Life is wasted on people
Since Noah Baumbach returned from his half-decade-and-change hiatus from directing movies, his work has had a new, bracing sting, with movies that seem both more and less polished than their predecessors. Less, because they strive for a vaguely seventies-influenced aesthetic with a large dose of indie-looking handheld camerawork; more, because Baumbach does seem to think about how these aesthetics tell his stories (or lack thereof), rather than simply switching into "indie" mode.
Even more noticeable than the gorgeously overcast Harris Savides cinematography, though, Baumbach's second-act output is characterized by brazenly unlikable and often selfish people at its center. The characters in Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy were neurotic and self-centered, but also sort of cute and appealing, if you find that sort of thing -- that Woody Allenish, Seinfeldian, witty-ironic banter, now-I-know-how-bad-American-coffee-is thing -- cute and appealing in the first place (cue Grover in Kicking and Screaming, countering a criticism of childlike behavior: "But if I were a child, you'd find that endearing!"). The familial and romantic relationships of The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, and now Greenberg are unholy (if usually low-key and non-hysterical) messes.
This doesn't weaken Baumbach's earlier, friendlier works in retrospect, nor does it, for me, diminish his less, well, comedic approach to the later movies that are still at least sort of comedies. If anything, it's fascinating to see the threads of similarity running through some very different films. When I saw Margot, Jack Black's slacker, who "hasn't had that thing yet where you realize you're not the most important person in the world" and spends time composing letters to the editor, struck me as one of the Kicking and Screaming boys, perhaps in less economically fortunate circumstances, ten or fifteen years down an unlucky road. Ben Stiller's title character in Greenberg writes letters, too -- letters of complaint to airlines, coffee shops, public officials, the New York Times -- and even moreso than Black, looks like a nightmare version of the aimless postgrads of 1995. Grover and Otis and Max and Skippy had moments of weakness, but Roger Greenberg has dug into his caustic observations and bitterness and fussiness and become an insufferable ("it means I can't suffer him," Nicole Kidman's Margot would explain) jerk.
And yet: Greenberg remains an interesting character and Greenberg is a pretty wonderful, often very funny movie. Unlike Kicking and Screaming and Highball, where a good seventy to eighty percent of the dialogue is funny, Greenberg uses its best lines as strange punctuation to awkward or sad scenes. The movie doesn't have much by way of story; it follows Greenberg around his visit to Los Angeles, where he stays at his brother's house, attempts to dog-watch, and takes some advantage of Florence (Greta Gerwig), not least because she seems accustomed to the taking. Gerwig has mostly done mumblecore movies, and though I've liked many of those and liked her in them, she's even better with a more exacting writer like Baumbach, who makes her relationship with an angry, somewhat unpleasant man about a decade and a half her senior seem believable.
The unpleasantness, while not really as intense or harrowing as the "worst" of Margot at the Wedding, will put some people off; I saw the movie with Marisa, Rayme, Ben, and Lorraina, and Ben was not enjoying spending time with this guy (Ben and I also tend to see movies together that one of us will wind up hating; The Girlfriend Experience for him, The Blind Side for me. Watchmen may have united us in indifference). I understand; I would probably enjoy being friends with people in Kicking and Screaming or Highball, and I could convince myself to live in fear of anyone I care about turning into Roger Greenberg. But I never feel like Baumbach is wallowing in awfulness, maybe because he's unsparing but also weirdly humane. Watch the final scene of Greenberg and see if you don't feel something, even if you're not exactly sure what it is you felt.
Less ambiguously good feelings were in store on Saturday, when Marisa and I met up with my future sister-in-law and my future cousins-in-law to go to the Tim Burton thing at MoMA and then go see Alice in Wonderland again (because Corinne and Stephanie hadn't seen it, but really, just as much because Marisa and Stacey want to be watching it as close to constantly as possible). After the Burton business and some dinner and walking around, Marisa and I went downtown and caught a showing of The Runaways, the sorta-biography of the all-girl seventies punk-rock band. Like most rock and roll biographies that aren't either I'm Not There or completely made up, the movie doesn't do much to break free of the traditional rise-and-fall-and-whatever structure. As a result, the first half of the movie is a bit more interesting than the second, because the story of how the Runaways formed is (apparently) pretty interesting, while the story of how they broke up is pretty rote.
Surprisingly, though, and unlike so many rock biographies, The Runaways is a lot of fun regardless of the boilerplate aspects. It certainly isn't comprehensive; I was wondering why Alia Shawkat (Maebe!) wasn't getting many lines as the bassist until I found out that she's actually playing a composite of several Runaways bassists, and I had no idea that Lida Ford was semi-famous (or that the name of the other guitarist was Lida Ford) until someone in our audience called out "what about Lida Ford?!" when they did a few where-they-went-next crawls in the credits (EDIT: Apparently her name is Lita Ford. Again, end credits, come on, help me out here). But as a glimpse into this band's origins and brief triumphs, it's really enjoyable, often beautifully shot, and very well-acted by Kristen Stewart (Joan Jett!), Dakota Fanning (Cherie Currie!) and Michael Shannon (the creepy Svengali who put the band together in the first place). Shannon falls right in the middle of his crazed-looking-to-completely-fucking-insane character-sanity spectrum, though for most actors this would be off those charts completely.
It's Stewart, though, who continues to impress me, at a rate of about once per year. In the Twilight movies, she's drippy and twitchy -- that's the character, I'm told, but she sure doesn't bring much to it. But in movies like Adventureland and The Runaways, her tentative qualities take on alluring life -- charisma, even! She and Fanning are interesting to watch even when not that much is going on (although I could've done without some of Cherie's family drama stuff). The story in The Runaways doesn't have a lot of surprise, but the energy is just right.
