It hurts to watch Rachel Getting Married because it captures, better than any film of recent vintage, the wild emotional undulations of life in a dysfunctional family.It hurts to watch Rachel Getting Married because addicts are inevitably selfish, and movies about them are inevitably claustrophobic.
It hurts to watch Rachel Getting Married because Anne Hathaway is rawer, bluer, meaner, truer, more broken than you've ever seen her — than you've ever seen just about anyone portraying a lost soul in recovery.
It hurts to watch Rachel Getting Married because Bill Irwin, the actor playing her father, seems to split down the middle as we watch. It hurts because Rosemarie DeWitt, as the Rachel getting married, conveys without an ounce of malice the outrage and exhaustion of loving someone who's so far off from normal. And it hurts because our joy at seeing the warm, familiar face of Debra Winger turns to shock when her calibrated performance — as a detached mater familias — abruptly kicks into hellfire-spitting fury.
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