In Noah Baumbach’s garden of warped, difficult, and desperate characters, Roger Greenberg is a real showcase piece. This quiet misanthrope, as abject a failure as we’ve seen in contemporary cinema, is a potentially repellent walking contradiction, an emotional porcupine who uses what he perceives as brutal honesty in order to perpetuate a big lie, that is, that he doesn’t really need anybody else. “I’m weirdly ‘on’ tonight,” he observes, hilariously, to his now-sober old pal Ivan (Rhys Ifans) at one point, as he’s violently turning off everybody else he comes into contact with.
Ben Stiller deserves full acknowledgement as Greenberg’s co-creator. His performance is some kind of career peak, a beautifully modulated piece of craft and one of the best bits of physical acting you’re likely to see in a film for a while. Greenberg’s whippet-thinness comes off as born of a certain kind of spite; Stiller’s here highly-prominent Adam’s Apple sometimes functions as a character in and of itself. Stiller’s smallness of frame works wonders when his Greenberg, feeling defeated before he’s even made an effort at accomplishing anything, curls up in a corner. Florence, Greenberg’s romantic foil, such as she is, has a frame that’s the opposite number of Greenberg’s matchstick; obtrusive and awkward and gangly and hardly smoothed-out. Todd McCarthy got a bit of smack from some overly sensitive observers for referring to Florence’s portrayer, Greta Gerwig, as “a big young woman;” but here she’s supposed to be “big,” at least relative to Stiller, and apparently she put on 15 pounds for the role.
Gerwig is, I’m happy to say, also very fine here. I’ve always found her to be an appealing screen presence, but this is really the first time she’s been asked to embody a fully conceived character rather than present a haphazard compilation of tics, traits and attitudes. She acquits herself quite beautifully. Florence, who’s the personal assistant to Greenberg’s very successful brother, at whose L.A. home Greenberg is sojourning after a stint in a mental institution, is established right off the bat as almost shockingly passive, making her the unfortunately perfect receptacle for Greenberg’s abuse and deflected self-loathing.
This is Baumbach’s first cinematic L.A. story, and it was conceived with and co-produced by his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, a California native whose own feature co-directorial debut, The Anniversary Party, was an often-sharp Los-Angeles-plays-itself picture in a venerable tradition, which Greenberg beautifully honors. (Leigh also acts, splendidly, in the picture.) Baumbach and company looked at vintage work by Mazursky, Cassavetes, Ashby, and Altman in prepping the picture, and it shows without seeming slavish; there’s a particularly funny echo of Altman’s The Long Goodbye in Greenberg’s non-relationship with the neighbors of his brother who have rights to the pool. But there’s also a very pertinent nod to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita near the end that ups this film’s strangeness level, its uniquely Baumbachian discomfort. (That factor never goes off the rails here, as it did for me in Margot at the Wedding’s self-soiling in the woods bit.) Like Payne’s Sideways, the film also partakes sensitively and generously not just of the California light itself, but of the overall look of the films that inspired this one. Harris Savides puts all the grain that wasn’t in Zodiac here; he also makes the canyons look eerily rusty, as if it’s suddenly a long time after the end of the world. Ford Wheeler’s production design is also remarkably apt; I was especially taken with the shabby-genteel quality of the Greenberg brother’s house, and its details, such as the peeling headboard of the bed, in the room of his now-young-adult step-niece, that Greenberg sleeps on.
I’ve not gotten into the plot details and such because…well, certainly not because it’s such an event-filled film that to do so would be potentially spoiler-rific. But because this really is a picture of moments, and a lot of them are still coalescing in me. My initial sense is that these moments are presented as well if not a little better than they’ve ever been in a Baumbach picture, and that hence, Greenberg is very much worth your time.
Um.…firsties?
Gerwig, as I’ve stated in other serious quarters (viz., my Facebook status), is mumblecore’s Karina and I’ve been waiting for her to move on to, um…elocution-core? As for Mr. Stiller, although he’s seems capable of living his character Greenberg’s truth in what some still refer to as real life, I, as must many others, effectively bow five times daily in the direction of The Ben Stiller Show, that 13-episode fons et origo for all things subsequently alterna-comedic, up to and including The Daily Show, Cinema Apatow, &c., &c., &c.
Finally, as for Baumbach, I really enjoyed his Margot and his characters in all their privileged, self-absorbed glory. But what’s this about his mom wanting to abort him, or something?
“Come on, gimme some death!”
“No, Jim, no!”
“Come on, gimme some death!”
“No, Jim, no!”
Also, Jake Steel: Marionette Cop
So yes, I, too, have always liked Stiller. I’ve liked him in bad movies as well as good, because frankly I think the guy has an effortlessness about him. He’s funny, ego-less in his comedy (I sometimes think he works out only so that he can make fun of people who work out) and has a nice just-act-the-scene vibe to his more dramatic work – I think he’s probably the best thing about YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS (“It’s a great story, isn’t it?”).
