Noah Baumbach, USA, 20053.5 out of 4 stars
This kind of movie is, I would think, particularly difficult to pull off right. There are some abhorrent behaviors depicted (okay, almost every behavior depicted here is abhorrent), and one critic dismissed the whole thing (and every one of his peers who liked it) by saying it was just bourgeois self-indulgence. Of course, that begs the question as to whether this film depicts bourgeois self-indulgence in a valuable manner or is just another diseased product of bourgeois self-indulgence.
I don’t know if I’m qualified to respond to that, and although I grew up with parents that didn’t split up and at least, compared to these characters, behaved normally, I still felt involved in (and repulsed) by this picture. The camerawork definitely seemed spot-on, quirky at times without being overbearingly “artistic.” I was really fascinated by the surprising and disturbing ways the two children backed up and imitated their respective “preferred” parent. My main criticism of it is that I really knew Jeff Daniels' character by the time the film was over, but I was a lot less clear on Laura Linney’s character, who gets a lot less lines in general. I felt like they made it easier to take her side because most of her transgressions were merely referred to by other people, whereas Daniels is always, constantly incriminating himself (and Jesse Eisenberg's performance is a very effective partial mimicry of his own). That said, that might actually be the intended effect… I’m not entirely clear on that. Definitely worth a rental, in any case.
25 March, 7:26 PM
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