Listen Up Philip (12A.)
Directed Alex Ross Perry.
Starring Jason Schwartzman, Elizabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce, Krysten Ritter, Josephine de la Baume and Eric Bogosian. 108 mins.
Jonathan Pryce seems completely miscast playing the Bellow/Updike/Roth surrogate, Ike Zimmerman, in this dry literary comedy, but then Pryce seems miscast in most every role. He has no type, so perversely he seems to fit in anywhere and here he plays nobody's idea of the great American novelist to perfection. In contrast, Schwartzman is equally good, playing everybody's idea of an impossibly arrogant, angry and dissatisfied young writer.
Listen Up Philip seems to be made up entirely of various unpromising elements. Two lead actors (Schwartzman and Moss) who always seem smug and hipsterish; it is made in the low budget mumblecore style (Wes Anderson without the production values); it is about the life, loves and struggles of an obnoxious New York author. Its solution seems to be to push all these objectionable elements as hard as it can in the hope of making it all the through to the other side and turning out likeable. It sort of makes it.
Certainly Schwartzman pushes hard as Philip Lewis Friedman whose second novel is about to be published. Informing his live-in girlfriend (Moss) that he's going to spend the summer in the country to write he tells her, “I hope this will be good for us; but especially for me.” The only thing that makes him happy is a burgeoning friendship with the legendary American writer Ike Zimmerman (Pryce) who admires his first book and decides to pass down his wisdom to him.
The film's big schtick is having Philip be comically “honest” with everybody he meets and to show two novelists who have become so attached to their craft that they are emotionally detached from their own lives and the unhappiness they cause. Philip's life even has its own narration, provided by Bogosian. The bookish milieu is something the film seems to have got spot on. Usually in films about fictional writers you never believe in the back catalogue. Here the names of the writers – Ike Zimmerman, Philip Lewis Friedman – seem to express exactly what kind of writers they are and during the closing credits there is a montage of book covers by the fictional authors mentioned in the film and they all seem incredibly believable. The film summons up the whole era of great post war American novel writing, but then suggests that the people who did it were something like minor monsters. The narration, which highhandedly explains what the characters are really feeling is very arch and seems to be suggesting the limitations of writing. Listen Up Philip celebrates the great American novels while subtlety, possibly inadvertently, suggesting they are no longer valid.
Listen Up Philip (12A.)
Directed Alex Ross Perry.
Starring Jason Schwartzman, Elizabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce, Krysten Ritter, Josephine de la Baume and Eric Bogosian. 108 mins.
Jonathan Pryce seems completely miscast playing the Bellow/Updike/Roth surrogate, Ike Zimmerman, in this dry literary comedy, but then Pryce seems miscast in most every role. He has no type, so perversely he seems to fit in anywhere and here he plays nobody's idea of the great American novelist to perfection. In contrast, Schwartzman is equally good, playing everybody's idea of an impossibly arrogant, angry and dissatisfied young writer.
Listen Up Philip seems to be made up entirely of various unpromising elements. Two lead actors (Schwartzman and Moss) who always seem smug and hipsterish; it is made in the low budget mumblecore style (Wes Anderson without the production values); it is about the life, loves and struggles of an obnoxious New York author. Its solution seems to be to push all these objectionable elements as hard as it can in the hope of making it all the through to the other side and turning out likeable. It sort of makes it.
Certainly Schwartzman pushes hard as Philip Lewis Friedman whose second novel is about to be published. Informing his live-in girlfriend (Moss) that he's going to spend the summer in the country to write he tells her, “I hope this will be good for us; but especially for me.” The only thing that makes him happy is a burgeoning friendship with the legendary American writer Ike Zimmerman (Pryce) who admires his first book and decides to pass down his wisdom to him.
The film's big schtick is having Philip be comically “honest” with everybody he meets and to show two novelists who have become so attached to their craft that they are emotionally detached from their own lives and the unhappiness they cause. Philip's life even has its own narration, provided by Bogosian. The bookish milieu is something the film seems to have got spot on. Usually in films about fictional writers you never believe in the back catalogue. Here the names of the writers – Ike Zimmerman, Philip Lewis Friedman – seem to express exactly what kind of writers they are and during the closing credits there is a montage of book covers by the fictional authors mentioned in the film and they all seem incredibly believable. The film summons up the whole era of great post war American novel writing, but then suggests that the people who did it were something like minor monsters. The narration, which highhandedly explains what the characters are really feeling is very arch and seems to be suggesting the limitations of writing. Listen Up Philip celebrates the great American novels while subtlety, possibly inadvertently, suggesting they are no longer valid.
