In an effort to blog more often, I've decided to make a post based on something I've observed lately-Noah Baumbach. He's this independent filmmaker/writer who appears to specialize in truly fucked up movies. However, I love them.
He hasn't done much work, I think he's written and directed four films but I've seen two of them, have another one in my queue on Netflix and then his latest project, Greenberg, comes out in theatres in a few months. I think it might be his first movie in theaters but I'm not entirely sure.
I first saw The Squid and the Whale a couple of months ago. It's a semi autobiographical movie about parents divorcing and the effects it can have on a kid. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney were in it. Basically, the dad was this huge pretentious asshole and the mom was kind of a bitch, but she tried to be a good mother to her kids. It was an absolutely perfect example of how when you get divorced you're forced to choose sides. The older son sided with his dad while the younger son clung to his mom, although the younger kid just got more and more fucked up as the movie went on. It was sad but it was also real, which I feel a lot of movies don't do anymore. Hollywood knows that most people want to see a happy ending, so most of the time it can take one of the saddest or most dramatic movies ever and somehow make it so that everything falls neatly into place at the end of 2 hours. But some movies need to be made realistically or else you just provide people who haven't experienced it with a false assumption of what it's like. Take The Squid and the Whale. Most people, even those who haven't gone through it, know that divorce is a messy thing. But if Baumbach wanted to comply with normal Hollywood standards, by the end of the movie Dad would've moved back home and everyone would've been happy, or both of the parents would've realized their flaws in both their parenting styles and in how they treated each other and everything would've worked out. But it doesn't always happen like that. My parents have never gotten along and I suppose they never will. Each has their reasons, my mom more than my dad, but after he moved out things were messy and nothing was ever perfect or fit together like a puzzle. [Not that it did when he was here.] My point is, Noah Baumbach is brave enough to make a movie that might not be hugely popular or submit to standards nowadays, but it's a genuine, real movie.
I watched Margot at the Wedding tonight and it wasn't as good as TS&TW. It was even more fucked up though. Margot is just this really huge bitch throughout the whole movie. She travels with her son to attend her estranged sister's wedding to a man she quickly learns to despise (along with apparently everything else in the whole entire world.) Seriously, one of the most frustrating and bitchy characters ever. But I still liked the movie, it kept my attention.
Baumbach's movies also have a habit of having the characters just kind of...babble, almost. Not babble, but they talk about things that don't necessarily relate to the script all the time, which I like because in real life, I don't always talk about the same thing the entire time lol.
But seriously, check out at least the squid and the whale. His movies aren't for everyone because like I said, they have elements of fucked upedness to them, but they're good.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment