Each year we can count on discovering new pieces of media that will resonate with us more than we initially expected them to— for me, 2 of those have been the films Rachel Getting Married (2008) directed by Jonathan Demme and The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020) directed by Frank Marshall.
On the outside, these films stand at opposite ends of the spectrum: the former a dramatic account of a drug addict taking brief leave from her rehabilitation program to attend the wedding of her sister, and the latter an overview of the career of one of the most successful music groups comprised of brothers who reached peak popularity during the 70s. A closer look and these two projects can be stitched together through similar themes exploring the often-fraught relationship between family members, specifically siblings, that is only compounded by loss.
In Rachel Getting Married, Anne Hathaway plays Kym Buchman, a recovering addict who has been in and out of treatment for a decade. The film begins with Kym receiving a moment of reprieve from rehab, several months into her most recent sobriety stint, due to the impending nuptials of her older sister, Rachel played by Rosemarie Dewitt, to her fiancee Sidney.
Kym arrives home after being picked up by her father Paul and stepmother Carol. Kym tries to make conversation in the car ride home but it often veers into unsavory topics, like mentioning Rachel’s eating disorder, and Kym continues to push on through despite the discomfort of her father and stepmother who both appear well-acquainted with Kym’s rambling.
Wedding preparation is in full swing with the interior and exterior of the home rampant with movement and activity. Kym feels acutely out of place amidst the commotion—even reuniting with her sister makes her feel like a third wheel as Rachel’s best friend Emma, who is no fan of Kym’s, is present and the two take turns verbally sparring.
Later that day, Kym must attend Narcotics Anonymous and her father Paul is hesitant to give her the keys to the car. She winds up biking to the community center and interrupts group while Kieran is speaking. Kieran turns out to be Sidney’s Best Man. Through Kieran, Rachel discovers that she’s not Rachel’s Maid-of-Honor, but Emma.
Kym confronts Rachel while they’re out at a bridesmaids dress fitting. Rachel tells Kym she was unsure if Kym would even be able to make the wedding and didn't think to assign her that role, which Kym takes personally. Frustrated, Rachel asks Emma to relinquish her title to Kym. Kym makes a comment about sisterhood, but it’s apparent that Rachel doesn’t feel the same and simply gave in to avoid a fight. It’s easy to conclude that Rachel has lived a life of concessions in favor of Kym, something many of us with siblings are familiar with in one way or another.
At the rehearsal dinner, we get a better look at Kym and Rachel’s relationship. Throughout the night, Kym interjects to an uncomfortable degree— every other minute, during conversations, she makes a remark or asks a question, preventing a natural flow. This carries on during the individual toasts to the couple and Kym once again seizes the opportunity to make her voice and presence known, by initiating a toast of her own.
Between jokes about her recovery and past behavior, Kym makes a tearful apology to Rachel for all the grief she has put her sister through— much like the guests at the reception, as an audience member, it felt intrusive to watch this purportedly personal exchange play out. This feeling of trespassing into the intimate lives of strangers is recurring throughout most of the film. The reception for Kym’s speech is lukewarm and a precursor for Rachel’s icy response once they arrive home later that evening, accusing Kym of being self-centered and insincere in making amends. A defensive Kym proclaims that nothing she does is ever good enough and when it seems the argument will come to a head, Rachel announces that she is pregnant and diffuses the entire ordeal. Kym is put off by her sister’s diversion tactics and leaves.
Once again, you’re struck by the feeling that this type of emotional wrestling has happened before and that perhaps Rachel has had to develop this skill of diversion in order to draw the attention back to her and extinguish Kym’s flare ups. It’s interesting the ways siblings often anticipate and bank on each other’s actions, especially during arguments, based off of past experiences.
The tension between Kym and Rachel is brought into full perspective when, during group, Kym recounts the harrowing experience of being under the influence of Percocet at age 16 which lead to the death of their little brother, Ethan. Kym had been babysitting Ethan at the time and was driving home from an otherwise enjoyable trip to the park. Kym ran the car off of a bridge into a lake. She was unable to rescue Ethan from his car seat and he drowned. This moment in the film reads more vulnerable and authentic than the rehearsal dinner which is ironic considering that she’s telling this story to a room full of strangers vs. close friends and immediate family.
Another moment that stuck out to me occurs while Rachel is working on finalizing seating arrangements where she makes it clear that she doesn’t want Kym at the family table. Paul makes repeated attempts at shuffling guests around to make it work, but Rachel puts her foot down and requests one day without having to consider Kym. To Rachel, she isn’t just getting married, but setting a precedence she hopes will follow into her marriage and life long after her big day: Kym is not the center, Kym is not a priority, Kym is not my problem.
This exchange is followed by a number of unfortunate events that unfold including: Kym absentmindedly handing their father a dish that used to belong to Ethan and spoiling a dish loading competition, Kym being outed as a liar when a hair stylist confides that Kym sharing her sexual assault helped him confront his own (she had never been molested and made it up at a previous treatment facility), and Kym getting into a physical altercation with their mother, Abby, resulting in Kym becoming so upset she gets into a car crash on the eve of Rachel’s wedding. In that final confrontation, Kym badgers her mother for answers about letting a known addict watch their baby brother. Abby strikes and violently shakes Kym. It becomes apparent that Abby hasn’t forgiven Kym and by extension, she also still blames herself.
On the morning of the wedding, after the car crash, Kym retreats home like a wounded dog, and heads straight to Rachel’s room. Upon seeing her sister’s disheveled state, Rachel assumes the familiar role of caretaker. She runs a bath and gets her sister ready for the ceremony. Not much is said and not much has to be said. Kym speaks so brashly, so often, throughout the film that her silence during preparation is an apology in and of itself. The wedding ceremony itself goes off without a hitch and before we know it, Kym is being picked up by an employee from the rehab facility, and whisked just as quickly out of her family’s hair as she arrived.
