Showing posts with label Noah Baumbach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Noah Baumbach. Show all posts

Sunday, 18 March 2018

A small remembrance of something more solid¹ ~ Blondie

This is a long-unfinished review of Mistress America (2015)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

18 March
This is a long-unfinished review of Mistress America (2015)


Spirit says ‘Five feet to the left and unhappy (not dropped into body)’ ~
Dr Yang (Alice (1990))





That Blondie track contains a pertinent reference, but ‘Souvenir’ by Orchestral Manœuvres in the Dark (or OMD) is actually part of the soundtrack : a perfect (but British²) single for a skittish take on the ways of New York City [though, for some reason, Wikipedia® styles the band ‘English’] – even for someone who lived through those times, redolent of that era, but maybe less easily placeable (one first thought of Gary Numan…) ? :



My obsession
It's my creation
You'll understand
It's not important now
'Souvenir' (by Paul Humphreys and Martin Cooper)


Personnel (in order of appearance) :

 * Lola Kirke ~ Tracy [Fishlock ?]

 * Greta Gerwig ~ Brooke Cardinas

 * Cindy Cheung ~ Karen / tax attorney


Its fast-talking quipping is exhausting - for them, as well as for us ? - before they settle to it. Till it mellows, and slackens the pace, more like the imaginary game of billiards in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which is a conversation, cannoning off another one, that is quite parallel :

 The film is a lot like the strands that go on, at the same time, in Deconstructing Harry (1997), with a hooker, an old friend who dies, and an abducted son - all in the car with Harry Block on his way to be honoured by his old college. Except that Woody Allen (a) knows to keep it short, and (b) to have the lines better complement each other than the height of intricate Renaissance polyphony, where the text, even if one has it before one, can often barely be followed.



Deconstructing Harry is the apt film to think of, not only because of its stranded nature (in one sense), but because the characters become stranded (in another) in a situation of difficulty that is almost wholly of their making (or, in Harry’s case, of his). Brooke, who barely knows Tracy (but who is impressionable, not to say suggestible), has insisted to her³ :
You have to chase down the things that you say



Tracy, though she protests Me ? I don’t know anything !, is the willing participant on this Möbius-strip of a ride, However, she is as when Ben Stiller, embarrassingly, tries to make a pitch in While We’re Young - out of her depth with what she is doing.




When Greta Gerwig and he co-wrote Frances Ha (20??), which Noah Baumbach directed, it was delightfully knowing in its allusions to Woody Allen of the 1970s, and it was a delightful film. In life, as in film, you have to Know what you’re selling, and What you’re buying, and Mistress America does not…




A note on lighting :

 In the use of light and dark, towards the end of the film, Greta Gerwig is in the darker part of the room, which is not just as it happens that way, but to reflect that another character is much more brightly lit – at what distance can we imagine them to be that there is such a gradient that the former is in shadow, the latter brightly lit ?

 As was seen in While We’re Young (2014), although much more subtly than there, where insight and gullibility / naivety / self-deception (the recurring themes here) are also vividly pictured by extremes of lighting (Ben Stiller in darkness, Adam Driver iluminated)…


End-notes

¹ From 'Picture This', by Debbie Harry, Jimmy Destri, and Chris Stein.

² Hope Springs (2012), too, pleasantly surprised with the Scottish strains of Annie Lennox.

³ Which is self-referential to the story, though not in the rather patent and unsatisfying way of Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths (2012). One related, difficult element (to joking with 'psychopathy') of Mistress America was mention of a mother with bi-polar experience (or diagnosis ) – talking about someone as if that person is a creature from a fairy-tale or myth...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday, 30 March 2015

My name sounds so much better when you say it ! ~ Josh

This is a review of While We’re Young (2014)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

30 March (6, 7 April, Tweets added)

This is a review of While We’re Young (2014)




Whatever Noah Baumbach may have felt about Frances Ha (2012) when he had finished making it (in which Adam Driver (from this film) played Frances’ one-time flat-mate Lev), and whatever he may have felt when he knew how it had been / was being received, may have had no bearing on While We’re Young (2014) : one forgets the likely gestation of things (just as film-makers forget what we may notice about their technique), and unthinkingly wishes to see the next film as some sort of progression from what we previously saw.




