I'm an anxious person. It's a character trait that over the
course of the last year I've come to accept as a part of
very essence of who I am. Good, bad, indeed at times ugly,
I am graced/afflicted with the unconscious ability to over
think anything and everything. To hinder and help myself
with the sheer force of question. It's had a strange effect
on my movie viewing of late, films that I think would
entertain and amuse some have left me tense, literally
shaking with anxiety. I found myself in such a stir after
the crushing nerves of A Serious Man that it took a
second viewing for me to truly tell people I'd enjoyed the
film. It's slowly tightening vice upended me, caught me
off-guard in an emotional zone I didn't know even existed.
Review - Greenberg
Noah Baumbach's new film Greenberg shocked me in a
similar way. Greenberg is the story of Roger
Greenberg (Ben Stiller), a 40-something carpenter who's
house-sitting the Los Angeles home of his more successful
brother (Chris Messina). Greenberg is in the midst of a
semi-forced mid-life crisis, a period of time where he is
attempting to "do nothing" in the attempt to find meaning in
his life. Unfortunately L.A. is his home town and his
return is a return to uncomfortable reunions and an even
greater sense of void. His crack at redemption comes in the
form of Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig), a 28-year old seeking
similar substance.
I'm always fond of Noah Baumbach as he doesn't hesitate in
making his characters completely unlikable. Stiller's
Greenberg is a man controlled by anxiety, a trait he
expresses by being a know-it-all asshole. The sort of
boorish jerk who hides his own insecurities under a cloak of
dislike and complaints. And Stiller nails it, his natural
tendency towards angst cranked up and away from the
impetuses of comedy. He's a force in this film, a tetchy,
jittery mess of a man who destroys relationships left and
right in his search for, well, something. His relationship
with Florence is a touch-and-go, crash-and-burn ordeal he
orchestrates and it is only kept afloat by the characters
shared sense of disembodiment.
Baumbach directs the film like a high budget bit of
mumblecore (rightly so with mumblecore maven Greta Gerwig
starring) and it works exceptionally well. These are
characters you might meet at a bar, lost souls in a town of
hopeless dreams. Their conversations stem from actual
circumstances, the humor in the film (awkward and biting as
it is) isn't laugh at loud, it's realistically situational,
and you chuckle more than guffaw. Los Angeles is used
perfectly in this film, a sprawling mess of a city that
holds promise if you can find it.
As I left theater my stomach was wracked with knots of
worry, Greenberg's character a condensed, purified form of
all of my own anxieties. A character unknowing of his future
thus uncomfortable with his present. My stomach hurt, my
mouth was dry, and in my brain raced with questions about
life and the future. And I think that's exactly what Noah
Baumbach intended.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The
Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and
the KEXP blog. He also has his own
Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.
If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his
writings here at Side One: Track One then please do
so
here.
- Noah Sanders
-
-
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
Creative Commons License.
