Mumblecore

[John Cope]

Just watched Jay Duplass' The Puffy Chair tonight, which was okay and that's about it. There is a core of something potent and valuable here, however, that is teased out on occasion and developed somewhat so in that sense it's better than Swanberg's circling around the drain mentality, though that's not saying much. The ending was unusually strong and risky for this kind of thing but would it kill these guys to care just a little bit about aesthetics? I'm not going to demand rigorous formalism but why be so dismissive of such an important and vital constitutive component? It cannot be purely a money thing as Jost has been a formalist to one degree or another since the beginning and he has never had any real production budget to speak of. This is why Katz seems like a director to watch. Even in Dance Party USA he was more attentive to framing than most of the rest of his contemporaries. Also, the Duplass brothers left me cold in their interview segment when they sort of blew off the whole issue of aesthetics as if it were some technical detail tangential to their prime concern of good storytelling (as though these elements can be separated).

There's also the fact that it depresses me some to think that films like this and Swanberg's stuff are probably being embraced for being emotionally honest by the generation they represent. That's certainly one of their supposed selling points but their dogmatic disdain for careful set-ups as some sort of badge of realist pride simply grates my nerves and feels inauthentic actually, undercutting their potential moments of honest revelation. It's as though somebody realized that the content was shallow and too simple and the self-consciously facile aesthetic itself would need to prop up the idea of these being genuine moments of emotional exposure. Seems specious to me. Bujalski is more successful at nailing the vacillating uncertainty of his characters but even in his work the supposed-to-be-endearing character shtick wears on and on and on. This is where my own embrace of sentiment as sacrosanct has its limits. Sentimentality can be a pure, genuine reflection of something sincere and novel (i.e. Alan Rudolph/early Hartley) but it can also be shallow and hypocritical. Obviously this is a subjective call. In respect to the Duplass film, I just got weary of the back and forth "realistic" relationship blather and the cornball subplot involving the hero's brother. And how hard did they labor to ensure that the damn "puffy chair" would be able to act as A Symbol? But the movie has its positives. And, of course, Carney loves it.

[colinr0380]

I caught up with The Puffy Chair last night and would express a similar disappointment as John Cope with the film, though for different reasons. I was more disappointed by the more orthodox aesthetics and construction of the film and really was left feeling that the film had a lot in common, in style and ambition, with a film like Little Miss Sunshine. There's the scene of the couple arguing and a comic scene at the hotel where Josh tries to pay for a room for one and smuggle the other two in, that turns into an uncomfortable confrontation with the manager which is only the first in a number of confrontations with unsympathetic characters that push Josh to the edge of his nerves until he snaps. His brother then has to symbolically destroy the chair that has caused so much trouble, I guess to show that it is not worth all the fuss it has caused.

Not that there is anything completely wrong with this kind of material but it did feel, along with the road trip set up, to be a rather conventional and contrived construction.

The relationship between Josh and Emily coming to a head over the trip was interesting but again unsurprising (except perhaps in its resolution, which I thought was nicely touching), but I really had trouble with the digression Josh's brother Rhett has with the girl he meets at the movie theatre, Amber. From following this stranger outside and going for coffee the film moves to Rhett and Amber later that night having a 'marriage' ceremony in the presence of Josh and Emily and then the next morning their having broken up with the promise of e-mailing each other. It just felt much too contrived and fast moving to be at all believable - it would make sense as a mutual one night stand kind of thing but to go from strangers to expressing a deep mutual connection to parting simply because they cried together and 'met at the wrong time' seemed a ridiculous arc to cover in the space of less than a day! It ended up making it seem just that much more obviously constructed only to bring Josh's and Emily's relationship to a head, as Josh (correctly, as it turns out) says Rhett and Amber's 'deep relationship' will be a flash in the pan, while Emily is touched and moved by their commitment ceremony, which illustrates a lot of her naive view of the world. I ended up not sympathising with either of the pair, since Emily seems ridiculously stupid in being swept away by the sight of such an obviously short and untested relationship to the extent that she is, while Josh is proved correct in his statement without having to have really thought about it in any deeper way than "that's just how my brother is".