For, if that were the reality of film-making, a linear succession of films (with no spurs, dead-ends, recursions), one would be tempted to say that this one is – for whatever reason – striving to be as little like Frances Ha as possible. That film has its nods, and, staying with Woody Allen, one now feels a touch of Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) at times, but also of all of these, too, at others (in alphabetical order) :




* Celebrity (1998) ~ Jamie Massey (Adam Driver) bears resemblances to Lee Simon (Kenneth Branagh), with his opportunistic, if unfocused, ambitiousness (and to that of Oscar Isaac (as Llewyn Davis) ? – please see below)

* Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) ~ Josh (Ben Stiller) is, occasionally, a little in the vein of the character of Lester (Alan Alda), other times that of Cliff Stern (Woody Allen)

* Deconstructing Harry (1997) ~ Here, Josh mirrors what happens to Harry Block (Woody Allen), which is also at the time of someone being ‘honoured’

* The Double (2013) ~ On which we begin to converge

* The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) ~ Also played by Ben Stiller (as Walter), but on better form, and with a better version of this sort of ‘character-journey’ ?

* The Talented Mr Ripley ~ Please see next item

* The Way Way Back ~ Such seduction / attractiveness, but, from Sam Rockwell (Owen), in reverse, and not for ill – and also in and through the retro feel / ethos (rather than, say, invoking the analogue / digital paradigm of The Matrix (1999)…)

** Turtle Diary* (1985) ~ Shamanistic initiations (in Russell Hoban's (@russellhobanorg's)novel, it was rebirthing, probably little included in the screenplay (one forgets), by Harold Pinter)


What, then, would a film look like that had fragments of these other films embedded in it ? Well, one that is trying to find how character can drive plot, perhaps, since Frances depends, as well as on her (Greta Gerwig’s) relationship with Sophie (Mickey Sumner), on the personality of Frances, in relation to that of others, and the film’s direction arises from it. While We’re Young has a much more obvious story-line, which those who could not relate to Frances were presumably missing…




In the event, though, structurally – at the over-arching level – this film does still resemble Frances (or, equally, Deconstructing Harry) : the bulk of the film is, relatively speaking, at the microscopic level, but the coda (here, with an explicit statement as to the passing of time) puts it in a macroscopic context. One may remember, likewise, how Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) concludes, where Mickey and Holly’s (Woody Allen and Dianne Wiest’s) union is blessed with an unexpected pregnancy – or, even getting to that point, how their chance meeting in a record store is able to benefit both from the passing / healing of time, and by Mickey (who finds himself able to share it with Holly) having had an epiphany that has moved him on.

Films that do not do this (both Allen’s and those of others) may still do something that has a similar effect, i.e. of putting distance on what the rest of the film has depicted – staying with Allen, and giving another example from his canon, To Rome With Love (2012) starts with the perspective of the traffic policeman, who comes out of his role (directing the traffic) to direct us into the film. After immersing us in the action, Allen ends it with the viewpoint of the householder in another dramatic Roman location, overseeing the Coliseum, who gently reminds us that the four strands of story that we have seen are just part of what he could tell us another time. (Other films may be less explicit in so doing, using part of the language of cinema itself, by slowly zooming in on our locale at the beginning, and then, nigh ritualistically, by taking us back out again by way of conclusion – That's all, folks !)

What Noah Baumbach does with While We’re Young is to seek the same misdirection at the close as at the start (along with the literary red herring of Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder), coupled with – whether faked or not – a little piece of pure observation about where one generation puts itself in relation to another : how, in the face of the impact of technology*** (epitomized by such films as Her (2013)), sometimes the things that we have in common (as Joaquin Phoenix [Theodore Twombly] does with Amy Adams [Amy]) count for more than what might separate us, and so we are left with the incredulous gaze / expression of Naomi Watts.


