If I was Ross I wouldn't marry Rachel. I'm like one of those people who doesn't like doing what's expected of me. Perhaps that's why I live such a Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle.
The anxiety of not sticking to the plan is the subject of Noah Baumbach's Greenberg. The movie follows Roger Greenberg on his return to his native LA, released from hospital after a breakdown. Roger Greenberg should have been a rockstar and instead he's a lonely, harassed Ben Stiller character.
It is an uncomfortable film. Which is an achievement in itself. There are lots of really nice touches: the loneliness of being carless in LA, being swimless in a swimming pool and being middle aged at a teenagers party. There is also a heady and depressing love story, a reprise of those classic stories where misery and middle age gets a boner for youth and hope, with not so hilarious consequences.
In the end though, the warnings are in the same tepid gulf stream of Hollywood claptrap. This is a movie about not following your dreams. That's the first thing. This is still a deeply American (shorthand for lots of mean things that people say about cinema) movie. If Disney supplies the carrot, this kind of stuff is the stick which drives the American dream.
If you don't go to the ball, if you don't collect the golden ticket, you might end up being a social spastic, housesitting for your successful brother and fucking his dog-walker.
BUT:
This is a sad film, but I'm not sure this is really a legitimate thing to make people sad about.
The second thing is that I just don't know if this Ben Stiller thing is really a reliable or conscientious portrait of a breakdown. He's like a bit miserable, a bit sociopathic, a bit sarcastic. In fact, this image of crushing depression, in another context, might be described as being English. Not long before watching this movie I watched Cassavetes' masterpiece, A Woman Under the Influence. C'est very wunderbar. Films like that make me think about the real danger and anger and nightmare of a nervous breakdown. I just don't know about Roger Greenberg.
I don't know if you've noticed, that I've started doing that thing were I tell you a better movie to watch than this one. Maybe that's what I'll do from now on.
The upshot of all thiis that Roger Greenberg is just a twat. I know that Baumbachs big trick is to present you with nightmare human beings and make you feel sorry for them. It works so well in the Squid and the Whale, but in this there isn't really that many moments were pity and twattishness couch up together. Its a bit more sloppy maybe?
Also, you can't help feeling that if this was a Michael Haneke film, there'd be a bit more motherfuck. Roger Greenberg might get a bit of punishment, like a knife in the face or something. That would be more satisfying.
In my reviews, do I talk about Haneke too much? Did that question make me sound like a Ben Stiller character?
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