Noah Baunbach's MARGOT AT THE WEDDING

[mouton]

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING
Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach

Malcolm: I haven’t had that thing yet where you realize that you’re not the most important thing in the world – anxious for that to happen.

What does it say about your wedding when your estranged sister’s attendance is a bigger event than the wedding itself? I mean, it’s right there in the title of Noah Baumbach’s dysfunctional family disaster movie. It isn’t called “The Wedding” or “Malcolm and Pauline Get Married”. No, it’s called MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. If your sister at your wedding causes that big a stir, perhaps the invitation would have been better lost in the mail. Still, despite her better judgment and in the interest of progress and healing, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) does invite the sister she still refers to as her closest friend after years of not speaking, to her intimate affair. It is clear her idea was not her best from the moment Margot (Nicole Kidman) steps off the boat and on to the New England shore. Pauline sends her fiancé, Malcolm (Jack Black), to pick Margot and her eldest son, Claude (Zane Pais), up from the ferry. She claims to be making last minute arrangements back at the house but I suspect it was she and not the house who was not quite ready to receive. Then, when the two are finally face to face, standing in front of the house they grew up in, they smile and make pleasantries but fidget hesitatingly before actually embracing. That awkward moment grows into a whirlwind of deep-seeded pain before long and suddenly rain on the blessed day is hardly the biggest worry for the bride-to-be.

Baumbach scored last time out with his Oscar-nominated THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. He was lauded for his sensitive and honest tale of divorce and how it affects the entire family unit. With MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, he solidifies his reputation for creating believable family ties based on dependence, dysfunction and subtle admiration. Watching the sisters as they sit around the house catching up is voyeuristic as we are often privy to conversations that feel as though they were not meant to be heard. As the sisters flip through old records in their even older house, Baumbach writes decades of experiences into his characters and we, like Malcolm, are latecomers to this dinner party. Director of photography, Harris Savides, draws us even closer to this inner circle by shooting mostly handheld footage in natural lighting and with older lenses. The resulting tone is dark and grainy but nostalgic and rich with history at the same time. At times, we are the quiet cousin who says nothing but stands in the corner with a camera and follows the drama from room to room. It isn’t long before we learn how to interpret the vernacular of this particular family and we find ourselves laughing along inappropriately at the expense of whomever Margot is lovingly ridiculing at the moment. As we laugh though, we care as well.

Kidman and Leigh (Baumbach’s wife) are both marvelous as they walk the very tightly wound lines of their borderline personalities. Baumbach guides their performances into textured characters that seem natural as sisters and strongly rooted as multifaceted people who struggle to be themselves when in the presence of the other. They even possess archetypal qualities without coming across as contrived. Margot is the master of deflection. She is constantly doling out psychological diagnoses to those around her to avoid any fingers pointing back her way. It never dawns on her that as a writer, she actually has no formal foundation to base her opinions on. She cannot understand why Pauline would settle for Malcolm; she picks at Claude to keep him closer; she even attacks her husband (John Turturro) for his good nature because it just makes her feel like a bad person. She is a fatalist to Pauline’s hopeful but defeated optimist. Pauline is damaged but wants to heal and has done so much more than she gives herself credit for. She teeters back and forth between making sneaky, subtle jabs at her sister, habits from her youth, and building new connections so that she can have the sister she always wanted instead of the one she has always had. Only, in the house that Baumbach built, the answer to whether people can ever truly change is not the least bit clear.