Does the film try too hard to be more than one thing, and so dissipate its energies, because, by not being any one thing (arguably, since life itself is not any one thing), it ends up being not very much ? It certainly felt that it did, and it had stylistic features that made one question whether, when they appeared too obvious, they added not to feeling invited to relish the artisanal nature of the enterprise (and, with it, its status as a constructed reality), but, rather, that it was more amateurish in nature, and that Baumbach had employed techniques without (much) regard to what they would look like to those who saw (through) them :

* Such as the patent use of different people being in light and shadow, although in the same, ostensibly undifferentiated setting :




* Or the reaction-shots that foreground, bottom left or right (and extremely out of focus), what is sometimes no more than an impression of a sleeve or shoulder – almost as if to parody notions of what a reaction-shot is supposed to include (required by 'industry standards' ?) so that one 'knows' that it is one, but to do so in such a way that, if it is not meant to resemble on the fly documentary footage (after all, this is the genre of the film within a film – consistent with using that fast-pan onto Josh when he finds something on Google® ?), it looks incompetently done.

* Most curious of all, the scene at Lincoln Center when Josh confronts Jamie – a wide, low long-shot that, looking dead, has absolutely nothing going for it, either in itself, or within the edit. Suddenly, it feels that someone unused to making the impact of a setting tell (such as the scene behind the windows) has stepped too far back, and lost the subjects... Or as if it had not been deliberate to take it to use it, it had to be used for want of anything better.


If, though, one just unquestioningly consumes what is exemplified above in viewing the film, maybe the result is that one just dips in and out of Josh’s life as a more likeable and less fractured type of Inside Llewyn Davis**** (2013), which, conceivably, is Harry Block (from Deconstructing Harry) with the softer features that Stiller has as Walter Mitty ?

So – even if maybe for the wrong reasons (unless Baumbach is actually trying to please, and to work through theses – for an elite – about being mimetic in cinematic style / technique ?) – this is a film that does / can get one thinking : it has a slow-burn of a response, which, for others, persisted, beyond the immediate three hours afterwards, following Under the Skin.

Yet, unlike that dismayingly dazzling ending, the one here could be seen (in the same way that Frances 'deals with her issues') as normalizing the paranoia / projection that Josh vividly gives us (and which, although we may be slow to believe that Stiller is a film-maker (let alone Watts), we buy into, it must be said – which is the real power of the film), and endorsing a rather tame message that Time heals ?


End-notes
* Frances and Sophie did make one laugh, whereas one is aware that Josh (Stiller), Cornelia (Watts), Jamie (Driver), and Darby (Seyfried) are (being) amusing ?

** There is some speculation, here, about a re-make :



*** The cover-all word (along with technological advance) that indulges / excuses everything, and makes it seem acceptable to be drawn into having the latest ‘device’ (another such word), rather than dismissing it as gadgetry ?

**** Another point of contact with Adam Driver, who there is Al Cody, Llewyn Davis’ friend / fellow musician.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday, 1 August 2013

Too good to be true ?

This is a review of Frances Ha (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

1 August

This is a review of Frances Ha (2012)

* Contains spoilers *

I had heard such positive noises about Frances Ha (2012) that I feared that I would be disappointed - and would squirm. But my worry was groundless, and I have nothing but praise for the film and for Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote it, as well as starring.

The script had all the urbanity of, say, Dianne Wiest as Holly and her friend and business partner April (played by Carrie Fisher) in Hannah and her Sisters (1986), and one likewise felt that, just as Woody Allen produces very good parts for himself (apart from giving himself the lion's share of the jokes), so Gerwig gauged her own nuances perfectly in the writing. (Allen gave her the part of Sally in To Rome with Love (2012), which, of course, does not surprise.)

