Chris Knipp
12-05-2013, 03:41 AM
Joe Swanberg: ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY (2012)
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8053/6l0v.jpg
JANE ADAMS IN ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY
Lovely views and fearful prospects
Le's not go all over what Mumblecore movies may or may not be this time. Why reinvent the wheel? Joe Swanberg doesn't. He just keeps making little zero-budget movies, six in a year recently. To keep up that rate you can't be too fussy, though you may grow by leaps and bounds. This one, about an aging and moderately successful actress, seems in the eyes of some to be Swanberg's best yet, and it's totally casual. So let's be casual in writing about it. Marie is played by Jane Adams, who has starred in a few movies, including Todd Solondz's Happiness, but in many others mostly has had supporting roles. Adams is more or less playing herself. But isn't that the impression Swanberg always seeks to achieve? Nothing happens except that Marie's visited for a weekend by a young niece from the East Coast, Faye (Sophia Takal), and flirts with a couple of men, and meets with a metaphorical man (David Siskind) who's apparently teaching her about solar measuring devices. The sun's a middle-aged star that's eventually going to burn itself out. That's not as blunt as it sounds. A neighbor, Rusty (assured and excellent horror vet Larry Fassenden, who looks like and can spot-on imitate Jack Nicholson), tells Marie she's "on a tear" of self-pity. Faye and Marie compare bodies. Faye is young; Marie is pushing fifty. Marie knows the roles won't be as easy to find now, or the men.
Rusty and Marie are neighbors in stilt houses along the coast in Malibu. Marie's living room is all glass on one side, looking full onto the glistening sea. She can afford this, and it's nice. But it's a small house, and rented. The ocean-scape is spectacular, every day. All the light in the sky may be blinding. It may reveal too much. Rusty enjoys it, but he tells Faye it's all going to wash away in a few years. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. While Marie is wrapped on the couch in a pretty handmade shawl Rusty calls a "granny" thing, and she's fretting over his use of that word, up above young people are partying. And while Faye visits she has a wild night and Marie, childless, being motherly, nurses her next morning with one of her trademark homemade smoothies.
This is a midlife crisis movie, but it tells its story without using a story to tell it. It's all a network of casual hookups, giggles, morning oatmeal and wet-suited paddleboard sessions. Marie's life is aimless but healthy. She's probably losing a role to Kristen Wiig. So it goes. What Swanberg gives us isn't action, but slices of life. Moment to moment the scenes are real. And the reality is appalling. The triviality of it. The ill-turned, mumbled phrases, cut short with a giggle. I was longing for someone well dressed, someone who moves with confidence and grace. But hey, this ain't Eric Rohmer (where even the shy, uncomfortable women are lovely and speak in well-turned sentences). This is American life.
It seems like Swanberg carved out the segments of acting that worked, threw away what didn't, and spliced together what was left. But in fact the movie has a rhythm and a progression. The scenes with Fay and the various men, including Faye's Skype fiance (Lawrence Michael Levine) who makes her show him her breasts, are prologue. When Faye and Marie put on wet suits and shower afterward, they look at each other's breasts. Faye is twenty-five: enough said? She is starting out as an actress, and her future is ahead of her. But the climactic scene is a static one, Rusty and Marie on the couch, when they finally agree it's nice just being comfy together.
Then comes the coda. The solar man in Marie's living room telling her the sun is a middle-aged star that will burn out one day -- and finally, Marie under the house stilts getting her board and floating out into the distance on a flat, gorgeous, limpid morning sea. This is beautiful construction, and a serene if somewhat merciless view of life, astonishingly mature for a thirty-two-year-old, Joe Swanberg's age. Marie is fidgety and uncertain, on a pity "tear," but the filmmaker is not. He's come some way since the frenetic uncertainty of the long-distance relationship chronicled by him and Greta Gerwig in the 2008 Nights and Weekends (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2381-Joe-Swanberg-Greta-Gerwig-Nights-and-Weekends-%282008%29&highlight=nights+weekends), in which he and Gerwig also star. In the five years since then, counting shorts, Swanberg has made thirteen films, including the recently Landmark-screened Drinking Buddies, which I didn't much like (the young brewery people are vividly annoying), but which is very polished. Swanberg has lamented that he was working too much on his films to grow up as a person. But maybe like his ironic ancestor Ingmar Bergman, he is growing up in his films, not in his life.
All the Light in the Sky, 78 mins., with Swanberg the director, writer, and cinematographer, debuted at the AFI Film Festival 3 November 2012. It had its Internet release 3 December 2013, and a theatrical release 20 December 2013.
Seev Richard Brody's thumbnail review (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/all_the_light_in_the_sky_swanberg) in The New Yorker. [No longer available.]
