GREENBERG

Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach
Starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh

Florence: Hurt people hurt people.

Noah Baumbach, the Oscar-nominated writer and director of THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, has a knack for creating characters that are troubled and difficult to be around. His fascination with giving a voice to those no one wants to hear, shows his immense sympathy as a writer and director, but it also means that his characters are not easy to endure for two hours straight. In his latest film, GREENBERG, he gives us another gem of a man – complicated, broken and the kind you would desperately avoid if you could.

Ben Stiller is this man, one Roger Greenberg. Fresh from his time in a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown, Greenberg has left the comforts of New York City to do nothing for a while at his brother’s place in Los Angeles. While in the city, he meets up with buddies and ex-girlfriends from his rock star youth days but not because he wants to. He does so because it is a lot easier than forming any new relationships in his life. The supporting cast - Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh representing the old and Greta Gerwig charmingly representing the new - struggle too but the way they handle themselves only further shows how little dealing Greenerg is actually doing. Still that naïve, failed rocker, he has not progressed past his glory days and he is quickly realizing that they weren’t so glorious to begin with.

Stiller doesn’t have to try very hard to be unlikable but he still does the depth of Greenberg’s sorrow justice all the same. Successfully capturing a character that is so narcissistic and oblivious not an easy feat. The more successful you are though, the more you run the risk of alienating everyone watching. You want to like Greenberg; you can tell the people around him want to like him; but until he actually considers liking himself, there isn’t a lot to like about him. Fortunately for him, at least Baumbach still has his back, and fortunately for us, Baumbach still has ours too.

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FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Written by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach
Directed by Wes Anderson
Voices by George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray


Mr Fox: This is going to be a total cluster-cuss for everybody.

Let me just get this out of the way; Wes Anderson’s FANTASTIC MR. FOX is certainly aptly titled as the perfect word to describe it is simply, fantastic. This stop-motion Roald Dahl adaptation about man versus animal honours its roots and broadens its ideas into a contemporary family classic that is both insightful and yet still playful. In his first foray into animation, Anderson does not bend to the style but rather turns the style itself inside out to become the perfect compliment to his quirky and expressive nature.


Despite being fantastic, Mr. Fox (voiced by a spry George Clooney), has gotten himself and his neighbours into a hole they can’t get out of. After promising his wife, Mrs. Fox (a sly Meryl Streep), that he will never steal again once she announces that she is pregnant, Mr. Fox deliberately breaks that promise and angers the biggest farmers in town, Boggis, Bunce and Bean. The farmers drive the animals underground and they must come together to dig their way out. The battle is on and the delight with which Anderson seems to be having with it all, draws the viewer as deep into the depths of the film as the tunnels being dug on the screen.


While Anderson, along with THE SQUID AND THE WHALE writer, Noah Baumbach, infuse the screenplay with adult themes a plenty, from resisting your natural instincts to rising above the hand that feeds you, they create a pace that is delicate and quiet but never so much so that younger viewers will lose interest. Under Anderson’s always mindful and always expansive eye, FANTASTIC MR. FOX is as cunning and as sharp as one would expect a fox to be. It is its unexpected charm though that will make it Anderson’s most endearing work.

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING

Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach


Malcolm: I haven’t had that thing yet where you realize that you’re not the most important thing in the world – anxious for that to happen.

What does it say about your wedding when your estranged sister’s attendance is a bigger event than the wedding itself? I mean, it’s right there in the title of Noah Baumbach’s dysfunctional family disaster movie. It isn’t called “The Wedding” or “Malcolm and Pauline Get Married”. No, it’s called MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. If your sister at your wedding causes that big a stir, perhaps the invitation would have been better lost in the mail. Still, despite her better judgment and in the interest of progress and healing, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) does invite the sister she still refers to as her closest friend after years of not speaking, to her intimate affair. It is clear her idea was not her best from the moment Margot (Nicole Kidman) steps off the boat and on to the New England shore. Pauline sends her fiancé, Malcolm (Jack Black), to pick Margot and her eldest son, Claude (Zane Pais), up from the ferry. She claims to be making last minute arrangements back at the house but I suspect it was she and not the house who was not quite ready to receive. Then, when the two are finally face to face, standing in front of the house they grew up in, they smile and make pleasantries but fidget hesitatingly before actually embracing. That awkward moment grows into a whirlwind of deep-seeded pain before long and suddenly rain on the blessed day is hardly the biggest worry for the bride-to-be.