The film is shot in monochrome, and uses a montage to give us quickly the breadth of the relationship between Frances and her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). Coincidentally, and in no ways as a detraction from this film's originality and expressive power, I found myself reminded of those long-lost stories of another inhabitant of New York and her sister, from the t.v. series Rhoda : not pressing the similarities, but the quirkiness, the humanity, and the sense of being an individual.

Frances is gorgeously composed and shot, edited with style and precision, and the music is as it should be, so unobtrusive that, when one sees the list of what has been used, one is boggled not to have noticed so much of it, even well-known classical pieces. To prove the rule, two deliberately prominent tracks are David Bowie's 'Modern Love' and 'Every 1's a Winner' by Hot Chocolate, which feel just right, both in their exact context, and their emotional contribution.

So who is Frances exactly ? I shall say nothing about the film's title other than that one is kept waiting right to the end*, where we feel again the healthily pragmatic and impulsive part of Frances' character to the fore. Throughout, she is her own woman, and those who struggled with the role of Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy-go-Lucky (2008), an excellent piece of work by Sally Hawkins, might be reminded of it.

If one took seriously what IMDb's headline statement had to say about Frances, one would think that she is simply a dreamer, which she is not : I do not believe that Poppy or Frances is an incurable optimist, but that they have a not infallible sense of others' hurts and susceptibilities, and live their lives trying to take account of them. (Unlike me before this film, Frances approaches things, and people, with expectancy.)

Sumner and Gerwig have to be singled out since, just as Poppy has her trusted flatmate in Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) for their own bohemian world, they are at the heart of the film (though a heart that beats at a distance when Sophie goes to Tokyo), but everyone seems well cast, and to give of their very best as part of the ensemble.

The film covers a lot of ground, and feels a lot like a portrait of Frances done with honesty and compassion : quite naturally, I believe that one feels for her, whether it is being let down about the Christmas show, or finding that a conversation with new room-mates Lev and Benji that she relied on about rent has been forgotten.

A key scene is the rather awkward dinner-party with friends of another room-mate, this time reluctant, where we learn a lot about where Frances stands in relation to others who are not of her kind - with Benji, she was able to communicate naturally, whereas these people seem unable to understand even when, metatextually, she drunkenly tries to explain what makes her able to get on with people.

Perhaps a bit of a loner, an outsider, she is still valued, and she sticks to her convictions. (In this connection, whatever dancer Gerwig may be, the film wisely limits what we see of her on her feet, choosing instead to show her nimbleness as she runs and twirls with ease along the streets of New York and of Paris, so that the status as dancer is established, but does not distract.)

In Poppy, one might have felt that her vibrant persona in the world was a response to something deeper. What we get to know of Frances, with her spontaneity and with a problematic way with money, makes a similar hint, not to be much dwelt on**, but noticed. What I take away is a special person, loving and caring (even for someone whom she does not know who is sad), and a bit of an outsider. If this is what Miranda July had in mind in The Future, I believe that she is way off, whereas Gerwig and the film's co-writer and director, Noah Baumbach, are spot on.


End-notes

* But there is a joke from A. A. Milne...

** Unless one's bedtime reading is informed by such things as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and it guides trying to understand a whole person : one would quickly rule out high-functioning autism, but ponder a mild form of bi-polar disorder, or even traits of borderline personality disorder, on which more here...

Also, I'm not sure that it's just not having the money that means that Sophie has a mobile on which she can get e-mail and Frances hasn't, or that Frances has a computer that she doubts will enable her to communicate with a distant Sophie as suggested. Even if she could, I don't see Frances spending on those things, because her priorities, her notions of relations, are different : Sophie makes an up-beat blog in Tokyo so that her mother will not worry, whereas, tellingly, Frances envisages her mother seeing the truth on her own blog and coping with it. (I forget the quotation, but the word 'depressed' / 'depressing' is used.)


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