Based on a story by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Noah Baumbach
** (two stars)
“Can’t pretend that growing older never hurts.”
-Pete Townshend
“Slit Skirts”
I am compelled to begin this review by stating at its outset that I did not like this movie. I didn’t hate it. I don’t believe it to be a bad movie. But, I just did not like it very much at all and I have to admit that my reaction confounded me.
Now that I have begun writing reviews for your reading pleasure and consumption, as well as to continuously exercise my creative muscles, I am purposefully not reading official critic’s reviews until after I have written my own, so as not to be influenced. (Of course, I am aware of reviews general tone and I still cannot help but to watch “At The Movies” but I think you know what I mean.) That said, once I walked out of the Sundance movie theater showing “Greenberg,” the new film from Writer/Director Noah Baumbach (2005's "The Squid and the Whale") and starring Ben Stiller in the titular role, I found myself walking towards the giant sized poster of this film. The life-sized advertisement contained an enlarged version of the complete review from the Wall Street Journal, and I had to stop and skim through it. Upon reading, I again realized that the movie I saw and the movie most critics are seeing were two different films, almost entirely. This was a movie that seemed to travel right up the middle of the alley of my personal interests. The film’s Writer/Director is one I have long admired. The rare dramatic turn from the film’s leading actor is one that had excited me. Most importantly, it was the subject matter that spoke loudest. Ant ultimately, it was akin to having all of the ingredients for a great meal, preparing it as best as possible and nevertheless, it refuses to taste good. “Greenberg” slipped through my fingers as I didn’t connect to it. My mind wandered frequently and I was emotionally unengaged for much of its seemingly stagnant running time. My viewpoint has run in the opposite direction of the general consensus.
Baumbach’s “Greenberg” shares many similar themes with the just released “Hot Tub Time Machine,” and in fact, if you took that film’s whirlwind party animal character of Lou and made a dramatic feature surrounding him, you may end up with a film like this one. The life of Roger Greenberg, at the age of 41, is currently in a simultaneous state of arrested development and emotional precariousness. Recently released from a mental institution after a nervous breakdown, Greenberg has been invited to Los Angeles from his beloved New York by his brother to house sit for six weeks as they take a family vacation to Vietnam. Despite his apparent OCD, intense social awkwardness, severe depression that leads to several verbally violent outbursts, as well as being a prisoner of his own past, Greenberg obliges. After his arrival in L.A., he is reunited his with past in painful passages including, Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the other half of a failed relationship and Ivan Schrank (Rhys Ifans in a performance of precise and tender sorrow), a college friend and former band mate, currently going through the agony of his own marital separation. Greenberg is endlessly sarcastic as best, brutally acerbic at worst and narcissistically nihilistic all of the time. His rage at the world is constantly hurled to all around him including via various acid drenched letters to all corporations that have offended him in some way (a Starbucks, an airline, New York Mayor Bloomberg, etc…). Yet, there may be light, however slight, on the horizon in the shape, form and body of Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig) a 20ish college graduate and personal assistant to Greenberg’s brother’s family, with whom Greenberg strikes up a tentative affair.
At its core, Ivan sums the film up best, when he pointedly states to Greenberg to “embrace the life you never thought you would have.” This is a concept that is also at the core of nearly all of Baumbach’s previous films, especially his 1995 debut feature “Kicking And Screaming,” which featured Eric Stoltz in an exploration of post-college ennui and the trepidation of engaging with the continuous passage of life for fear of its inevitable disappointment. In many ways, Greenberg could be one of that film’s over-educated, sardonic, literate and extremely tenderhearted characters, now at the beginning of middle age and constantly perplexed at how he fits into the world at large when even his pop-culture references do not even contain the smallest level of kitschy glee anymore. Greenberg’s crippling fear is one of becoming obsolete to all around him and it is caged in a wall of nearly impenetrable self-loathing, which of course, forces everyone away. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that he is forced to engage with during his six week stay as he, like the characters in the aforementioned “Hot Tub Time Machine,” discover that their cherish youth wasn’t much to cherish anyway. Heavy resentments still linger in the hearts of his former band mates as they continue to blame Greenberg for the loss of their one record deal offer. And a feeble attempt to rekindle Beth’s old flame is terribly pathetic. However, Greenberg is a character who does not want to make you stone the screen. This is due to Baumbach’s extremely perceptive writing, of course, but also in huge portions to the performance of Ben Stiller.