The Rhett and Amber digression was the heart of what I found problematic with the film, in that what I think we are supposed to take from their relationship (which prefigures to some extent the ending of the major relationship of the film between Josh and Emily) is that there is a perfunctory quality to youthful encounters, with a difficulty of connection and a hesitation to commit because of the fear of close ties to a particular person. That is combined with the wish people have to be given some obvious 'a-ha! He/she is the one!' moment that never comes to validate the decision to stay with someone or to end the relationship - the diffculty of being sure of what you are doing is the right thing. The scene between Josh and his father at the end of this film, when Josh asks what the deciding factor was for their marriage, is this idea made (perhaps a little too) explicit.

Those are very interesting ideas, and it is good to see a film taking that kind of introspective look at the clashes between different expectations a couple has about what they want from a relationship, but I feel that the pay off of these ideas is undermined by the contrivance in setting them up in something like the Rhett and Amber mini-relationship. The initial action doesn't really deserve the creation of such major consequences because it seems too obviously set up to push the characters into those crises through unrealistic scenarios. There is also a reductive suggestion, perhaps unintentional, of a kind of view of men as instinctual horn dogs while women are too emotional and too quick to fall into fairy tale notions of romance.

I'm even more frustrated with the construction of the film because the three main characters are well played by the actors, and especially the hotel scene after Emily and Josh get back to the motel after Rhett and Amber's commitment ceremony is extremely well played, hitting some very resonant and heartbreaking peaks of the 'reality' of an argument. Similarly I thought the final scene to be very touching, yet at the same time I didn't think the film itself really 'deserved' moments of such quality from the main actors that emerged from much of the clunky A to B plot mechanics.

One of the most interesting things is that the pre-credits scene between Josh and Emily seems very uncomfortably played by the two actors, and the bust up as Emily smashes the plates and storms out because Josh has taken a mobile phone call from a friend rather overdone, making Emily seem a lot more of a petulant character than she should do to be taken at all seriously (this, combined with her naive view of the Rhett/Amber thing as true love and her comment during the argument that she needs a commitment because she is 26 and not getting any younger, led me to feel Emily was portrayed as being a little more childish than Josh and therefore a bit more unsympathetic. Josh doesn't seem too great either, with his attempts to save money on their hotel room, his taking of the relationship for granted and his seemingly unconcerned willingness to cheat, blackmail and all out threaten some of the really unsympathetic minor characters in order to get his way, but he doesn't seem as dim as Emily is made to act at certain times in the film).

Strangely though as the film progresses the characters become much more at ease with one another until that final scene of breaking the relationship up where they actually feel like a real couple and are physically intimate for the first time by hugging each other. I don't know if this was intended to show that without the pretence of having to keep up the idea of a relationship that the pair can finally relax (that paradoxically having broken up might bring them closer together), or whether it could have been an unintended consequence of the actors getting more comfortable playing together over the course of the film that makes that first scene seem stilted and the later scenes more fluid - though I have no idea in what order the film was shot in.

It is an interesting film, though I'd feel a conventional one with a few outstanding moments in the performances that make seeing it worthwhile. I would say that I feel Quiet City works much better in depicting a relationship by stripping out a lot of the plot conventions completely once the couple have been thrown together and the premise established, basically just showing people hanging out and getting to know each other better, the tenuousness of brief meetings, of the beginnings of friendships with just the possibility of that becoming something more set against the much greater possibility that nothing may come from it and people will go off on their separate ways again.

I like that hinting at the specialness of a relationship comes a lot from its fragility, and almost impossibility with the constant chance of fears, embarrassment or misunderstandings ending things before they've even begun that makes a successful connection between people all the more something to cherish as being achieved against the odds.

[King Prendergast]

The trailer for Nights and Weekends shows you everything you need to know why mumblecore has suffered a quiet death.

[Narshty]

The trailer for Nights and Weekends shows you everything you need to know why mumblecore has suffered a quiet death.

The quote at the end of the trailer is a beauty: "So close to life, it's barely a movie."

