Noah Baumbach is a tricky writer/director to figure out. His latest films, The Squid and the Whale (2005) and Margot at the Wedding (2007) are very similar: both feature intensely unlikeable characters, story lines driven by the characters rather than plot setups, and both have been misleading billed as "dysfunctional family comedy-dramas". Now, for Lars and the Real Girl, the style of film making was so charming that even if you went in expecting a laugh out loud comedy, you didn't leave disappointed. Margot is different because, like "Squid", it is so very real in its portrayal of unlikeable and dysfunctional people, and it spends all of its time de-constructing them (painfully) for us to watch. The simple premise is this: short story author Margot Zeller (Nicole Kidman) goes with her prepubescent son Claude to visit her more free spirited sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her soon to be husband Malcolm (Jack Black). After that, there's no real plot, but rather just a sequence of loosely connected events that show how screwed up this family is, and what miserable people they are. That's where it gets real. There's no weird older relative or cliched gay brother to lighten things up or provide running gags. The "comedy" that MATW pulls off is little more than things that make you barely grin and go "ha" under your breath. Where the film does succeed however, is as a portrait of a realistic (warning, may be a bit too real for anyone who has known people like Margot...) family that just can't seem to click with each other. The chief cause of this is Margot, who is not only neurotic, but as we continue to watch, unstable. In one scene she compliments her young son and only scenes later she quietly tells him how he "used to be rounder but smarter looking. Now your face is thinner but you look dumber" (okay, that's not the exact quote...I'm sure the real thing sounded a lot harsher). Sometimes its horrifyingly obvious as in the example above, and other times its quick as a flash. In one scene with Malcolm, Margot is in the middle of a conversation about Pauline when she opens the refrigerator, pulls out a bottle of wine, and takes time to quip "doesn't anyone ever fill the ice trays in this house?" under her breath. Margot is an incredibly unlikeable character, and Nicole Kidman brilliantly digs into the role. She isn't trying to make Margot sympathetic, but rather show us what an unstable mess she is. Margot does love her son, but she's been too abused in childhood (as revealed in some early scenes) and can only be a parent the way her horrible father was to she and her sisters. Months ago, most of the acting buzz for this film was centered around Jason-Leigh, before slowly shifting to Kidman. After seeing the film, this shift is completely reasonable. In all her despicable acts, Margot is still a fascinating train wreck to watch in motion as she struggles (but often succumbs to) against the overwhelming amount of darkness in her. However, Mr. Baumbach does lose points for a error in the film's final act: he tries to make EVERYONE (sans the two principle kids and John Turturro) just as messy and wretched. Leigh and Black's characters were never people we were really rooting for, but geez, lay off already. This realism can be harsh as I said earlier and I have no trouble understanding why someone would hate this film the way I hated "Squid" (my parents and I each had drastically different thoughts on the film which is reeeeeeally rare). But for those who can stomach it for whatever reason, the film is a slice of life that puts elements A, B, and C into a room and lets them all collide with no direction whatsoever; we just observe the results.
Grade: A- (surprised? Yeah, me too.....)
Current Nominations: Best Leading Actress - Nicole Kidman (#2), Best Original Screenplay (#4).
No comments:
Post a Comment