Greenberg (15.)
Directed by Noah Baumbach.
Starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh.
If you’re all sitting comfortably, Greenberg will soon put a stop to that. With The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding, writer and director Baumbach (he has also co-scripted Wes Anderson’s more recent films) has cordoned off the unforgiving terrain he wants to explore – awkward dysfunctional relationships.
It’s a comedy/drama that goes for quality over quantity in terms of humour. But the funny bits are very funny and while the drama often seems improbable and inconsequential, it draws you in to its gentle meander through the meeting of two people who’ve been pushed out into the margins.
It is made by two excellent performances. The film initially focuses on Florence (Gerwig), an affable doormat who is a personal assistant for a well off family in LA. When they go on holiday the husband’s brother, Roger Greenberg (Stiller) flies in from New York to house sit and a relationship of sorts grows between them.
Greenberg the film is full of awkward behaviour and abrupt insulting moments. Greenberg the man is an irascible, self obsessed irritant. A man who routinely writes letters of complaint, who has just come out of mental hospital, can’t get on with anyone and whose professed aim is that he’s just “trying to do nothing for a while.”
Possibly the best thing I can say about Ben Stiller’s performance in the title role is that it isn’t the barnstorming, Oscar pleading, career highlight turn most other actors would’ve made of it. It really is unusual to have a name actor play a genuinely unpleasant character without compromise. He doesn’t redeem him but he still makes Greenberg someone you can bear to spend time with.
The argument against the film is that the central relationship between Greenberg and Florence just isn’t believable. When they first get together it seems so arbitrary and abrupt that you may suspect that it is some kind of ruse or trick. But that’s just the film’s way; it doesn’t give you nicely rounded people or situations.
After two films on the east coast Baumbach has, like his central character, moved to Los Angeles. It’s the affluent, hazy LA that featured in Altman’s 70s films, you almost expect Greenberg to run into Elliot Gould’s version of Philip Marlowe from The Long Goodbye doing some late night shopping. It’s a vision of LA, and relationships, which is at once drably realistic but strangely hazy.
.
Greenberg (15.)
Directed by Noah Baumbach.
Starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh.
If you’re all sitting comfortably, Greenberg will soon put a stop to that. With The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding, writer and director Baumbach (he has also co-scripted Wes Anderson’s more recent films) has cordoned off the unforgiving terrain he wants to explore – awkward dysfunctional relationships.
It’s a comedy/drama that goes for quality over quantity in terms of humour. But the funny bits are very funny and while the drama often seems improbable and inconsequential, it draws you in to its gentle meander through the meeting of two people who’ve been pushed out into the margins.
It is made by two excellent performances. The film initially focuses on Florence (Gerwig), an affable doormat who is a personal assistant for a well off family in LA. When they go on holiday the husband’s brother, Roger Greenberg (Stiller) flies in from New York to house sit and a relationship of sorts grows between them.
Greenberg the film is full of awkward behaviour and abrupt insulting moments. Greenberg the man is an irascible, self obsessed irritant. A man who routinely writes letters of complaint, who has just come out of mental hospital, can’t get on with anyone and whose professed aim is that he’s just “trying to do nothing for a while.”
Possibly the best thing I can say about Ben Stiller’s performance in the title role is that it isn’t the barnstorming, Oscar pleading, career highlight turn most other actors would’ve made of it. It really is unusual to have a name actor play a genuinely unpleasant character without compromise. He doesn’t redeem him but he still makes Greenberg someone you can bear to spend time with.
The argument against the film is that the central relationship between Greenberg and Florence just isn’t believable. When they first get together it seems so arbitrary and abrupt that you may suspect that it is some kind of ruse or trick. But that’s just the film’s way; it doesn’t give you nicely rounded people or situations.
After two films on the east coast Baumbach has, like his central character, moved to Los Angeles. It’s the affluent, hazy LA that featured in Altman’s 70s films, you almost expect Greenberg to run into Elliot Gould’s version of Philip Marlowe from The Long Goodbye doing some late night shopping. It’s a vision of LA, and relationships, which is at once drably realistic but strangely hazy.
.
