Forgiving Rachael in Rachael Getting Married

In the film Rachael Getting Married poses an original American drama. This story gets it right. A modern couple of the 21st Century which happens to be inter-racial, exchange their wedding vows over a weekend celebration at the bride’s father’s estate in Connecticut. It just happens to be the place where tragedy occured. Naturally, this sets the audience up for a dark journey into the light.

What’s so wonderful about this experience is how exacting the characters are, good or bad and how this elevates the audience into predisposition of thought. In other words, the story is told like a narrative which invites the audience to enjoy in the festivities while simultaneously appreciating the unspoken problem. And talking about the problem doesn’t necessarily solve anything. It is the protagonist’s choice to deal with all the family’s guilt in her own way. So the mood is moot.

Like any holiday where family members gather and their pasts are represented, spotlighted with nuances and innuendos, it does behoove them all to face their challenges together like a knot in a tree that refuses to untwist. It does not inhibit the plant to grow but rather take form in a new shape despite the surface debauchery of it. It’s easy to deplore beauty as something deep and unfounded but in nature, thus technology, life is way too complicated to construct like a clean sheet of paper. Sometimes the only wisdom is in the reluctant belief in allowing art to compose life from within.

Anna Deavere Smith, graduate of Master of Fine Arts at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco stars in this praised creative document of film art. Go see it.