Family, even the best examples, can be tricky to negotiate. Spending any extended period of time with the people who both influenced you and hurt you the most in your life can be exhausting. That said, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING can be no less trying. There are those who revel in watching others with deeper dysfunction then their own. It helps them to feel that their lives are not nearly as bad as they thought. There are also others who feel they have enough to juggle already with potentially damaging weddings of their own to survive coming up fast. Why then immerse yourself in a tornado of neuroses and painful memories that are not even your own? Truthfully, you don’t have to. Along those lines, Pauline never needed to invite her sister to her wedding either. Only if she hadn’t, she would have missed out on everything the experience taught her about herself and the potential for progress. This is the genuine beauty of Baumbach’s work. He shares so intensely and personally that he inevitably forces the viewer to deal with their own inner-Margot.

www.blacksheepreviews.com

[Chris Knipp]

As you say, Baumbach certainly "scored" with his debut, The Squid and the Whale, which was a big hit at the NYFF, Baumbach being a "local boy," so to speak, and also sort of a Village Voice boy, with a strong family connection to that influential New York publication with its strong (if recently downgraded) film reviewing staff. So his new one was insured attention at the 2007 NYFF, where it was an Official Selection, as The Squid and the Whale had been.

However, when it was shown to the press at a NYFF screening this fall, it fared much less well. A few people felt that he "he solidifies his reputation." as you said, but many felt he undercut it, and lost a lot of the good well he had gained. In fact there was quite a widespread buzz that this is a stinker. I don't know if I would go that far; I try not to be too negative, especially about such a genuine effort. But I simply found almost nothing to like in Margot at the Wedding, despite the good cast. You yourself acknowledge that watching the film "can be trying." I'd go further and say it's unpleasant and also unrewarding and unenlightening, an experience more to be endured that enjoyed .

Incidentally, though you repeatedly refer to Baumbach's "work," and he obviously does specialize in a certain type of East Coast dysfunctional family and there is a communality of themes,I don't see much in common, really, between the feek of The Squid and the Whale, which is a fairly straightforward coming of age picture focusing on a key period in two brothers' lives that detunks the pretentions of parents who're splitting up in a way that's acidic and yet also warm hearted, and Margot at the Wedding, which focuses on nutty siblings and a collection of odd, dysfunctional adults over a relatively brief period at a family gathering.

I'm not ultimately sure these two films are going to be reacted to as closely related by the public. And Margot hasn't been received with the same general enthusism in reviews either, though it's done respectably enough. I feel it has structural weaknesses. I'd agree with Variety's Todd McCarthy that "This study of a disastrous reunion of two sisters feels more like a collection of arresting scenes than a fully conceived and developed drama." So I disagree with your view that Baumbach has solidified and moved forward--even though he has gotten one of her more serious and realistic performances out of Ms. Kidman.


I will reprint my review from the NYFF so people can consult it here in case they haven't seen it.

[Chris Knipp]

NOAH BAUMBACH: MARGOT AT THE WEDDING

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/9127/518hmqnej1lss500.jpg

Neurotic chaos in the Hamptons

Baumbach was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his amusing, spot-on study of a New York literary intellectual family in crisis, The Squid and the Whale. As befits one who received accolades and some little box office success, he has moved forward with similar themes and a better budget, and was able to enlist not only better known actors but a famous cinematographer, Harris Savides, and a renowned costume designer, Ann Roth. Baumbach has also moved along in time, as it were. If The Squid and the Whale was a parental breakup arguably considered from the viewpoint of a teenage boy, this family analysis has more of an adult sibling focus--though there's a boy on hand who's important. More limited in its time-span than Squid, Margot is more complex in its specifics and its conversational delineation of neurotics at play. Just about every scene is a relationship meltdown. It's a wonder nobody comes to violence. In fact one character does get kicked in the chest, and a big tree falls down doing some damage.

Baumbach himself may understand what all this is about, but the choppily edited and shot piece has too little dramatic structure (despite being very much like a play) to go anywhere or make much overall sense. Despite good buzz from some quarters and urban (especially New York) fans, the young director may lose with Margot a sizable slice of the credibility he gained with Squid.