Ben Stiller is uniformly and unquestionably excellent in the leading role. With this performance, all is forgiven after toiling for too many years in one painful derivative comedy after another. I have always felt that he is one of those actors that is much smarter than the material he has been given and here is his chance to prove it as he is front and center of material I feel is of equal weight to his talents. He creates much humor and sympathy for a character that otherwise would become frustratingly tiresome and one-note. At times, he reminded me very much of Anne Hathaway’s blisteringly brilliant performance in Jonathan Demme’s extraordinary “Rachel Getting Married” (2008) as he also portrays a person who receives very little and unforgiving support from the people that should understand and forgive most. This is shown mostly in several sequences where Greenberg check in with his vacationing brother, and their phone conversations, most of which surround the care of the brother’s ailing German Shepherd named Mahler, reveal a history of resentment and history of vengeful family roles. Stiller masterfully finds the venom in the humor and the humor in the venom, all the while presenting empathy for a character many of us would walk away from…just like the people in Greenberg’s life. Stiller is remarkable.
“Greenberg,” the film, is not about a story or plot. It is a film of mood and behavior, as well as a dual character study (more on that shortly). I am not always in need of a film to provide me with easy answers where characters are universally transformed and tremendous life lessons are learned. I greatly appreciate and even love many films where characters are more informed rather than transformed. As I watched, I was reminded of films like Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers” (2005) and even Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown’ (2005), where those films’ deliberate pacing and off-kilter rhythms approximated a certain pattern of how life is really lived and how a person’s progress is always taken in baby steps. As we view the progression (or lack thereof) with Greenberg, we are given a similar trajectory with the character of Florence Marr. The personal assistant to Greenberg’s brother is mousy to the degree where she nearly exists as a doormat. Unsure of her place in the world and also unaware of the tools to monkey-wrench herself into it has led her into a state of being as adrift as Greenberg. Yet, it is their relationship that provokes her (possibly for the first time) to discover what her voice may be. Florence begins to realize what she may want out of her life and most importantly, what she may want to discard by simply saying the word, “No.”
But, here’s where the film ran into huge problems for me and also where the divide between myself and the major critics has run the deepest. Greta Gerwig has been receiving glowing attention for her performance as Florence Marr and I am truly unaware at what the critics in her corner saw, as I did not see the same attributes in any conceivable way. It is not a bad performance by any means, let me please make that clear right up front. She possesses a certain weary, awkward grace along with her inviting, warm smile. She seems to represent that person where the sensation of perhaps, “love at eighth sight” may exist. She grows on you, as she also does on Greenberg, but this is nothing approaching the “star making performance” hyperbole that is being banded about heavily. Gerwig gives a quiet, nuanced performance but she is so nuanced that it is almost to the point of near narcolepsy with her languid, woozy line readings and overall demeanor. Nevertheless, she does what she can as the character felt poorly underwritten to me. For all of her screen time and equal weight to Greenberg in the story, I never, ever felt as if I knew this person. The details, apparent and implied, in Greenberg were just not there for Florence at all. Engaging in meaningless sexual trysts, offering petite mutterings of gratitude to gracious drivers, and jangling along to Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” are signs of behavior, not character development. These are things that she does, but they don’t tell us who she is. Even a late-film trauma is something that just happens to her and it does nothing to serve the character at all. This weakness makes her half of a dual character study decidedly weightless.
The film “Greenberg” reminded me of the most was Sofia Coppola’s sublime “Lost In Translation”(2003), which also featured two adrift souls who somehow find a certain profound connection in an alien place. Coppola weaved her film by suggesting that the souls of the characters played by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson were destined to become intertwined, if only for a short period of time and it could ONLY be these two souls. In “Greenberg,” however, I could see how Florence’s soul would have been affected by Greenberg’s acidity but I not fathom if Greenberg’s soul had been touched specifically by Florence’s or if he would have behaved in the exact same way with ANY woman. Their relationship was unconvincing and since that is a huge portion of the film, “Greenberg” unfortunately succumbed to a deadly tedium.
