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NYFF 52 in the Rearview: While We’re Young (2014)

while we're young

(Sorry this one has been sitting in the draft folder for a minute …)

For the final recap of my 2014 New York Film Festival experience, I would like to discuss Noah Baumbach’s latest feature, While We’re Young. The ensemble cast is led by Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle aged couple, finding themselves at a crossroads.

On this journey to find something new or rewarding in their lives, they take up with a hipster couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried), who are not all that they appeared to be, although we know for sure they are hipsters because they 1) live in a loft in Brooklyn, 2) ride bikes, 3) make their own ice cream.  I could go on, but I think you get the point.

That is a very brief description, I realize; hope you got the gist of the spirit of the piece and kinda sorta can determine the direction and shape the narrative will take. There are, of course, additional details which deal with the interpersonal relationships, not just of the principal characters, but also with:

  • the growing estrangement from one’s close friends who are now dealing with their newly-established parenthood (somewhat relateable)
  • the continuing struggle (even in middle age – yes folks it never stops) to find one’s footing in the world (very relateable).

In the case of the latter, it is Ben Stiller’s character, a filmmaker dealing with living in the shadows of his father in law (played by Charles Grodin). There is an ironically meant subplot dealing with the subject of Stiller’s documentary, a professor played by Peter Yarrow or “Peter, Paul and Mary” fame.

Having quite enjoyed Baumbach’s previous outing, Frances Ha, I had a degree of goodwill when this was presented as a “surprise screening” at the festival. And while While We’re Young is clearly a well-made film with some solid performances and a good soundtrack, I found myself sitting through the screening quite disengaged from the action. That is to say this film might not be for everyone.

I am curious though – have any of you seen it? And if so, what were your thoughts? Hit the comments section below and SHARE SHARE SHARE!

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NYFF52 in the Rearview: Mr. Turner (2014)

Mike Leigh’s latest feature, Mr. Turner is a wonderfully evocative biopic about the life of English painter J.M.W Turner (1775-1851), played by Timothy Spall (Cannes Film Festival Award winner, Best Actor).

Many art enthusiasts may know the name not only for the work the landscape artist produced but, also for the prestigious prize that bears his name.

As per the director’s statement:

[Mr. Turner] is about the tensions and contrasts between this very mortal man and his timeless work, between his fragility and his strength. It is also an attempt to evoke the dramatic changes in his world over the last quarter century of his life.

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Although we enter his life story past the midway point (punctuated by the death of his father), we see his art transforming before our very eyes. A closer examination of his work (which the film refers to) shows that as the years progressed, his work got more and more abstract, reflecting his own emotional turmoil and internal conflict. And be sure, there was a lot to have caused Turner to look inward and be troubled. Aside from the acute sadness he experiences upon the passing of a most beloved father, there were a host of romantic entanglements:

  • the love of his housemaid, which he did not return, but instead exploited to his own personal satisfaction,
  • the strained relationship between himself and a former partner (and their two illegitimate children),
  • and the secret, common law relationship at the end of his life with a woman with whom he would live out his days in the London district of Chelsea.

Leigh ‘paints’ this phase of Turner’s life by showing the people, places and events that influenced his work. There must be a great freedom in being about to do this when you have a stable of actors with whom one frequently collaborates. For star Spall, this is his fifth Mike Leigh feature. The rest of the principle cast including Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Lesly Manville, have also all worked with him in a variety of productions for television, film and the stage.

So effective was the way this film is constructed and presented, that my screening guest had not realized until our post-screening chat, that the film is based on an actual person. I point this out because I see it as a great credit to the work. Where many biopics are clearly telegraphed as such, in Mr, Turner you still retain some of that linearity, but in addition you are treated to a story that has an artistic and dramatic flare, more often associated with straight narrative features.

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NYFF52 in the Rearview: Maps to the Stars (2014)

A little late but, alas, there is a lot to say about my adventures at Lincoln Center for the 52 annual New York Film Festival.

I start with my take on David Cronenberg’s latest feature – Maps to the Stars. Penned by Bruce Wagner (an L.A. native), this film is a cutting satire about Hollywood and our celebrity obsessed culture. The film has an all-star cast lead by Cannes Festival Best Actress Award winner Julianne Moore and includes John Cusack, Mia Wasikowska, Olivia Williams and Cronenberg muse-du jour, Robert Pattinson.

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It is a cold picture in that it projects Hollywood as this plastic, glossy (at times haunting) world so very disconnected from the “ordinary” and any known reality that I am aware of. No one who inhabits this world is shown much pity; especially those who are self-professed “gurus” have in them a deeply troubling, corrosive core. As the layers of the film are revealed to the audience, this all leads to a shocking and disturbing denouement. In other words, classic Cronenberg.

While the dysfunctional interpersonal relationships (and demons) were very fascinating to watch, I could have done with more of the overarching “Hollywood is not what it appears” theme. But I guess that may have been the point – to interweave the immediate and the personal with the larger world that all of these players are a part of.

It is not a stretch to declare that Maps to the Stars is probably not for everyone – notably those of you who have gotten comfortable with some of the director’s more recent, “mainstream” (term used loosely) fare such as A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method.

There are plenty more qualified folks out there who have and will continue to speak more eloquently about the film, but in my reading some of the reviews, I noticed that there were the inevitable comparisons drawn to other films that have looked at Hollywood with a similarly caustic gaze. For me at least, I had no such thoughts. Surely, the themes of “all that glitters …” and the (potentially) corrupting nature of the machinery driving the industry are common, here with this film, the time, place and context give the story a very different tone. In that respect, Maps to the Stars kind of stands apart as a contemporary example in its dealing with the people, places and things concerning the “Dream Factory” in such an unrelenting manner.

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