For some filmmakers, reinventing oneself with a radical new direction seems to come naturally. Steven Soderbergh, for one, has made a career of it, jumping between mainstream big-budget fare like the Ocean's Eleven series and Out of Sight and independent and even experimental works like Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Bubble. For others, attempts at reinvention only lead to massive failures. After making a name for himself in the '70s with hard-hitting, brilliant dramas like The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola tried to reinvent himself with the romantic musical One From the Heart, a film which famously lost nearly all of its massive $26 million budget. While the former director has thrived by constantly changing his filmmaking style, the latter failed miserably trying to do the same.I am happy to say that Jonathan Demme's latest film, Rachel Getting Married, places the acclaimed filmmaker firmly into the Soderbergh category of directors. Film buffs have been singing Demme's praises as far back as the 1980s due to films like his seminal music documentary Stop Making Sense and the comedy/drama Melvin and Howard, but Demme didn't truly enter the mainstream until he created his Oscar-winning blockbuster hit The Silence of the Lambs. Released in 1991, the film grossed upwards of $100 million and was widely acclaimed as a landmark work by critics, who heaped praise on the film and on Demme in spite of the violent and controversial subject matter. Demme followed this up with Philadelphia, one of the first Hollywood movies to deal frankly with the issue of HIV/AIDS. Again, Demme was revered and hailed for his bold direction.

But, then a funny thing happened on the way to Demme's becoming the next great director; while he directed some music videos and documentaries during the latter half of the 1990s, his work in feature films became poor as well as rare. He directed a stale adaptation of a Toni Morrison novel, Beloved, and then went on to direct two ill-conceived remakes of classic films, The Truth About Charlie and The Manchurian Candidate. While in the early '90s Demme looked to be one of the best directors working in Hollywood, by the turn of the century his films already seemed out of date and out of touch.

That is, until his newly released family drama Rachel Getting Married. Starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt and Debra Winger, Rachel is a transformation in every way for Demme. Gone is the classic Hollywood style that he had used throughout his career, replaced instead with an intimate and natural style more akin to a documentary. The film is shot almost entirely with hand-held cameras, uses editing techniques such as jump cuts rarely seen in Hollywood pictures and even lacks any non-diegetic music (that is, music that does not play within the world of the film). In other words, Jonathan Demme has decided to reinvent himself as an independent film director with Rachel Getting Married.

Of course, all these attempts at a type of realism on Demme's part would be inconsequential if there were not a script equally up to the task. Thankfully, Jenny Lumet, daughter of the great veteran director Sidney Lumet, provided such a script. Lumet created a work which has such an organic feel to it: you could almost swear there was no script at all, but that rather the film was entirely improvised. The characters feel real and immediate, nothing like the packaged archetypes that Hollywood trots out year after year.

The story itself is simple; Rachel (DeWitt) is getting married, and her sister Kym (Hathaway) has just gotten out of rehab and is coming home for the wedding. The film is primarily concerned with lies, both the kind we tell knowingly and the kind we tell ourselves over and over until they become truth. The film is somewhat close thematically to Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, though thankfully the nasty cynicism of that brilliant play is balanced with a warmth that the characters naturally exude. As the film goes on and old scars are reopened and new ones are formed, the pain these characters feel shines through in a way that is equally moving and depressing.

Incredibly enough, with Rachel Getting Married Demme has managed to create an anti-Oscar film in that it lacks the showiness and smooth edges that characterize most Oscar favorites. It should nonetheless receive strong awards attention. The characters you empathize with can be cruel one minute and loving the next, giving them the feel of real people you might know rather than movie characters. There are no simple answers in Rachel, as problems are not magically solved and old wounds are not healed overnight. However, there is a hope within the film that nevertheless provides warmth to the characters even in the harshest situations. If Rachel Getting Married may put off some viewers with its naturalistic style and script, it will win over just as many fans with its brilliant and immediate performances. Simply put, Rachel Getting Married is a masterpiece, one of the most uncompromising and best pieces of filmmaking of this or any year.