losangeles

Greenberg

by James McNally on July 13, 2010 · 1 comment

in DVD

Greenberg
Alliance is releasing Greenberg on DVD in Canada on Tuesday July 13, 2010.

Greenberg (Director: Noah Baumbauch): As a dir­ector, Noah Baumbach isn’t afraid to show us char­ac­ters who are, shall we say, less than sym­path­etic. In recent films like The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding, he was nev­er­the­less able to make us sym­pathize with prot­ag­on­ists who were self-centred and needy. With Greenberg, he allows Ben Stiller to bring another of these nasty people to life, and Stiller brings his own comic gifts to bear, making Roger Greenberg someone who makes you laugh even as you secretly agree with him. The sig­na­ture line of the film is found in the trailer, where his friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans) laments that youth is wasted on the young. Taking it fur­ther, Greenberg blurts out that “life is wasted on…people.” He should know.

Released from hos­pital after a nervous break­down, Greenberg returns to an L.A. he aban­doned years before to house-sit for his more suc­cessful brother who’s taken his family on vaca­tion to Vietnam. He is about to turn 41 and though he is working as a car­penter, he plans to spend some time “doing nothing.” As he looks up old friends like Ivan, we find out that years before, they had been in a suc­cessful band. On the brink of signing a record deal, Greenberg balked and the band broke up. Despite his prot­est­a­tions to the con­trary, it’s clear that he’s regretted that decision ever since. He des­troyed not only his own dreams of suc­cess, but those of his band­mates. Eager not to show weak­ness, he’s become a bitter and nar­ciss­istic man who pro­jects his issues onto other people, blovi­ating in the lan­guage of psychiatry.

The unex­pected occurs when he meets and falls for his brother’s per­sonal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig). She’s also a bit lost, lamenting that she’s been out of col­lege now for as long as she was in it, and not sure what she wants out of life. It’s not a fairytale romance, to say the least. Greenberg treats her appallingly, and at first she’s willing to put up with it.

In the end, it’s Ivan who teaches Greenberg how to embrace this life he never planned. He’s left his own rock star dreams behind to embrace his new role as a hus­band and father, not without some sad­ness. Thankfully, things aren’t tied up with a neat bow, and Greenberg con­tinues to exhibit some out­rageously selfish beha­viour right up to the end of the film, but a very small act of sanity in the last act provides just a glimmer of hope that he will finally grow up.

Stiller is won­derful playing this bitter and aim­less nar­cissist, but I wish the other roles had been a little more sub­stan­tial, espe­cially Florence, who too often comes across as an air­headed doormat. Nevertheless, Greenberg is a sharply-observed comedy of (bad) man­ners that unfor­tu­nately rings true, even out­side of Los Angeles.

DVD spe­cial fea­tures are dis­ap­pointing, just three short (sub 2:00) bits which look like they were taken dir­ectly from the film’s EPK (elec­tronic press kit).

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: losangeles, narcissism

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L.A. Without A Map

by James McNally on December 3, 2009

in DVD

L.A. Without A Map
Disclosure: This film was recently released on DVD in Canada by Project X Distribution and Kinosmith, my employer. You can pur­chase it from the Kinosmith online store.

L.A. Without A Map (Director: Mika Kaurismäki): I was looking for­ward to seeing this 1998 cult hit for sev­eral reasons. I love the Kaurismäkis (both Aki and Mika) and if anyone can tell a “fish-out-of-water” story about Los Angeles, cer­tainly a Finnish dir­ector can. The pres­ences of Vincent Gallo, Julie Delpy, and yes, Johnny Depp in a film this modestly-budgeted also made me curious.

The cha­ris­matic David Tennant plays Richard, a young Scottish under­taker who falls for a free-spirited American tourist (Vinessa Shaw) and impuls­ively fol­lows her back to Los Angeles. Barbara is an aspiring act­ress trying to break into the movies, and Richard has ambi­tions of his own, to become a screen­writer, so things should work out per­fectly. He’s des­perate to leave his dreary life behind and follow his dreams, and for the first hour of the film, things mostly fall into place. Despite the fact that Barbara already has a boy­friend, an insuf­fer­able boor who also hap­pens to be a film dir­ector, Richard pur­sues her patiently. He even rents an apart­ment, and des­pite the fact that it’s in a bad neigh­bour­hood, finds a best friend imme­di­ately. Moss (Vincent Gallo in a hil­arious turn) is a sort of hippie yang to Richard’s uptight British ying, and before long he’s hooked up with Barbara’s friend Julie (Julie Delpy). If it all sounds a bit too neat, well, it is, but it’s also quite funny and charming.

But as soon as Richard and Barbara impuls­ively get mar­ried on a jaunt to Vegas, the film takes a turn toward the sour. Barbara’s ambi­tion and the con­tinuing atten­tion of her ex-boyfriend lead Richard to bouts of extreme jeal­ousy, and the romance drains out of their lives pretty quickly. The second half of the film attempts to lam­poon the film industry but it’s pretty broad and without their idealism, the char­ac­ters just aren’t that inter­esting any­more. The turn toward drama also exposes the lim­it­a­tions of Vinessa Shaw’s abil­ities, and at times she just seems shrill. It doesn’t help that her char­acter is under­written, leaving Richard and the audi­ence guessing as to what she really wants out of her life. The ending is pre­dict­able but at least it lifts the film from its mean-spirited middle.

There was lots to enjoy in the film non­ethe­less. The pres­ence of the Leningrad Cowboys, for one. This “East meets West” rocka­billy band even had its own film (Leningrad Cowboys Go America) which was prob­ably the first Kaurismaki film I ever saw. Johnny Depp appears as both a fantasy figure (Richard’s poster of Jim Jarmusch’s film Dead Man keeps coming to life with Depp nod­ding and ges­turing word­lessly) and later as him­self. And Tennant is a joy to watch, espe­cially in the early L.A. scenes where he’s clearly “without a map.”

Overall, though, this sendup of the movie busi­ness is just a movie itself. We never really see exactly what Richard sees in Barbara except for a pretty face. L.A. seems like a hor­rible place and the movie busi­ness a cess­pool. If this is a fish-out-of-water story, we realize in the end why fish gen­er­ally stay in the water.

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: losangeles

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