Pauline (Baumbach's wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh), who lives on the family house on an island, is about to be married, for the second time, to out of work artist Malcolm (Jack Black). Her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman) comes with her young adolescent son Claude (Zane Pais). Ingrid (Flora Cross), Pauline's daughter, is there, and a playmate for Claude. Margot is a well-known short-story writer, and it turns out she's scheduled for a reading at a local bookstore with a former flame, Dick (Ciaran Hinds), whom she seems to want to get together with again. Dick's sexy daughter Maisy (Halley Feiffer) is also on hand. Margot has told her husband Jim (John Turturro) not come for the wedding.

Pauline and Margot haven't been getting on well for years, but they approach this occasion with the misguided assumption that they're still nonetheless each other's best friends and that things are going to be rich and consoling.

But as soon as the good-looking and accomplished, if thoroughly neurotic Margot lays eyes on the fat layabout Malcolm, she goes to work on Pauline to cancel the wedding--even though Pauline reveals she's pregnant. There is a family of nasty neighbors, the Voglers, who want the big tree in the backyard to come down. Its roots are spreading to their property, it's rotting, and it's poisoning their plants, they say.

Margot wants Claude to become more independent, but neither of them is ready for that yet. Nobody seems to be ready for anything, relationship-wise. This is about the only thing that clearly emerges.

One of the problems is in the conception of the main characters. This is not the anguished, edgy Leigh we've often seen in the past but a mellow woman, and despite lack of accomplishment and temper tantrums (which he credibly argues are justified in this crazy situation) Malcolm may have been a sweet guy who clicks very well with Pauline. Margot seems to make trouble for everybody, beginning wit her son. But since she's the most accomplished family member, it's a bit hard to know how to take her. Complex characters are fine, but nobody in this piece is going in a consistent direction. And this is equally true of the action. Was the wedding meant to have a meltdown before it ever happened?

This is a slice of life in more ways than one. Scenes are constantly cut off and linked to the next by jump cuts, an effect meant to be verite and sophisticated that tends at times merely to look sloppy. Though Baumbach says he got exactly the look he wanted, it's suprising that the Savides of Elephant and Zodiac would give us so many shots that are seriously underlit. Again, the effect hovers between original and amateurish.

All this is a shame, because all the actors do great work. The young newcomer who plays Margot's son Claude, Zane Pais, is indeed miraculously natural and believable. Leigh and Kidman do some of their best work, and Jack Black has perfect pitch in every line. There's no doubt that weeks of careful rehearsals on the set, in the house, helped the cast work so well together, and Baumbach knew what he wanted. But it reads as a series of vignettes rather than a film.

An official selection of the New York Film Festival, October 2007. Present at the press Q&A: Baumbach, Leigh, Kidman, Turturo. Moderator: J. Hoberman.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
As you say, Baumbach certainly "scored" with his debut, The Squid and the Whale, which was a big hit at the NYFF, Baumbach being a "local boy," so to speak, and also sort of a Village Voice boy, with a strong family connection to that influential New York publication with its strong (if recently downgraded) film reviewing staff.

The Squid and the Whale is not Baumbach's debut. He made two very accomplished films in the 1990s, which nobody seems to remember (at least not here). They are Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy. Both are charming and smart and feature great ensemble acting; the latter is a must-see for fans of Woody Allen.
As long as The Voice has Hoberman I can't call the film staff "downgraded".

[Chris Knipp]

You're quite right: it was an error on my part to call The Squid and the Whale Baumbach's "debut," though it was a sort of debut in the big time. It got him more publicity and critical attention.

The VILLAGE VOICE movie critic situation is far too complex to simplify by saying all is well as long as J. Hoberman is there. Yes, he is still there. As a writer in The Reeler said, "There is that." But the department has lost its depth, and people have been forced out. I have referred to the Reeler coverage before, I think, but here's a link again:

http://www.thereeler.com/features/the_voice_in_the_wilderness.php

Media purges and consolidations do matter, whatever you choose to call it.

A company in Florida bought THE CHICAGO READER last summer and is laying people off, including some longtime investigative journalists.

Sale: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=25766&seenIt=1

Layoffs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/business/media/10carr.html?bl&ex=1197608400&en=4c30b527b6dbe8b5&ei=5087%0A

[mouton]

There is no question that MARGOT is not going to connect with audiences in the same fashion that SQUID did, even on the limited scale that did. I disagree though with your review, Chris, when you say that this will ultimately detract from the momentum he was building. When I refer to his work, I do so because Baumbach clearly has a distinct voice. Like so many other auteurs, he will build an audience with time and I am sitting at the front of the bus already. I LOVED The Squid and the Whale ... honestly, blew me away. I can't call Margot a let down. It doesn't feel like a misstep either. It just felt to me like a different, darker project that had different intentions. The performances are layered and draw upon so much history ... Baumbach knows how to dig up family tension while still showing how these people care about each other.

I have not seen Mr. Jealousy .. as a big Woody fan, I will definitely put that on my list.

[Chris Knipp]

I said he would lose "credibility," not "momentum," but I probably should not have I made any such statement. I can't predict what Baumbach's future will be artistically or financially, and I wish him all the best. I simply thought Margot was not a success artistically; pinpointing the fact that it has too little dramatic structure to make much sense. Obviously Margot is not the charmer for audiences or critics Squid was (66 vs. 82 on Metacritic and box office totals that don't look like they're going to the same levels as Squid's). But I wouldn't say he's losing "momentum." He seems to be charging ahead, though I'm not sure if I'll want to follow the way things are going.

I missed Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy, and Baumbach was a new name to me when he was featured at the NYFF two years ago. I like that both feture Eric Stolz and Chris Eigeman. Eigeman is a White Stillman alumnus. Ank Kicking and Screaming is a Criterion selection.

[oscar jubis]

Jim Ridley, one of the new crits at the "downgraded" Voice has written as good a piece of criticism as I've read all year.
Some excerpts:

"Margot could be the dejected, midlife, midlist-career-and-a-busted- marriage-later version of the hyperliterate post-grads in Baumbach's first feature, 1995's Kicking and Screaming—people whose education taught them to parse others' sentences for slights."

"Their destination is a Long Island family home, Chekhov by way of Cheever, where the happy event is to take place."


" He writes dialogue that genuinely lacerates—it doesn't just lash the intended target, it lays open the speaker as well. "When you were a baby, I wouldn't let anyone else hold you," Margot coos to Claude, setting him up for the kill: "I think maybe that was a mistake."

The scene in which Pauline shows Margot her (storage) room, acted by Kidman and Leigh with a seismograph's sensitivity to shifting emotional ground, sketches a lifetime of sibling rivalry in just a few surgically cutting lines, culminating in Pauline's desperate topper: "I've become a really good cook."

"Margot, in Kidman's compellingly unlikable performance, is every relative whose motives and utterances we've picked apart on the drive home from some misbegotten holiday, blissfully unaware that she is doing the same to us."

"Sometimes, perhaps, the detail is too novelistic and schematic—a literal family tree with rotting roots is as metaphorically on-the-nose as the emotional Samsonite of his collaborator Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited. But the pseudo-doc immediacy of Baumbach's direction diverts us from any obviousness in the construction, wisely emphasizing the concrete over the symbolic. In this, he's helped immensely by the mottled palette and over-the-shoulder intensity of Harris Savides's camerawork, which turns a shallow depth of field into existential near-panic."

"If we insist on reading the movie as autobiography, it would seem that Margot—a writer who plunders her family troubles for a New Yorker story and faces the music—is more a directorial surrogate, and the movie an act of penance. But that just reduces one of the most perceptive films of this year to inside baseball. "

[Chris Knipp]

Maybe you could have devoted more time to writing your own criticism of the film. Here, you might as well just given us a link to this piece. Jim Ridley shows himself to be a writer, perhaps a young (and therefor cheaper) one very much in love with his own words and his own cleverness; but a lot of what he's said here has already been said elsewhere, and doesn't prove the movie has the merits he attributes to it.

