Festen (1998) & Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Nothing is more emotionally loaded than a family gathering. There’s pressure to celebrate, unite, and an unspoken rule to brush any nastiness under the rug. Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (1998) and Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married (2008) both explore the tension between the performance and reality of family. Festen, as a predecessor, is often credited as a large inspiration for Rachel. Both stories follow dysfunctional families attending large celebrations, but deviate due to their cultural contexts.

Festen (also known as quite literally- The Celebration) takes place in a lavish Danish mansion, celebrating wealthy businessman & patriarch Helge’s birthday. His three children- eldest son Christian, trouble-making Michael, and defiantly liberal Helene- all return home with varying levels of resistance. Eventually, Christian takes the gathering as an opportunity to reveal a horrifying family secret- Helge horrifically sexually abused Christian and his deceased twin sister Linda as children.

This film was the first of the Dogme 95 movement started by Vinterberg and his fellow filmmaker Lars Von Trier. The movement seeks to strip back filmmaking to performance and story, with extremely restrictive rules such as “props and set must not be brought in” and “the sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa.” Personally, I am not a fan of Dogme 95’s principles. I believe that such repressive rules are contradictory to the medium of film and its potential.

However, I do recognize the significance of the movement in film history and can appreciate what it does for Festen. The handheld camera places the audience right in the center of this awkward celebration. Objectively, I think it’s worth saying that this movie is very visually unpleasant. The camera quality is less than ideal, it very much feels like it’s recorded on a camcorder. However, there’s a yuckiness to the visuals that does make you feel appropriately uneasy. The focus on performance is also clear; each character feels incredibly realized and present. Christian’s impressive dance between the performance of a perfect son and a determined justice-seeking adult is something that oscillates throughout the film.

Rachel Getting Married, on the other hand, was not a part of Dogme 95, but felt equally as immersive. The film also has a large family gathering as the centerpiece, the titular Rachel’s wedding in her family home in Connecticut. As the days leading up to the elaborate wedding, black-sheep addict Kym is released from rehab to support her sister. Kym’s arrival brings up painful memories of their younger brother Ethan’s death, at the hands of a strung-out sixteen-year-old Kym driving off a bridge.

The use of handheld shots and organic “home-video” style editing in Rachel gently places the audience into the wedding party. Again, there is a “camcorder” vibe to the film, though the literal resolution of the film is higher. I found myself laughing at toasts, moving my shoulders to dance as music played, cringing with the bystanders as if I was a guest. Through Demme’s skilled eye, I was also able to feel incredibly connected to Kym’s perspective throughout the film. As Rachel and Sidney exchange vows, you can’t help but feel the weight of Kym’s grief, guilt, love, and joy through her half-covered gaze behind Rachel.

Both films feature secrecy, trauma, and grief, but they certainly have different approaches to tackling these subjects. The world of Festen is cold and uncaring. When Christian reveals the abuse he suffered at the hands of Helge, the room goes silent for mere seconds before returning to showering the abuser with compliments, jokes, and congratulations. Even his own siblings struggle to accept his confession until Linda’s suicide note is read aloud and Helge’s nausea-provoking line- “It’s all you were good for.”

I am an American, and can recognize my bias in this, but there’s something about Festen’s solemn, stoic take on the themes that is certainly not American. In Rachel, there’s significantly more levity and a delicate balance between the horrific trauma the family has faced and the genuine care they still have for one another. Throughout Rachel, friends and family pour their hearts out about love. The wedding itself combines music and elements from many different cultures, furthering this core of connection in the film. Kym is an addict, a liar, and can be incredibly selfish. But at the end of the day, Rachel bathes her and brushes her hair. She makes sure that her hand is on the knife when she cuts the cake. Their father, Paul, does everything he can to protect and support her. There is grief, anger, pain, but also love.

Class is also a factor in this disparity. This is not to say that Kym and her family are impoverished by any means; they have a gigantic home in Connecticut with a china cabinet, but the family of Festen was one of the direct inspirations for the billionaire Roy family in Succession. The unspoken code of behavior at this extreme level of wealth is much stricter. When Michael realizes his wife didn’t pack the right color of shoes, he panics, exclaiming that his father will be furious if his suit and shoes are mismatched. This formality and politeness make Michael’s horrifying and explicit confession seem even more shocking in contrast.

The laid-back attitude of the wedding attendees in Rachel shortens the gap between the “secret truth” and the “public lie.” Of course, it’s worth mentioning that Ethan’s death isn’t a “secret” in the same way that Michael’s abuse was, but certainly the feelings surrounding the incident aren’t something that anyone in the family necessarily wants front and center during the wedding. Through most of the film, Kym is the only one who brings up her “fucked-up-ness,” almost in a desperate attempt to apologize for and justify her existence. When her mother restrains her while repeating “I didn’t expect you to kill him. I didn’t expect you to kill him,” it’s clear that this is not something that they’ve talked through, nor feel comfortable enough to talk about often.

Somewhat off-topic, but I think another interesting contrast is the way that race is handled in both films. In both, there is an interracial relationship between a white woman and a Black man. Helene brings her Black boyfriend, Gbatokai, to the festivities, who is immediately met with Michael telling him “they don’t need anyone to play jazz” and trying to force him off the premises. Later in the film, Michael provokes the attendees to sing a racist Danish song in unison while Gbatokai sits at the table. Perhaps this is a commentary on Danish culture, or simply the behavior of the ultra-wealthy. Either way, I think the addition of this sub-plot does a lot of work in developing both Helene and Michael’s character, and adding context to their family in general.

The titular wedding of Rachel Getting Married is between Rachel and her Black husband, Sidney. Demme doesn’t acknowledge the interracial relationship directly, but doesn’t necessarily ignore the culture that Sidney and his family would bring into a huge life event like a wedding. There’s also a curious decision to have the bride and groom be dressed in traditional Indian attire, despite neither party having any Indian heritage nor having a traditional Indian ceremony. This choice, along with the music varying culturally so much throughout the film, paints a utopian, blurry take on race that I find both interesting and reflective of white liberal America’s perspective in 2008.

Ultimately, both films provide deeply personal insights into the complexities of family, tragedy, and grief using the stage of celebration. I find both films to be incredibly successful at exploring these themes through their own lenses and heartbreaking in different but equally effective ways. I plan on watching more of these “family reunion” dramas, especially with the new collection available on the Criterion Channel. Seeing multiple filmmakers tackle similar subjects really demonstrates the range of possibilities in filmmaking, which makes me love the medium even more.

Copied from my Substack