While We're Young: Sly social commentary

While We're Young (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang

Getting older is difficult enough, in terms of physical and emotional challenges, without having to worry about the need to remain “relevant.”

In the aftermath of a truly silly consciousness-raising experience, Josh (Ben Stiller) and
Cornelia (Naomi Watts) attempt to make sense of the previous evening, to determine
whether any useful insight might have been achieved. Sadly, they've a ways to go before
any genuinely helpful epiphanies.

Perversely, though, that issue has become more challenging in our modern world, with cultural and technological imperatives changing not by the decade, not even by the year, but at times — seemingly — by the month. More than ever before, it feels like only agile young minds have a hope of keeping up.

But is “keeping up” really that important?

Intellectual obsolescence is the core issue of Noah Baumbach’s newest character study, but the writer/director actually has much more on his mind. Part comedy, part drama and all biting social commentary, While We’re Young is a perceptive take on 21st century fortysomethings who worry that life is passing them by ... or, worse yet, long ago left town on the last bus.

Mid-life crises are nothing new, of course; every generation crosses this more-or-less halfway point with varying degrees of the same angst. But Hollywood didn’t really discover the genre until 1955’s The Seven Year Itch, and most of the topic’s classics are more recent: 1973’s Save the Tiger, 1979’s Manhattan, 1999’s American Beauty and 2004’s Sideways come quickly to mind.

While We’re Young definitely belongs in their company. Baumbach has an unerring ear for troubled interpersonal dynamics, dating back to his Oscar-nominated script for 2005’s The Squid and the Whale. That said, some of his subsequent films — however insightful — spent too much time with unpalatable or downright mean-spirited characters; it’s difficult to embrace any message when delivered by, say, the misanthropic title character in Greenberg.

But Baumbach’s approach has been gentler of late, starting with the forlorn misfit played so winningly by Greta Gerwig, in 2012’s Frances Ha. Maybe it’s because Baumbach is gaining maturity not merely as a filmmaker, but also as a person; it can’t be accidental that he’s the same age as his protagonists in While We’re Young, definitely his kindest — and therefore more approachable — film to date.

We meet Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) as they nervously try to interact with a newborn: not theirs, as we quickly discover, but the first child of best friends Fletcher and Marina (Adam Horovitz and Maria Dizzia). As displayed so expressively by Watts — Cornelia tries, but doesn’t quite succeed, to hide her agitation — this moment is a crisis, and not merely because it revives painful memories of their own failed attempts to have children.

No, it’s a crossroads. Just as marriage leaves still-single friends feeling isolated, new parents with kids instantaneously join yet another social clique that simply doesn’t allow for childless members ... no matter how polite the lip-service.

Just like that, Josh and Cornelia feel left out.

Frances Ha: Engaging portrait of an unfinished soul

Frances Ha (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Slowly but steadily, Greta Gerwig has been crafting wry and thoughtful portraits of today’s self-absorbed millennials ... and, more specifically, those who suffer from what has been branded Failure to Launch.

Mourning the apparent loss of her long-time best friend, Frances (Greta Gerwig) drowns
her sorrows in a good meal with Lev (Adam Driver), a sympathetic guy-pal who offers
the sort of superficial warmth that can obscure emotional pain ... if only briefly. What
Frances hasn't yet learned, though, is that true healing must come from within.

We’ve seen hints in her stand-out supporting roles in the remake of Arthur and Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love. Despite having (I assume) minimal creative control over those projects, and being limited to what those directors and scripts allowed, Gerwig nonetheless delivered an irresistible blend of quirky charm and wary vulnerability. The classic Greta Gerwig character — assuming it’s not too early to brand her in such a manner — always seems slightly out of phase with our world, her expression of cautious bewilderment suggesting that, to her, society and interpersonal relationships always are mildly out of focus.