[oscar jubis]

I already apologized about a week ago for not having time to write long reviews at the present time. But all is well, don't despair, I'll come back in February-March with 60 Miami film festival reviews. Then I'm taking the show on the road, to Sarasota, where I'll watch a dozen film and review them in April. For now, I'll post brief comments and greetings to y'all. So you don't like Ridley's review... beats me.

[Chris Knipp]

i have not read Ridley's review, if it's a new one. Even though you quote it so extensively you might as well have given a link, you haven't given us the whole reviw. If it's an old one, I probably read it at the time when the movie opened, or even in connection with the NYFF showing. The press reaction seemed rather negtive. It appears reviews were okay--I've pointed this out before--but not ecstatic. I don't know how you think I am going to come around to liking the film when I strongly disliked it, when it seemed to make even very little sense. But don't get me wrong; I know Baumbach is an interesting director, and that this movie has its strong admirers. Don't count me in that number, though.

I would rather have a b it more depth in your own writing about films and detail and length in your reviews rather than more and more quantity, though your coverage of southland festivals is appreciated for the items we don't get up here.

[oscar jubis]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Even though you quote it so extensively you might as well have given a link, you haven't given us the whole review.
The link I tried to provide failed. Now I'm at the library and this computer doesn't allow me to do it.

I don't know how you think I am going to come around to liking the film when I strongly disliked it, when it seemed to make even very little sense.
I don't presume I can make you come around to liking the film. It's ok to disagree. I think it's among the most accomplished American films of the year. I wish I could watch it again but it came and went quickly here despite a good review in the major daily.

I would rather have a bit more depth in your own writing about films and detail and length in your reviews rather than more and more quantity
I try to have "depth" no matter the length of the post. I guess we could all be critical of everybody else's writing. I've posted a reasonable number of long reviews this year but I don't associate length with "depth". I also wonder how many readers read our long reviews from beginning to end. Sometimes it's more audience-friendly to attempt to be concise.

your coverage of southland festivals is appreciated for the items we don't get up here.
Thanks, I'm lucky to have two excellent festivals in my state. The Sarasota one is small but it's nicely organized and the film selection is quite smart.

[Chris Knipp]

Unless you're writing poetry, in plain prose terms it takes a little length to achieve some depth, because depth requires detail. I was not "being critical of anyone else's writing," only wishing you found time to wrote more complete reviews. That is all. It surprises me that you would talk about being "audience-friendly." That isn't how you judge movies; why should it be an aim to point writing on film to the reading-challenged?

[oscar jubis]

Not to the "reading-challenged". I'm very aware of the variety of things that could interest the potential reader, and the fast times in which we live; an era when people are struggling to find enough time to do everything they must do so they can allot time to do what they want to do. The model for a kind of precise, concentrated, brief but deep criticism are the record reviews Robert Christgau started writing for The Voice in the 1960s. Acquarello has adopted that style, which I don't think you like. The capsule reviews in The New Yorker and The Chicago Reader often manage depth within a very limited length. I don't claim to be able to do that, but it seems to fit the nature of the times in which we live so it's worth trying.

[Chris Knipp]

You make good points. However, more can always be said in a longer review; it can't be otherwise. Acquarello sometimes goes into detail, I think, and even into considerable length--I thinik; I find his or her command of English somewhat shaky, despite the elaborate vocabulary, and that lessens my pleasure in reading the contents of Strictly Film School, but I recognize that behind them is a thoughtful person with a considerable knowledge of film. I am attracted to good writing. That's perhaps why I prefer Hoberman to Rosenbaum; Hoberman has the more readable and supple style. And besides that, he writes more reviews. But I read Armond White with interest for his independence of mind, even though he misuses words sometimes and iisn't always terribly adept at construccting sentences either!

A person who thinks he hasn't got time to read a thousand words is reading-challenged, whatever the excuses given.