Rachel Getting Married was a deeply satisfyingly, uncomfortable and messy film. I love the many depictions and explorations of grief that we have available in media, each one poignant in its own way. As someone raised in a large family and with 4 other sisters, I also appreciate when the dynamics of family and sisterhood are displayed. Rachel Getting Married was an unflinching portrayal of the resentment that collects when families abandon excavating the root cause of trauma to building on top of it instead. If it isn’t confronted in an appropriate way, it can topple and collapse, often times taking everyone with it.
The central cast absolutely delivered. Rosemarie DeWitt’s chilly and demure performance against Anne Hathaway’s hot and brash performance worked in perfect, dysfunctional harmony. To me, this is Anne Hathaway’s best work and I will trick myself into believing the Academy Award she has to her name is for this role and not Les Miserables. It makes me wish we had many more films about women, by women, but specifically longing for another film by Jenny Lumet.
Pivoting to a film I saw more recently, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is a documentary that follows the origins and subsequent rise, fall, rise again, fall again, etc. of international music sensations The Bee Gees who are best known for their contributions to the Saturday Night Fever (1977) soundtrack that spawned hits such as Stayin’ Alive, How Deep Is Your Love, More Than A Woman, and If I Can’t Have You. The original Bee Gees lineup featured eldest brother Barry Gibb and his younger twin brothers, Robin and Maurice.
I won’t cover the entirety of The Bee Gees career, as I do recommend still giving the HBO documentary a viewing, but it was interesting to me how empty this documentary felt to me when I did further research into the lives and careers of the Gibb brothers.
There were a few interesting, but low level, tidbits such as the original printing of their Odessa (1969) album being discontinued due to an allergic reaction it was causing in assembly workers or Robin Gibb and his wife-to-be at the time surviving a train that crashed and claimed 49 lives, but there were a few omissions from the personal lives of these men that I felt would’ve added more depth and context to this group of brothers who spent the latter half of their careers trying to be taken more seriously as musicians.
To begin with, while they do dedicate time to highlighting their late brother Andy Gibb (1979), who was a star in his own right seeing worldwide success from his hit single I Just Want to Be Your Everything (1977) accompanied by several others and died from natural causes after years of drug abuse that weakened his heart, their sister Lesley and the eldest Gibb child, was spared no mention. This is strange due to the fact that Lesley herself had stepped in for Robin during a sold-out show prior to the group’s first breakup. While she inevitably opted to pursue a life free of fame, it struck me as odd to leave out a member of the Gibb family who was also a singer and that had actively taken part during the early days of their career in a documentary that was focusing on how these brothers were so bonded by their music.
That being said, the footage of the Spirits Having Flown Tour with Andy on stage during You Should Be Dancing (1979) makes his premature passing all the more upsetting considering he was to be officially inducted into The Bee Gees the same year he died.
Substance abuse is weaved throughout The Bee Gees history and we got a glimpse of Maurice’s alcohol abuse through his story of being the town drunkard during a downturn in The Bee Gees career. Maurice had battled alcoholism since the 70s, with touring and excessive partying serving as an epicenter for his addiction. His drinking habits were exacerbated after the death of Andy, a loss which Maurice took very personally and carried that grief and guilt in the final years of his drinking.
While this moment comes and goes, there is a darker moment in Maurice’s story that wasn’t shared in the documentary. In 1991, after a month long bender, he threatened his wife Yvonne and their 2 children at gunpoint with Maurice unable to recall the events the next day. After that moment, and with the active involvement of his older brothers, Maurice dedicate the rest of his life to sobriety until his passing in 2003.
The spouses of The Bee Gees were featured throughout the documentary giving testimony to their lives spent alongside their famous counterparts. Something that was fascinating to learn about with Robin Gibb was his unconventional, open marriage with second wife Dwina Murphy-Gibb, a “bisexual, druid priestess”, whom he married in 1985 and remained married to until his death in 2012.
While earlier interviews cite Robin describing their relationship as experimental, those were later retracted after it was revealed Robin had maintained a several years long affair with his housekeeper Claire Yang, who was half his age, and a subsequent child. Claire and the child, Snow, were absent from Robin’s funeral services and most believe it was at Dwina’s behest.
This melodrama, understandably, didn’t make its way into the documentary but it did add another dimension to Robin for me that removed him from the “gifted but misunderstood artist” category into “just another man” which might’ve clashed with the film’s version of Robin it had built up.
In comparison to Rachel Getting Married, what the documentary was missing for me were the more gruesome parts of being famous, particularly alongside your siblings. Much like the sole remaining Gibb brother Barry and his personal life, there was no real conflict. Aside from earlier mentions of egos besting the brothers, there wasn’t actually a closer look at the interior of their lives, which would’ve served to humanize them vs. fossilize them into cardboard cutouts of their true selves. All in all I appreciate the documentary and its focus on the musicianship, but I would love more documentaries that try to extrapolate these icons into more than just caricatures of themselves.
I think it’s why I loved Rachel Getting Married so much, because it didn’t shy away from the ugliest parts of what Kym and Rachel thought, felt, and experienced. Some reviewers have called the film terrible and over the top, but isn’t that just life? Particularly one plagued by trauma? Being uncomfortable is not always a bad thing and I hope that in future documentaries retelling the stories of real people with real impact, who just happened to achieve an incredible level of success for a moment in time, honor them by showing all aspects of their lives— no matter how messy or unappealing they may be.