Baumbach scored last time out with his Oscar-nominated THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. He was lauded for his sensitive and honest tale of divorce and how it affects the entire family unit. With MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, he solidifies his reputation for creating believable family ties based on dependence, dysfunction and subtle admiration. Watching the sisters as they sit around the house catching up is voyeuristic as we are often privy to conversations that feel as though they were not meant to be heard. As the sisters flip through old records in their even older house, Baumbach writes decades of experiences into his characters and we, like Malcolm, are latecomers to this dinner party. Director of photography, Harris Savides, draws us even closer to this inner circle by shooting mostly handheld footage in natural lighting and with older lenses. The resulting tone is dark and grainy but nostalgic and rich with history at the same time. At times, we are the quiet cousin who says nothing but stands in the corner with a camera and follows the drama from room to room. It isn’t long before we learn how to interpret the vernacular of this particular family and we find ourselves laughing along inappropriately at the expense of whomever Margot is lovingly ridiculing at the moment. As we laugh though, we care as well.


Kidman and Leigh (Baumbach’s wife) are both marvelous as they walk the very tightly wound lines of their borderline personalities. Baumbach guides their performances into textured characters that seem natural as sisters and strongly rooted as multifaceted people who struggle to be themselves when in the presence of the other. They even possess archetypal qualities without coming across as contrived. Margot is the master of deflection. She is constantly doling out psychological diagnoses to those around her to avoid any fingers pointing back her way. It never dawns on her that as a writer, she actually has no formal foundation to base her opinions on. She cannot understand why Pauline would settle for Malcolm; she picks at Claude to keep him closer; she even attacks her husband (John Turturro) for his good nature because it just makes her feel like a bad person. She is a fatalist to Pauline’s hopeful but defeated optimist. Pauline is damaged but wants to heal and has done so much more than she gives herself credit for. She teeters back and forth between making sneaky, subtle jabs at her sister, habits from her youth, and building new connections so that she can have the sister she always wanted instead of the one she has always had. Only, in the house that Baumbach built, the answer to whether people can ever truly change is not the least bit clear.


Family, even the best examples, can be tricky to negotiate. Spending any extended period of time with the people who both influenced you and hurt you the most in your life can be exhausting. That said, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING can be no less trying. There are those who revel in watching others with deeper dysfunction then their own. It helps them to feel that their lives are not nearly as bad as they thought. There are also others who feel they have enough to juggle already with potentially damaging weddings of their own to survive coming up fast. Why then immerse yourself in a tornado of neuroses and painful memories that are not even your own? Truthfully, you don’t have to. Along those lines, Pauline never needed to invite her sister to her wedding either. Only if she hadn’t, she would have missed out on everything the experience taught her about herself and the potential for progress. This is the genuine beauty of Baumbach’s work. He shares so intensely and personally that he inevitably forces the viewer to deal with their own inner-Margot.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is this year’s Sundance breakout and nearly all the press its received thus far has lauded it as, well, a little ray of sunshine to carry audiences through the last month of summer. It is the independent underdog that will tickle your funny bone, stimulate your mind and warm your heart. This little movie has so much to live up to and it has barely even gone wide at the moment I am writing this. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t generating its own buzz; it’s having its buzz generated by the machine that wants so badly for it to be that movie it could. Y’know which one I’m talking about. The smaller, simpler movie that allows a more mature audience to wind down their summer, to let the ringing in their ears from all the explosive blockbusters subside. What the machine doesn’t understand is that the movie that fills that particular void is not manufactured. It is genuine and it earns that honour all by itself.

This honour is not one I feel LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE would have earned if it weren’t manufactured for it. Albeit an endearing film with authentic moments of hilarity and sentiment, it is often disconnected and unresolved. The dual director team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris create a believable family unit by giving each member their own personal touch. Dad is a failed motivational speaker; Mom has to deal with loser dad; Grandpa has a heroine problem; older brother has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a fighter pilot; and gay uncle Frank is fresh out of the hospital after trying to kill himself. Dealing themselves such a diverse hand of characters leaves many opportunities to cross the line between quirky and just plain awkward, which they do more often then they should. Then of course there’s Little Miss Sunshine wannabe herself, Olive. With an earnest enthusiasm and innocence beaming from her face (like a ray of … sorry), untouched and uncorrupted Olive reminds the family that they are in fact a family. It’s a lovely story but it is one that only takes shape in the final moments of the film. Prior to that, each character’s individual problems guide all of their own motivations and they only barely have any depth past these problems. Shifting each characters’ focus outwards gives the film some much needed structure but it leaves many an issue either unresolved or resolved far too quickly.