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8053/6l0v.jpg
JANE ADAMS IN ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY
Lovely views and fearful prospects
Le's not go all over what Mumblecore movies may or may not be this time. Why reinvent the wheel? Joe Swanberg doesn't. He just keeps making little zero-budget movies, six in a year recently. To keep up that rate you can't be too fussy, though you may grow by leaps and bounds. This one, about an aging and moderately successful actress, seems in the eyes of some to be Swanberg's best yet, and it's totally casual. So let's be casual in writing about it. Marie is played by Jane Adams, who has starred in a few movies, including Todd Solondz's Happiness, but in many others mostly has had supporting roles. Adams is more or less playing herself. But isn't that the impression Swanberg always seeks to achieve? Nothing happens except that Marie's visited for a weekend by a young niece from the East Coast, Faye (Sophia Takal), and flirts with a couple of men, and meets with a metaphorical man (David Siskind) who's apparently teaching her about solar measuring devices. The sun's a middle-aged star that's eventually going to burn itself out. That's not as blunt as it sounds. A neighbor, Rusty (assured and excellent horror vet Larry Fassenden, who looks like and can spot-on imitate Jack Nicholson), tells Marie she's "on a tear" of self-pity. Faye and Marie compare bodies. Faye is young; Marie is pushing fifty. Marie knows the roles won't be as easy to find now, or the men.
Rusty and Marie are neighbors in stilt houses along the coast in Malibu. Marie's living room is all glass on one side, looking full onto the glistening sea. She can afford this, and it's nice. But it's a small house, and rented. The ocean-scape is spectacular, every day. All the light in the sky may be blinding. It may reveal too much. Rusty enjoys it, but he tells Faye it's all going to wash away in a few years. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. While Marie is wrapped on the couch in a pretty handmade shawl Rusty calls a "granny" thing, and she's fretting over his use of that word, up above young people are partying. And while Faye visits she has a wild night and Marie, childless, being motherly, nurses her next morning with one of her trademark homemade smoothies.
This is a midlife crisis movie, but it tells its story without using a story to tell it. It's all a network of casual hookups, giggles, morning oatmeal and wet-suited paddleboard sessions. Marie's life is aimless but healthy. She's probably losing a role to Kristen Wiig. So it goes. What Swanberg gives us isn't action, but slices of life. Moment to moment the scenes are real. And the reality is appalling. The triviality of it. The ill-turned, mumbled phrases, cut short with a giggle. I was longing for someone well dressed, someone who moves with confidence and grace. But hey, this ain't Eric Rohmer (where even the shy, uncomfortable women are lovely and speak in well-turned sentences). This is American life.
It seems like Swanberg carved out the segments of acting that worked, threw away what didn't, and spliced together what was left. But in fact the movie has a rhythm and a progression. The scenes with Fay and the various men, including Faye's Skype fiance (Lawrence Michael Levine) who makes her show him her breasts, are prologue. When Faye and Marie put on wet suits and shower afterward, they look at each other's breasts. Faye is twenty-five: enough said? She is starting out as an actress, and her future is ahead of her. But the climactic scene is a static one, Rusty and Marie on the couch, when they finally agree it's nice just being comfy together.
Then comes the coda. The solar man in Marie's living room telling her the sun is a middle-aged star that will burn out one day -- and finally, Marie under the house stilts getting her board and floating out into the distance on a flat, gorgeous, limpid morning sea. This is beautiful construction, and a serene if somewhat merciless view of life, astonishingly mature for a thirty-two-year-old, Joe Swanberg's age. Marie is fidgety and uncertain, on a pity "tear," but the filmmaker is not. He's come some way since the frenetic uncertainty of the long-distance relationship chronicled by him and Greta Gerwig in the 2008 Nights and Weekends (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2381-Joe-Swanberg-Greta-Gerwig-Nights-and-Weekends-%282008%29&highlight=nights+weekends), in which he and Gerwig also star. In the five years since then, counting shorts, Swanberg has made thirteen films, including the recently Landmark-screened Drinking Buddies, which I didn't much like (the young brewery people are vividly annoying), but which is very polished. Swanberg has lamented that he was working too much on his films to grow up as a person. But maybe like his ironic ancestor Ingmar Bergman, he is growing up in his films, not in his life.
All the Light in the Sky, 78 mins., with Swanberg the director, writer, and cinematographer, debuted at the AFI Film Festival 3 November 2012. It had its Internet release 3 December 2013, and a theatrical release 20 December 2013.
Seev Richard Brody's thumbnail review (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/all_the_light_in_the_sky_swanberg) in The New Yorker. [No longer available.]