Just as I felt the character of Florence Marr was underwritten, I felt this film was decidedly underdirected as well. True, Noah Baumbach is not a visual stylist but his previous films all contained a certain inner momentum. "Greenberg” is too wry and dry for its own good as it seemed to have no momentum at all and scenes just laid flatly on the screen. I do realize that the film’s deliberately laconic pacing and atmosphere is designed to reflect life’s natural rhythms as well as the inner states of Roger Greenberg and Florence Marr’s apathy and melancholy, but I found myself unable to connect as there are too many sequences filled with long, awkward pauses and silences. There are great moments sprinkled throughout the film including a terrific extended party sequence where Greenberg, high on cocaine and desperately wanting to listen to Duran Duran’s “The Chauffeur,” launches into an explosive rant laying waste to all of the 20somethings around him. The same sequence also features the heartbreaking moment when Ivan has to painfully express to Greenberg that it is his own self-absorption and unwillingness to try and engage with anyone other than himself that has stripped him of any lasting connections. That the basis of friendship is a “give and take” process and Greenberg’s method of endlessly taking has become irrevocably damaging. But, those sequences are too far scattered from each other and what remained was an unfocused, undisciplined feature. “Greenberg” begged for some tightening to go with Florence’s much needed character development. As it currently stands, it was an honest attempt that refused to captivate and allure and it finally drifted towards an interminable place I was thankful to leave.
Before I close out this review, I am also compelled to share this short cinematic tale with you. Back in college during one of my film courses, we were assigned to view Francis Ford Coppola’s groundbreaking and celebrated psychological thriller, “The Conversation,” from 1974. Gene Hackman starred as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert, who grows increasingly paranoid and disturbed by his implicit role in a potential conspiracy and murder plot. It is a story and character study that details Caul’s crippling detachment and loneliness and I was bored senseless during that viewing. It was a film where seemingly nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING happened. Gene Hackman just paced around in an internally agitated state and that was it. There was even a stage where I nodded off and came to a few minutes later and there was Hackman, still pacing around. I was dumbfounded as to why that film had been so celebrated. But, I have to say that upon that initial meeting, “The Conversation” simply had not revealed itself to me. I would occasionally stumble upon it on cable TV over the years and I would find myself somehow drawn in. At first for a few minutes. Then, for maybe an hour and finally, the entire film. Now, I completely understand its legacy and have joined the choir in singing that film’s praises. It is the type of film that a major studio just would not make today. The complexities, the subtleties, and crucially slow pace which demands an audience’s acute attention is not what major studios want these days and can somehow only be found in most independent features.
Perhaps Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg” is that type of film. One that needs time to resonate fully. I have not rejected this film completely and would even concede to watching it again once it hits DVD. Maybe if I take a subsequent trip, the film would fully reveal itself.
And then again, maybe it already has.
Well, it seems like there was much in the film you liked, not least of all Stiller and Ifans. But I think you give Gerwig's character and performance a total misreading. Yeah, she's searching, too, but she hasn't given up. She sings, even to an empty room, and she does her job and happily, without even a thought of payment (even though she has to ask her best friend to loan her 40 bucks at a party). She's obviously sad that there's no one that she finds interesting enough to connect to on any long-term basis, and I think she finds this in Greenberg. I think he also appeals to her strong nurturing side; she sees in him someone who needs to be healed, and who'd be a better person if only someone would listen. I feel she wants him to engage with the present more than he is, and I think she finds him funny and smart, and more giving thatn he maybe even thinks he is (given that he's building the doghouse and is attentive enough to notice the animal is sick). I feel that Greenberg wants the world to be a better place (hence his letter writing) but he feels he's alone in this. And, like many of our age, he's disturbed that the elements of the past he once cherished are being forgotten by an equally self-absorbed new generation. The thing is, he doesn't feel this self-absorbtion in Florence. Who could? She clearly remembers what love is (I like how she talks to the kids in her first scene, and how she talks about the dog). I think this touches Greenberg, as much as he doesn't want to let go of his love for Jennifer Jason Leigh (whose one major scene is terrific and discomforting). I really liked your review, though, and especially liked that you concluded it by admitting that there are some movies that just grow on you. I'd urge you to consider GREENBERG one of them. Give it another try.
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