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Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), a failed musician now making a living as a carpenter in New York, returns to Los Angeles to house-sit for his brother (Chris Messina). There Roger soon sparks with his brother's assistant.
Noah Baumbach again investigates psychologically screwed-up people, although this time with much less comedic impact.
April 16, 2010
Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
Baumbach's writing and direction of these characters display more of a novelistic touch...but the approach produces a deeply felt view of flawed individuals.
His sharpest observations are reserved for preternaturally intelligent, hyper-self-conscious outsiders whose existential crises are the failure of the world-and, to some extent, themselves-to live up to their own high expectations.
A film of powerful, memorable moments -- some striking dialogue, some great performances, a handful of beautifully played, bracingly discomfiting love scenes -- in search of a structure and, perhaps, a soul.
Obviously there's running commentary from director Noah Baumbach -- his characters are never free of context -- but they don't have epiphanies, they don't learn and they don't apologize. It's kind of refreshing.
In many ways this is Baumbach's best film, filled with his bitter but often funny misanthropic perspective, but buoyed by the undeniable likability of Stiller and Gerwig.
What saves it, however, is Gerwig. The love story ain't credible, but her performance is, perfectly capturing a young woman who doesn't lack confidence so much as a sense of self.
Greenberg is not an enjoyable movie, but it's a unique experience that will mostly appeal to cinephiles with insatiable appetites for character-driven small films.
As a study of stasis and of people conscious of not living the lives they had imagined for themselves, the picture offers a bracing undertow of seriousness beneath the deceptively casual, dramatically offhand surface.