Hooray, movies are getting interesting again! If Hot Tub Time Machine turns out to be a "the next Hangover" that's actually way funnier than The Hangover, we'll really be in business.
Even more noticeable than the gorgeously overcast Harris Savides cinematography, though, Baumbach's second-act output is characterized by brazenly unlikable and often selfish people at its center. The characters in Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy were neurotic and self-centered, but also sort of cute and appealing, if you find that sort of thing -- that Woody Allenish, Seinfeldian, witty-ironic banter, now-I-know-how-bad-American-coffee-is thing -- cute and appealing in the first place (cue Grover in Kicking and Screaming, countering a criticism of childlike behavior: "But if I were a child, you'd find that endearing!"). The familial and romantic relationships of The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, and now Greenberg are unholy (if usually low-key and non-hysterical) messes.
This doesn't weaken Baumbach's earlier, friendlier works in retrospect, nor does it, for me, diminish his less, well, comedic approach to the later movies that are still at least sort of comedies. If anything, it's fascinating to see the threads of similarity running through some very different films. When I saw Margot, Jack Black's slacker, who "hasn't had that thing yet where you realize you're not the most important person in the world" and spends time composing letters to the editor, struck me as one of the Kicking and Screaming boys, perhaps in less economically fortunate circumstances, ten or fifteen years down an unlucky road. Ben Stiller's title character in Greenberg writes letters, too -- letters of complaint to airlines, coffee shops, public officials, the New York Times -- and even moreso than Black, looks like a nightmare version of the aimless postgrads of 1995. Grover and Otis and Max and Skippy had moments of weakness, but Roger Greenberg has dug into his caustic observations and bitterness and fussiness and become an insufferable ("it means I can't suffer him," Nicole Kidman's Margot would explain) jerk.
And yet: Greenberg remains an interesting character and Greenberg is a pretty wonderful, often very funny movie. Unlike Kicking and Screaming and Highball, where a good seventy to eighty percent of the dialogue is funny, Greenberg uses its best lines as strange punctuation to awkward or sad scenes. The movie doesn't have much by way of story; it follows Greenberg around his visit to Los Angeles, where he stays at his brother's house, attempts to dog-watch, and takes some advantage of Florence (Greta Gerwig), not least because she seems accustomed to the taking. Gerwig has mostly done mumblecore movies, and though I've liked many of those and liked her in them, she's even better with a more exacting writer like Baumbach, who makes her relationship with an angry, somewhat unpleasant man about a decade and a half her senior seem believable.
The unpleasantness, while not really as intense or harrowing as the "worst" of Margot at the Wedding, will put some people off; I saw the movie with Marisa, Rayme, Ben, and Lorraina, and Ben was not enjoying spending time with this guy (Ben and I also tend to see movies together that one of us will wind up hating; The Girlfriend Experience for him, The Blind Side for me. Watchmen may have united us in indifference). I understand; I would probably enjoy being friends with people in Kicking and Screaming or Highball, and I could convince myself to live in fear of anyone I care about turning into Roger Greenberg. But I never feel like Baumbach is wallowing in awfulness, maybe because he's unsparing but also weirdly humane. Watch the final scene of Greenberg and see if you don't feel something, even if you're not exactly sure what it is you felt.
Less ambiguously good feelings were in store on Saturday, when Marisa and I met up with my future sister-in-law and my future cousins-in-law to go to the Tim Burton thing at MoMA and then go see Alice in Wonderland again (because Corinne and Stephanie hadn't seen it, but really, just as much because Marisa and Stacey want to be watching it as close to constantly as possible). After the Burton business and some dinner and walking around, Marisa and I went downtown and caught a showing of The Runaways, the sorta-biography of the all-girl seventies punk-rock band. Like most rock and roll biographies that aren't either I'm Not There or completely made up, the movie doesn't do much to break free of the traditional rise-and-fall-and-whatever structure. As a result, the first half of the movie is a bit more interesting than the second, because the story of how the Runaways formed is (apparently) pretty interesting, while the story of how they broke up is pretty rote.
Surprisingly, though, and unlike so many rock biographies, The Runaways is a lot of fun regardless of the boilerplate aspects. It certainly isn't comprehensive; I was wondering why Alia Shawkat (Maebe!) wasn't getting many lines as the bassist until I found out that she's actually playing a composite of several Runaways bassists, and I had no idea that Lida Ford was semi-famous (or that the name of the other guitarist was Lida Ford) until someone in our audience called out "what about Lida Ford?!" when they did a few where-they-went-next crawls in the credits (EDIT: Apparently her name is Lita Ford. Again, end credits, come on, help me out here). But as a glimpse into this band's origins and brief triumphs, it's really enjoyable, often beautifully shot, and very well-acted by Kristen Stewart (Joan Jett!), Dakota Fanning (Cherie Currie!) and Michael Shannon (the creepy Svengali who put the band together in the first place). Shannon falls right in the middle of his crazed-looking-to-completely-fucking-insane character-sanity spectrum, though for most actors this would be off those charts completely.
It's Stewart, though, who continues to impress me, at a rate of about once per year. In the Twilight movies, she's drippy and twitchy -- that's the character, I'm told, but she sure doesn't bring much to it. But in movies like Adventureland and The Runaways, her tentative qualities take on alluring life -- charisma, even! She and Fanning are interesting to watch even when not that much is going on (although I could've done without some of Cherie's family drama stuff). The story in The Runaways doesn't have a lot of surprise, but the energy is just right.
Hooray, movies are getting interesting again! If Hot Tub Time Machine turns out to be a "the next Hangover" that's actually way funnier than The Hangover, we'll really be in business.