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America
Robyn Hitchcock
Rachel Getting Married
2008

I'm always surprised when I see a movie with someone and they don't "notice" the soundtrack.  I think that I would probably have to turn off part of my brain if I was ever to not notice. 

I saw this movie with Peggy at AMC in January 2009--over the winter break from school (the break that followed my substitute teaching stint at Centennial)  The roomy theatre contained the two of us and a dozen or so elderly couples (I love people-watching at AMC...diversity!).  By the time the final credits started to scroll on the screen I knew that I loved this movie, that I NEEDED to own it, and that I needed to find out everything I could about the dapper, gray-haired man with the strange voice who sang a song midway through the movie that made me melt into a puddle on the popcorn strewn, soda-sticky floor of the theatre. 

And this was the exact moment that started the early '09 love affair with Robyn Hitchcock (oh, and the love still warmly glows in every corner of my heart).  Music is a really central part of Rachel Getting Married.  Nearly all of the music that is played throughout the film is live--ie. happening on screen.  The score is warm and eerie (if there is such a thing) and comes from a little group of musicians that is always somewhere near the action (it works, I swear).  The opening guitar of "America" comes right at the end of the marriage ceremony (an Indian-themed Jewish wedding) and there is this moment between the divorced parents of the bride--a thousand things pour out of them and they don't even say a thing.  I don't know about you, but I tend to remember the part of a movie that makes me cry and that moment tends to GET ME EVERY TIME. 

I lived on this song when we went back to school in January.  I only had my iPod Shuffle at the time, so I didn't stray from "America" once I had located it (the Shuffle not having a handy display screen and all).  I wrote the lyrics in red pilot pen on looseleaf paper in one of those study carrels in the Education library.  The lyrics made my eyes itch, I felt them so fiercely: "I'm not too clear, but I'm easy to see/Moving alone through the fossilized crowd [...] How do you know when you've gone too far?/Look in the mirror, that's where you are."  I listened to it too loud (thankfully, Andrea let me know, because you know how I felt about the obnoxious noisies in the library).  I breathed this song.  It, and the movie, were that little tug on my sleeve; that reminder that there are things that exist that are so beautiful--so I'd best stick around to discover them.  "Maybe it's true/I'm not totally dead."

The original recording of this song does not compare to this version.  Time has done something to Robyn Hitchcock's voice (or nose...he sounds more nasal now than he did when he was younger) and the original version doesn't have the...messy, collaborative quality of the soundtrack version.  I love how loose and comfortable this song sounds; how warm and alive.