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GREENBERG (2010) is the first masterpiece of the year

Posted by Daniel Metz

Dir. Noah Baumbach
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, 2/19/10, 2:00pm

I am so glad to be able to write about a beautiful film. Most of the time I am mired in mediocrity, forced to view and write about rubbish or moderate achievements (i.e. Hot Tub Time Machine, The Crazies, Saint John of Las Vegas). Greenberg is the kind of film that makes me happy that I write about film. More than that, Greenberg is the kind of film that makes me happy that I watch films.

Noah Baumbach is one of our most important cinema artists. His film The Squid and the Whale is the most touching study of divorce’s impact on a family that has ever been committed to celluloid. His followup, Margot at the Wedding, is a brutal map of family relations that demonstrates Baumbach’s unique talent for capturing the vitriolic sides of humanity. His first film, 1995’s Kicking and Screaming is a cult classic that stands as one of the best post-grad comedies, and one that predates the mumblecore generation by some ten years.

Less talked about are the films between Kicking and Squid. Highball is a mess of a film from 1997. It is about three parties and the guests who attend them as the years go by. The film lacks all artistic flourishes but the screenplay is interesting. The name of the game here is awkward. Every interaction is awkward, the characters are awkward. In that sense, though, the film is a triumph of discomfort. Baumbach released the film under the pseudonym Ernie Fusco because he was ashamed of the final product.

Mr. Jealousy, released the same year as Highball, is an underrated accomplishment. The film stars Eric Stoltz as a jealously-obsessed boyfriend. Chris Eigeman plays the man who he thinks is having an affair with his girlfriend. Carlos Jacott plays his best friend. Stoltz manages to trick his way into Eigeman’s group therapy sessions by using the alias of Jacott, and then Jacott joins pretending to be a British person. Stoltz ultimately drives his girlfriend into the arms of Eigeman. This anarchic, absurd plot only makes the emotional climax that much more devastating.

His films are very much about growing up. Perhaps the cinema’s conventional “heroes journey” character arc speaks to Baumbach through aging; after all, what point A->point B scheme is more familiar and universal to us than maturity? Or perhaps the writer/director is stunted in his personal development and is still trying to work out a traumatic experience in his childhood? Whatever the reason, he is obsessed with unconventional, twisted coming of age stories.

Coming of age stories is probably the wrong term, though. His characters do not learn about themselves by testing their boundaries and coming face-to-face with a life-changing event. His characters don’t actually come of age, they are simply thrust into situations above their maturity level, and the life-changing events they (sometimes) approach are rarely learning opportunities.

Baumbach’s movies are basically about characters who are forced to grow up whether they like it or not. Some fight it, as the graduates in Kicking and Screaming, the childish lover in Mr. Jealousy, and Pickle in The Squid and the Whale. Some accept it, as Margot’s son Claude, and Jesse Eisenberg’s character in Squid. Others are either clueless of their surroundings or forcibly suppressing them, as Nicole Kidman’s Margot or Jeff Daniels’ very inspired turn as father Bernard in Squid. It is in these moments of rebellion, complicity or denial that Baumbach spends his time dissecting human action and reaction

Let me be clear: the growing up in Baumbach’s films is nothing like the Apatovian coming-of-age that is so popular in contemporary comedy. While the Seth Rogens and the Jonah Hills of those films are diagnosing a problem in the general state of twenty-something slackerism, Baumbach’s heroes and heroines are exploring minor crises, engaging with more character-centric issues than in wide-reaching social critiques. Further, and perhaps more importantly, they are much more true. The dialogue, scenarios, and performances are difficult to watch but always teach us something about ourselves and the world around us.

If Kicking, Jealousy, and Highball form a coherent trilogy of intellectual-comic films about growing up, Squid, Margot, and now Greenberg form a much darker triad of films. The human insight is still present in these works. Here, though, they are more raw, more scathing: less ha ha, more ha.

The most recent three films are not comedies as much as indie dramas, although I would much rather call them black comedies. After all, the films all prominently feature comedians in major roles: The Squid and the Whale stars Jeff Daniels, who I think is a comedian (he was in Dumb and Dumber); Margot at the Wedding is carried by mustachioed Jack Black; and Greenberg stars Ben Stiller.