Gerwig delivered a richer example of such a young woman in last year’s Lola Versus, but her often amiable performance was undone by a frequently cruel and tin-eared script that forced too much self-destructive behavior on a title character who clearly should have known better.

Cue the arrival of Frances Ha, a much more satisfying character study of a wayward New Yorker who — despite good intentions and often painful sincerity — just can’t get her act together. Gerwig had a strong hand in this 27-year-old woman’s development, having shared scripting credit with director Noah Baumbach. (They also worked together on 2010’s unsatisfying Greenberg.) The result feels far more credibly authentic than the erratic nitwit in Lola Versus.

Frances is the sort of forever flustered individual who will promise to do something, and then let the opportunity slip by; or will insist that she won’t do something, but then will. She’s simultaneously endearing and deeply frustrating, and numerous scenes in this film are uncomfortable and unsettling, as we worry over whether she’ll miss another promising opportunity, or yield to another impetuous, ill-advised decision.

She’s tone-deaf during social occasions, forever saying the wrong thing to the wrong people: not because she’s cruel or thoughtless, but mostly because she simply doesn’t pay attention to relationship cues, whether casual or formal. She’s much too self-absorbed: but, again, not in an unpleasant manner. She’s just ... well ... unfinished, somehow. And helpless to do anything about it.

But Gerwig’s performance is so endearing, and so genuinely sweet, that we can’t help forgiving Frances her many shortcomings (even as we groan over them). Watching her flail during an effort to describe wanting that “magic moment” between two soul mates — when eyes lock from opposite ends of a room, and a quick smile of acknowledgment cements the sort of bond that neither time nor God could disrupt — is poetry in motion. It’s a breathtaking, all-in scene: utterly mesmerizing, for Gerwig’s intensity. Watch how she works every square millimeter of her expressive face, from lips and chin to eyebrows.

Greenberg: Sheer torture

Greenberg (2010) • View trailer for Greenberg
Two stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, strong sexual content, nudity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.1.10
Buy DVD: Greenberg • Buy Blu-Ray: Greenberg [Blu-ray]


Filmmaker Noah Baumbach opens and closes Greenberg with tight close-ups on Greta Gerwig's expressive face, and in both cases we're overwhelmed by a painfully raw display of naked emotion: hope, uncertainty, frustration and uncomplicated compassion.

Particularly the latter: Gerwig's Florence Marr is the best part of this film, and Baumbach does well to highlight this talented young actress — born and raised in Sacramento -— as much as possible.

After another of their "romantic" encounters goes horribly awry, Florence
(Greta Gerwig) can't wait to abandon the mean-spirited Roger (Ben Stiller) for
the rest of the evening. Too bad she doesn't run him over with a bus; now,
that would be worth watching.

Unhappily, Ben Stiller's title character is the worst part, which makes this tightly wound relationship drama rather difficult to endure.

I'll be more blunt: We're sometimes forced, by circumstance of employment or casual encounter, to spend excruciating hours with people we can't stand. Why the heck should we endure a similar jerk in a movie?

Although we're obviously intended to sympathize with Roger Greenberg — to tolerate and be patient with this lost soul, as he struggles at the mid-life crossroads — Stiller's character doesn't earn such respect, nor is there reason to cut him any slack. He's an abusive, misanthropic, misogynistic, self-centered cretin who doesn't deserve the kindness shown by several of the other characters in this story, and particularly not by Gerwig's Florence.

Watching Roger turn nasty and emotionally belittle Florence is stomach-clutching the first time. Enduring it the second time, the third time, the fourth time ... is inexcusable. Gerwig's performance is so credibly, painfully shaded — Florence is so vulnerable, so willing to suffer the abuse — that it's like watching somebody drown kittens in a barrel.

And to what purpose?

That's the key question about Baumbach's film, which he directed and co-wrote with occasional collaborator Jennifer Jason Leigh. (They worked together on 2007's Margot at the Wedding.) Why are we wasting time with this intellectual thug?