So yay, GREENBERG. I hope that – and, Glenn, you make it sound like this is the case – it’s a return to the form Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, which I absolutely loved. If nothing else, that film reminded everyone how good Jeff Daniels is, before they all promptly forgot again.
Not wishing to derail the topic, but if anyone’s interested, Godard’s tribute to Rohmer is playing on Auteurs:
http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1573
Yes, Jaime, it’s quite wonderful. Helps to have good French.
Glenn, any thoughts on the score? I adore LCD Soundsystem, and while Murphy has said the score for GREENBERG wouldn’t sound like an LCD album, I’m curious as to just why Baumbach wanted Murphy to pen it in the first place.
I understand using “All My Friends” in the trailer (though a bit obvious), and Murphy can get all sorts of Eno/Cage atmospheric when he wants to, just wondering if the score in any way stood out to your highly attuned ears.
Glenn, it looks like a kind soul did an English-language translation and posted it in comments.
I really enjoyed SQUID, didn’t exactly care for MARGOT but it’s got a weird lingering power, and I find Baumbach’s writing style unusually compelling. Looking forward to GREENEBRG.
Funny story re: LCD. When I saw the trailer in the theater, I used my iPhone to tell me what song it was. (Because I’m completely out of the loop when it comes to music.) Turns out I had to buy the whole album for that one song. Then it subsequently turns out that I only like one song on that album…“Something Great.” Deleted all other songs from my iPod, including the song from the trailer. I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess…
I’ve felt like that about Gerwig in the awful, awful films she’s been in and even from the trailer for this it seemed like when she was given something to do other than rub bits of towel off breasts or play trumpet naked in a bathtub or sit unclothed on top of Swineberg that she might be an interesting screen presence. Good to hear that seems to be the case.
Also good to hear that the film isn’t the rich-people whining film you might get the impression it is from the trailer. I’ve seen three of Baumbach’s four films (save for Armond White’s favorite Mr. Jealousy) and loved them all, particularly the last two. I was worried by that trailer, the lack of recognizable Savides look and Baumbach’s unfortunate dip into the mumblecore Big Brother program, but now I’m excited about this thing again.
Excellent analysis, as usual. As much as I miss the Baumbach who would throw lines like “Would you rather fuck a cow or lose your mother?” into his films, GREENBERG is another major step up for him as both a writer and director. As you sagely noted, this is a film about “moments” more than anything else, and it will likely challenge and frustrate many a viewer with its lack of a traditional narrative arc and refusal to succumb to anything even resembling what many audiences would define as “redemption.” I can’t wait to see it again.
“This… misanthrope, as abject a failure as we’ve seen…is a potentially repellent walking contradiction, an emotional porcupine who uses what he perceives as brutal honesty in order to perpetuate a big lie…”
Omigod, it’s “The Armond White Story!” Maybe he’ll love it?
I loved THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and KICKING AND SCREAMING (and I still think THE LIFE AQUATIC is deeply underrated), so I“m glad to hear Baumbach’s latest is really good. And I agree with Bill and James about Ben Stiller– very smart and appealing, and I still miss THE BEN STILLER SHOW (“U2: The Early Years” still makes me laugh).
Your review has got me seriously interested in this film, Glenn.
PS – I have no idea who Armond White is.
That’s the only song you liked on Sound of Silver? Different generations I guess…
I’m really glad this sounds cool.
You never want to lose the promise of a potentially great artist.
Life Aquatic is super underrated.
Yeah, I’m getting old, you don’t have to remind me.
I never got back to Maximilian, and since we’re on the subject anyway: yes, I did like the score, no it didn’t sound inordinately like LCD Soundsystem, but also no, it wasn’t unrecognizable as James Murphy music. There was a lot of piano stuff that’s reminiscent of the vamp/drone of “All My Friends” but the song itself isn’t in the film. Anyway, what “score” music there is melds very nicely with the film, to the extent that it kind of doesn’t recur in your head when you’re recalling specific scenes. The song stuff is more memorable, particularly the scene when Gerwig’s character drunkenly marches around her place singing along to McCartney’s “Admiral Halsey.” Which subject prompts my only “verisimilitude” query about the film, which is why does Florence complain that Greenberg is into “old stuff” after he gifts her with a Karen Dalton song on a mix, and only a few scenes before Florence was depicted singing…Judee Sill!?!?!?
Just because Armond White says Noah Baumbach is an imperious, arrogant little prick doesn’t mean it’s not true. I’m sure he is. Just listen to Baumbach talk about his new movie. He watched Altman and Ashby and Cassavetes and that other guy. Whoa, Noah. You’re really on the cutting edge, man. Like, you so totally get it. You’ve been in Los Angeles for a couple of years and you have a bead on it. You see through the haze. You and Woody. Good for you. Now go back to New York. Your ascot misses you. I’ll be here, watching SpaceDisco 1. Call me when you have something new to say.
@ Rudolph: yeah, and Lou Reed comes off like a complete douchebag in many of his interviews, and yet…I still enjoy a great number of his recordings!
That White seems a tool in both his written works and his interviews, on the other hand, is largely an indication of his consistency.