[colinr0380]

Glenn Kenny on the films of Joe Swanberg. I've only seen LOL so far, so I cannot really form a judgment about Swanberg's work as a whole, but I felt the analysis of 'mumblecore stylings' in the essay was interesting to read through.

[tavernier]

Denby on Mumblecore

[aox]

I am curious to people's opinion on this, but would Primer be a mumblecore sci-fi film? I know it isn't included by anyone, but I think that it fits.

[justeleblanc]

I am curious to people's opinion on this, but would Primer be a mumblecore sci-fi film? I know it isn't included by anyone, but I think that it fits.

I would say no. There is too much narrative in comparison to the dialogue, which I assume is the mumbling.

I would instead say it's just a low-budget-film-school-esque sci fi flick along the lines of PI.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, it's definitely not a Mumblecore flick, though I'm curious to hear your justification

[Matt]

Mumblecore + (Zack + Miri) + (Chuck + Larry) = Humpday. Ha ha. You see, it's funny because they're not really gay. Oh, and very touching (but not in a gay way!)

[Antoine Doinel]

What is with overweight males signing on to do gay/porn panic comedies? I guess it provides a better "ew" moment for straight audiences who can't wrap their minds around two guys like, totally kissing and stuff.

[swo17]

Every movie is automatically funnier if it can find at least one opportunity to use the term "chubby chaser."

[barrym71]

Whom do I need to speak with to formally retire the terms "bromance" and "bromantic comedy" before this shit really gets out of control?

[Zumpano]

Whom do I need to speak with to formally retire the terms "bromance" and "bromantic comedy" before this shit really gets out of control?

Oh, it's out of control already. I'm assuming you've never seen this show, or clips of it on "The Soup". 8-)

[Antoine Doinel]

Mumblecore + (Zack + Miri) + (Chuck + Larry) = Humpday. Ha ha. You see, it's funny because they're not really gay. Oh, and very touching (but not in a gay way!)

They're really cranking out remakes quickly these days.

[Antoine Doinel]

Joe Swanberg lists his top ten Criterions.

[planetjake]

I'm not familiar with Swanberg's work (though I'm aware of what mumblecore is). Is his writing on this list typical of him and his work? That has got to be the most back-handed compliment ever paid to Brakhage.

[domino harvey]

Is his writing on this list typical of him and his work?

Certainly his liberal use of the word "I" is fitting

[James]

That has got to be the most back-handed compliment ever paid to Brakhage.

I was thinking the same thing.

[bearcuborg]

In defense of Swanberg, I will say I felt the same way when I first encountered experimental films/videos/installations. However, my most prized DVDs in a collection of thousands, are the works of experimental/underground and avant garde artists. My introduction (like most) to their work was probably from watching music videos, however when I actually saw the original source of the work I wanted to resist just like Swanberg. However, if you look at his films you will see that he is actually on the wavelength of experimental artists, rather than conventional filmmakers.

I appreciate his honest remarks. Brakhage, who taught young filmmakers, would have probably appreciated the honesty too.

[Tark]

Quiet City is in my bottom 10.

[James]

Quiet City is in my bottom 10.

I wouldn't go that far, but it's basically irredeemable.

[planetjake]

In defense of Swanberg, I will say I felt the same way when I first encountered experimental films/videos/installations. However, my most prized DVDs in a collection of thousands, are the works of experimental/underground and avant garde artists. My introduction (like most) to their work was probably from watching music videos, however when I actually saw the original source of the work I wanted to resist just like Swanberg. However, if you look at his films you will see that he is actually on the wavelength of experimental artists, rather than conventional filmmakers.

I appreciate his honest remarks. Brakhage, who taught young filmmakers, would have probably appreciated the honesty too.

I'm not super offended by his remarks or anything. I heard that kind of stuff at film school (from teachers as well as students) EVERY DAY. It's just that he makes no attempt to asses the work beyond his initial impressions beyond "I have a more open mind now!"

[Tark]

While reading Bresson's Notes on the Cinematographer today it occurred to me that if you read that, misunderstood every bit of it and then used it as a guide for making a film, you'd have mumblecore.