The ensemble cast of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE reigns as the true heart of this organism. Cramped together in their yellow mini-bus, many different personalities fester. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are the heads of the family. Collette is merely a device to highlight the failures of her husband through her aggravation with him. Kinnear’s role however is hefty and he stridently carries that weight as an emasculated patriarch who preaches his failed life lessons to his daughter because she is the only one still buying them. Like another successful family piece, Noah Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the influence of the parents on the children manifests before your eyes in a difficult and painful fashion. Steve Carrell plays suicidal uncle, Frank, like a seemingly dormant volcano that may or may not erupt. You just can’t tell. His mystery is heartening and shows promise for his developing capabilities.

As a critic, shedding expectations is a higher state of being I try to achieve before I watch anything. I don’t read other reviews before I see the movie or even before I sit down to write my own, all as an effort to keep it real (dawg). It only takes a quick glance at a magazine cover to get whether people are hating, liking or really loving a movie so it is hard to avoid entirely. But as much as I try to approach each film with a fresh piece of paper to write on, buzz manages to influence the way we see things. When I’m told that something is really solid and it isn’t, even just a little, my disappointment is magnified. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE has so many things going for it that what it is lacking makes it all the more frustrating because you really want it to live up to the hype. Still ...

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

Written and Directed by Noam Baumbach

So rarely does a film say so much, so genuinely through simple, naturalistic dialogue about it’s characters, their plights, their story. And so rarely is it told so beautifully, so painfully and so honestly without being manipulative or obvious. “The Squid and the Whale” is that unique exception, that kind of film that you walk away from feeling lucky, fortunate for having seen it. This is a film about relationships, ranging from the influences our most intimate relationships have on us to the lengths we will go to to maintain these relationships and the difficulties experienced when trying to establish new ones with ourselves.

The setting for this exploration is the newly broken home of the Berkman family in 1980’s Brooklyn. We know from the moment we see the Berkman’s as they play a doubles tennis game with passive-aggressive unrest that they’re all playing a losing game. Bernard and Joan Berkman (played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney) had been together for nearly fifteen years and had two children during the course of their marriage, Frank and Walt, both in different stages of adolescence. As their relationship is at the point of its dissolution, the focus is placed on the children’s struggle to contextualize and understand their new joint custody lives. Bernard and Joan are left to discover a more significant relationship with themselves, a concept that had long since disappeared when their marital problems began to monopolize their attentions.

As Bernard Berkman, Jeff Daniels is superbly understated. As a once-acclaimed author whose successful past work has stumped him from producing anything new or of worth, Bernard is entirely baffled as to why he has found himself excommunicated from his home and living in a beat up house on the other side of the park. Daniels carries himself with pride and pompousness and never allows any hint of remorse or reevaluation to show in his eyes. The rousing performance is both brave and fresh; I felt as if I had seen a whole new dynamic to Daniels’ abilities. Bernard’s arrogance becomes all the more sad and contemptible when his eldest son, Frank is seen emulating his father’s ideals on topics as diverse as literature and women. Like his father, Frank only appreciates high art, carelessly dismissing anything that his father does not deem worthy despite having no formal knowledge of the art he praises. His opinions become hollow regurgitations that serve only to give himself the appearance of being more cultured than he truly is. He knows very much about very little. And like his father, he believes himself to be far more important than he truly is, causing him to view his relationships with women to be interchangeable depending on what opportunity presents itself and to see a woman’s purpose to be solely for serving his own needs.

Frank’s relationship with his mother, Joan is almost entirely severed after the separation. The blame needs to be placed somewhere and as it was Mom’s decision, this seems to be the best place to put it. Besides, what could possibly make her think she would know what’s better for their family than Bernard would? Joan’s presence is sparse and selfish, leaving Linney’s talents underused. Baumbach, pulling double duty as screenwriter, practically writes her character out of the story. Her career as an author is emerging and her sexuality and self-discovery burgeoning. Her character is more relevant as absent, leaving the men to fend for themselves for some much deserved me-time.

This absence has the most impact on youngest son, Walt, who is just entering his teens. With Frank constantly feeding his father’s ego, Walt is almost useless to Bernard, leaving him to his own devices. With little supervision or guidance, Walt feels his way through most situations, often making decisions that alienate him from society, making him reclusive and withdrawn while all the while naively participating in increasingly more destructive behaviour. It is too easy to dismiss Walt as lost cause in response to his behaviour as he is the only character who does not fear the future though he does not necessarily understand all of it.

Baumbach’s quiet masterpiece is the filet of the broken family genre. By demonstrating the effects of parents struggling to remain involved and not forgotten as well as reasonably putting themselves before their children, Baumbach shows how the Berkman’s selfishness leads directly to the children’s scrambling to regain their balance. That their selfishness is both warranted and understandable is what leads “The Squid and the Whale” to be the most levelheaded and pertinent film dealing with divorce I’ve ever seen.