family really needed more dimensions (and a few more edges) for the film to really succeed as as the freewheeling social mosaic that it wants to be. I wouldn't blame Demme entirely, though -- Lumet's script simply doesn't go all that deep.

I loved aspects of the film -- it's loose, funky construction, many of the performances (though not Winger's), the really superb music. But I also had trouble believing a number of the characters and the dynamics between them -- some of the conflict to me felt writer-instructed rather than character-led.

comment #18

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Slutsky, Glenn Kenny and Insneider: You guys are sounding right now like a very typical personification of the morally and ethically superior media p.c. elite. Saying the "right" thing, in a sense, but speaking from an ivory tower.

All I said is that Rachel Getting Married felt annoyingly fake -- unnatural, restrictive -- for two reasons in this context. One, only the white characters have any hangups or interesting character wrinkles of any kind, and two, the fact that nobody in the entire wedding ensemble over the weekend makes any kind of observational innocuous remark about the Sidney-Rachel dichotomy.

Every good movie is a product of the mind and sensibilities of the director (or the director-writer) but if the auterist card is overplayed a movie can end up feeling like the movie is taking place on another planet, or at least in another hemisphere.

You're telling me that in real life (and not in the rarified world of Demme Land) that nobody would say anything about Rachel-Sidney? Nothing? With the dialogue that we've all been hearing all across the country for the last year or so about the "elephant in the room" in the current presidential election? With this country being a little more than 450 years old, and a once-significant (if extremely dated) Stanley Kramer social issues movie about the difficulty of accepting an interracial marriage on the part of the bride's parents having been released only 40 years ago? You're saying the country has become so transformed over the last 40 years that nobody invited to the Rachel-Sidney wedding would say anything at all? Nothing?

During the LA Film Festival I asked a question of the director of Boogie Man, the doc about Lee Atwater, and I said that I don't believe that a blatantly racial Willie Horton-type smear campaign would be as effective today as it was 20 years ago, and I was laughed at by some in the audience -- they thought my statement was close to ridiculous.

They didn't think, in other words, that this country has moved a single inch from where it was values-wise in 1988. And you're telling me there are no remnants whatsover of the 1968 mentality, attitudes and social currents that resulted in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? You're living on your own clouds, gentlemen.

And Insneider -- the rules are no personal insults, and if you say anything again along the lines that you said about me you're going to get the hook, pal. Watch your mouth and watch your ass. I will smite thee with a single stroke of my terrible swift sword.

comment #19

Josh Massey says ...

Burma: Hanks? I was referring to Beloved.

comment #20

K. Bowen says ...

Well, let's pretend there's this thing called the Internet and get it straight from the horse's mouth. From the Boston Globe, posted 10 hours ago:

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2008/10/04/in_family_screenwriter_sees_true_colors_of_connection/

"(Screenwriter Jenny) Lumet's mother, Gail Lumet Buckley, is black and the daughter of the singer Lena Horne. Her father, the director Sidney Lumet, is Jewish. Jenny Lumet's current husband, who is the father of her 5-month-old daughter, is "a nice Jewish boy," and her first husband, the actor Bobby Cannavale, the father of her 13-year-old son, is of Cuban descent. "I think of them as very, very American - those children of mine," she says.

In any case, she insists the idea to cast a black actor in the role of the groom came from the film's director, Jonathan Demme.

"If you look at Jonathan Demme's stuff, he casts in a completely embracing way," Lumet says. "Personally, I think that's what a family and America looks like. I think the other stuff - where everyone looks the same - is just a myth. That being said, the only time I ever thought about the race issue when writing the script was when I thought about making the characters of Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Kym (Hathaway) the children of an interracial couple. But I decided not to because I was afraid people would say that that was the reason Kym became a crazy drug person. And of course, that's not the reason people use drugs."

Given that she is the interracial daughter of a blue-blooded, blue-state interracial family, I think it would be wise to defer to her judgment.

comment #21

slutsky says ...

I can't believe you're playing the politically correct card here! Are you serious?