[oscar jubis]

I am attracted to criticism that gives me insights into a given film I couldn't extract on my own, usually because what the writer brings to the viewing experience is different from what I bring in terms of personal background, esthetics, etc. This is the value of criticism to me, not whether a sentence is well-constructed or not (as long as the meaning is clear_goes without saying). One would hope that, after decades as a published writer, White would learn to write better, but it doesn't always happen.
I agree that a person who doesn't have time to read a 1000 words is reading-challenged, except said person might want to read a 300-word review so he can get back to a novel or newspaper or whatever.

[Chris Knipp]

This whole discussion almost ought to have its own space....Yes, White has a permanent writing problem and needs better editors.

Of course everybody reads for "insights" they wouldn't arrive at by thelselves, why else? But writing needs to be entertaining whatever that may mean; it varies. You can't ultimately separate style from content. It makes no sense to say you don't care about sentence structure. It matters, if you want anybody to want to read your writing. I guess you are more concerned about keeping tabs on your viewing and expressing your enthusiasms and recording your discoveries. That is great, but I personally am here because I like writing reviews. I think it would be good if the site went more in that direction.

As for length, it looks like magazine movie reviews often tend to be longer than my 1000-word length and closer to 1500 or 2000 words for a film column. Minimal descriptions have a utilitarian value but may not do much to stimulate thought or discussion.

[oscar jubis]

I can get reviews anywhere on the net; smart discussion is harder to find. I always hope the reviews we post yield spirited discussions. Anyway, I wrote a review; rather long at about a thousand words:
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=19149#post19149)
Hoping to find the time to write a review of Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone. Can't accept that "our" wonderful 'lil website doesn't contain a review of such a memorable 2007 release. Or did you review it somewhere?

[Chris Knipp]

Have not had an opportunity to see Tsai's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, #21 on the Voice poll list. I don't know where and when this 2006-released film distributed n the US by Strand was shown, but apparently it is now available on DVD so I'll have to watch it that way. (I just put it on my Netflix queue.) Clearly judging by reviews it was shown in the spring of this year in NYC (April-May? perhaps only very briefly) but I wasn't around then to see it, and I don't think it got to the Bay Area, or maybe anywhere else. I have liked some of Tsai's work very much, but not all. I guess my favorites so far are The River and What Time Is It There? I know some love Goodbye, Dragon Inn, but it's pretty slow going. I disliked Wayward Cloud. But this one sounds like it's definitely worth watching. Anyway however uneven, he's a director to follow carefully.

[tabuno]

I support Mouton's commentary and I can't really add much to it because he more than aptly echoed whatever I could say on that matter. Margot really does a nice job of revealing what I consider to be the raw unbelly of most families that most of us hide in our closets. I would suspect that this movie hits closer to home than most people would feel comfortable. Sometimes reality isn't something the audience care to experience, like Mouton implies people have better things to do than watch something that reminds them of themselves. This neatly edited movie does justice to deliberate slices of drama that we often don't pay attention to and it progressively adds to LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003) slice of life film genre and moves from Japan to much closer to home. It nice to see sometimes that we may not be the only ones suffering in our hell holes. But on deeper reflection and thought on exeriencing this movie, there is really more going on here than dysfunction, there remains a more positive undernote as the sisters still manage to have a better connection than when the movie started, that the relationships aren't all destroyed and blown apart. With the uncomfortable experiences that some take away from this movie there are also signs of balanced hope and nurturance. Depending how one actually comes at this movie and takes from it, it can be a terribly uncomfortable disturbing movie or an emotionally enriching and satisfying one [small grammatical improvements - 1/21/08].

[oscar jubis]

Yes, Margot at the Wedding "hits closer to home than most people would feel comfortable". They say, the truth hurts and those who relate/identify with Margot because of her education, background or vocation probably hurt the most. The performances by Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh are simply outstanding. The film was an utter failure at the box office here and left theaters quickly, robbing me of the chance of a much desired second viewing.