And I guess that finally brings me to Greenberg. Stiller plays the titular hero, a cad, lazing through his forties and trying to do nothing with his life. As the film reveals, Stiller has been hospitalized for some psychological issues. He is house-sitting his brother’s home in Los Angeles, trying to sort through his troubled mind and reconnect with old friends, when he meets his brother’s assistant Florence, played by the charming Greta Gerwig.

This relationship is the film’s raison d’etre, as it serves to funnel Stiller’s neuroses and forms a plot. Stiller’s Greenberg is nervous, judgmental and subject to the occasional fit of anger. This is Stiller’s strongest performance to date, proving yet again how easy it is for a comic actor to perform dramatic roles (for a recent example of how the reverse is much harder, please watch the episode of SNL where January Jones hosts). Stiller’s character, similar in some ways to his turn as the tracksuit-wearing Chas in The Royal Tenenbaums, is a broken man, drifting through life with the very real knowledge that if he addresses his inner-turmoil, he will crumble.

Baumbach’s films are filled with little idiosyncrasies (undoubtedly derived from the writer’s personal experiences) that demonstrate the characters’ realness: Laura Linney pulling her chapped lip in Squid, for instance, or the way she stunk up the bathroom before the family meeting to discuss the divorce. Another is the piece of dead skin Margot at the Weddings’ Claude hopes to leave in a movie theatre so that it can watch movies all day, and is reminded of during the bizarre parade scene at the end of the film. Of the many in this film, the most stand-out personal moment is Greenberg’s habit of cutting his own hair, carefully shaping the bangs to look unkempt.

These moments are meant to trigger in us a sense of familiarity and shared troubles. Perhaps we cannot relate to these gestures directly, but we know people who do things like this. More importantly, we recognize the power of memories, and how our attention can be drawn to certain specific things during big moments to help us ignore the things we don’t want to remember. We remember the strangest things, Baumbach is saying, in our very subjective recollections.

Greta Gerwig has shown herself to be a very good actress in this film. Gerwig previously cut her teeth in mumble movies, but also dazzled us in a brief role in last year’s House of the Devil. She is beautiful in a plain sort of way, but more important is her uncanny ability to convey many emotions and ideas simultaneously. Here, she is infinitely understanding while also judging, hurting, being hurt. She is horribly sensitive in every scene, yet her presence, especially next to the shattered Stiller, is the strongest and most admirable in the film.

There is a sex scene I have to discuss, as it is by far the greatest scene of the year and of most in recent memory. Stlller awkwardly invites Gerwig out for a drink, but when they stop in her apartment, he suggests they just drink there, since the bars will surely be filled with bridge and tunnel people, “or whatever the LA version of bridge and tunnel people are.” She has only got a single Corona Light, so they share the beer while standing and facing each other. Without having any connection between them, they feel they should kiss.

This is the kiss of two people who simply don’t care about what they are doing. They have given up hope of satisfying contact. Gerwig gestures them over to the futon mattress that is on her floor. Stiller lifts her top just enough so that her breasts are hanging out. He kisses them for a moment but very quickly makes a beeline to her vagina. He takes her skinny jeans off and eats her pussy for maybe seven seconds before she says, “I’m sorry, I get kinda nerdy.” He gets off of her and goes to the bathroom.

All he does is look at himself in the mirror. As he turns around, he flushes the toilet with his foot although he doesn’t use it. He bolts for the door although she offers for him to stay. The moment, I guess, is over. There is such beauty in this disgustingly brief scene, as it captures the fleeting nature of these bizarre, selfish and yet hopeless sexual encounters that make up much of our modern, post-aids, pro-oral casual sex.

Other scenes are equally wonderful, as a scene at a pool party that is non-linear in its ordering of shots. To my knowledge, this is the first time Baumbach has experiments with non-linear storytelling, and it suits the situation well. Speaking of that scene, though, it is also worth noting that Baumbach works almost exclusively with natural light, and it is gorgeous. Baumbach is the greatest living user of natural light. In Squid, Margot, and Greenberg, Baumbach and cinematographers Robert Yeoman (who shot most of Wes Anderson’s movies) and Harris Savides (who shot Elephant and a number of other good films by Van Sant and others) are able to use the sun and the moon to achieve amazing visual results.

And this should not be ignored. Greenberg is a grand achievement in cinema because it is a convergence of breathtaking visual style and heartbreaking story. Writer/director Noah Baumbach continues dealing with the themes he has been working through for the past fifteen years, and he only gets better coaching actors and producing movies that are carefully crafted and beautifully constructed. I really look forward to seeing this again, and again.