This movie is set at a wedding—a wedding! What, are you expecting someone to stand up in the middle of the ceremony and raise an objection? Or for the movie to turn into an earnest issues drama? Maybe if this was a movie about Rachel and Sidney's relationship that followed their courtship, engagement and marriage you might see somebody say something untoward. But a three-day-drama where their relationship is secondary to the film's main plot arc?

What would a racist uncle character bring to this film? How would it make it stronger, besides to salve defensive post-PC liberal consciences in some perverse way?

comment #22

Glenn Kenny says ...

Again, Jeff, what's with the Republican talking points? "Morally and ethically superior media p.c. elite?" I've got an idea, let's get that redneck gal on the motorcycle to weigh in on the film!

You ask: "You're telling me that in real life (and not in the rarified world of Demme Land) that nobody would say anything about Rachel-Sidney? Nothing?" I answer—no, not necessarily. It's Demme's choice not to depict what a possibly bigoted member of the wedding might remark about the Sidney/Rachel union. It's not part of the story Demme's telling.

As for the immediate family not commenting on it, well, as Sidney's character is a success in the music biz, and it's implied that the Buchman patriarch has made his bones in the arts, speaking from my ivory tower, no, it's not entirely improbable that this particular event in this particular milieu would play as color blind. Might be a little more probable that Sidney and his family be treated with a bit of liberal condescension by the Buchmans.

Finally, the story Demme tells is the story Demme tells. Take it or leave it. You want balance, go to...Fox News?

comment #23

gruver1 says ...

Wells to K. Bowen: Why do I have to trust Jenny Lumet's judgment? This is how she sees things given her family background and personal perspective, but between her worldview and Demme's, they've given us a movie that doesn't feel entirely real. It feels a bit rarified, off on its own orbit. A warm and loving orbit, granted, but it's "out there" somewhat. All they had to do was give Sidney some kind of character dimension or behavioral quirkiness ...anything. And they refused.

comment #24

K. Bowen says ...

Well, you don't have to trust her judgment, Jeff.

I'm just saying that I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the people who have lived it.
.
But there's her explanation, whatever you wish to think of it.

comment #25

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Kenny: Why is it that someone -- a drunk uncle, a wise-ass writer, a 50ish blonde female neighbor -- taking note of the Sidney-Rachel dichotomy...why is such a person making such a comment described by you as "possibly bigoted"? If it's raining and you say "wow, it's wet out there," does that mean you're possibly anti-H20?

comment #26

Glenn Kenny says ...

Well, Jeff, maybe on the deleted scenes section of the DVD we'll see Roger Corman asking, "How the heck does that black fella know all the words to Neil Young's 'Unknown Legend'?"

comment #27

DavidF says ...

Can I just say that I chuckled heartily when Wells cited the final shot of Silence of the Lambs, where Lecter hangs up a phone and the credits roll, as evidence of "profound affection for Caribbean culture and music, and occasionally for African-American characters and subject matter."

At best its evidence of hoping the producers will front the money to fly everyone to the Bahamas for one shot, followed by a week-long beach rap party.

I do think there is a scene where Clarice listens to C&C Music Factory on her Walkman, so maybe that's what he's thinking of?

comment #28

MrFr3nch says ...

"My point is that in real life someone in the wedding party would at one point or another throw some kind of slider ball...into the proceedings."

In my real life as a Black man who married a White woman, this slider ball didn't come up at my wedding. We also had been dating for six years, and we didn't invite anybody who had a problem with our union. So the people who would have made an "observational innocuous remark" simply weren't in attendance. (To be fair, I was also tipsy on champagne, so I might have missed a torrent of interracial commentary after the cake-cutting.)

"In the same way someone would say "oh, it's raining" if a cloudburst were to happen."

My 2-year old shouts "Elmo!" every time Sesame Street comes on, because Elmo's new to him. My 8-year does not partake in the Elmo shouting, not because he's an Elmo-hater, but because he's seen Elmo hundreds of times, and Elmo is old hat. In other words, this issue doesn't make certain film critics racist at all. However, it does make them seem a little juvenile.