New York Film Festival: 'Margot at the Wedding'

Even well before I was a Professional Film Critic, I was never one of those moviegoers for whom the likability, or even worse the "relatability" of a movie's characters constituted a significant issue. The idea that Raging Bull is a lesser film because its central figure is such a nasty brute has always struck me as so weak-minded as to be laughable. The way I figure it, if you want likable characters, go read a frickin A.A. Milne book or something.

That said, on those rare occasions where I'm watching a picture and I get that "why am I spending time with such unpleasant people" feeling, I've got to check myself. I remember deeply disliking everybody in Doug Liman's Go (in my review I said that it had an "all-asshole dramatis personae"), and wondered if I was succumbing, in my advancing age, to some "these kids today..." tendencies. Liman's future work has convinced me that wasn't the case—rather that, for all the energy of Liman's direction, its glib slickness amounted to a form of packaging. The movie wasn't presenting the characters so much as selling them. I wasn't buying.

Writer/director Noah Baumbach's films are so relentlessly peopled by awful individuals that one may well wonder if Baumbach is acquainted with anybody who's just kind of a simple pleasure to hang out with. Margot at the Wedding, his followup to 2005's widely praised The Squid and the Whale, stars Nicole Kidman as one of those literary types you love to hate—a Manhattan-based author of short stories—who is also possibly the World's Worst Mother, Non-Physically Abusive Division.

The picture, which has an extremely apt perpetually-overcast look (it was shot by Harris Savides) begins with Margot and painfully awkward teen son Claude (Zane Pais, in a cringe-worthily accurate portrayal of the most wondrous stage of adolescence) not much enjoying a train ride out to the Hamptons. Margot's a tetchy, self-absorbed know-it-all with a vast barrage of both aggressive and staggeringly passive-aggressive weapons of emotional destruction in her arsenal, and she's ruthless and thoughtless in both how she uses them and who she uses them on. There's her needy, slightly bovine sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who's thrilled that Margot, from whom she's been estranged, has ventured out to their ancestral home for the first time in years; there's Malcolm, the opinionated but largely amiable loser Pauline is about to marry, there's one writer Margot's married to (John Turturro) and another she's having an affair with (Cieran Hinds). (On the phone to her husband, apropos her faithlessness, Margot exasperatedly says "This is happenng and you need to get your mind around it," a line that nicely sums up her particular brand of insufferability.) There are also varied neighbors and relatives whose faces she likes to get into, but mostly it's Claude who bears the brunt of her hatefulness. Margot loves to be the hip, cool mom who confides intimate, inappropriate stuff to her kid and hopes for reciprocation; the way she works this dynamic with Claude is frequently just jaw-dropping. And Claude can't get a break even away from mom, given the moist creepiness (evoked by Baumbach with a been-there acuity) he seems to find around every corner of a particularly boonie-like section of the Hamptons this film is set in.

You'd think this would make for one bummer of a picture, particularly given that all the characters are both thoroughly miserable and misery-inducing in their own ways, but Margot is a fleet, strangely enjoyable film. Baumbach is only gaining in assurance as both a writer and director; this picture brought to mind Rohmer's work of the early to mid-'80s, if Rohmer were more depressive and had a nastier social circle.

Comments

[Aaron Aradillas]

I seem to recall calling you out on your review of Liman's exhilirating, youth-on-the-prowl comedy Go. I believe it went something like this:

Aaron: You wrote a rather dismissive review of Doug Liman's rave generation chronicle Go. Of the characters' hard-edged attitude you wrote, "This is an increasingly prevalent and obnoxious device for today's 'hippest' moviemakers: the all-asshole dramatis personae." While I agree youth-oriented movies of the late '90s seemed to wallow in excessive attitude and posturing, Go captured a heedless romanticism that seemed to have more in common with American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused. The "all-asshole dramatis personae" you speak of seems to be more in line with the movies of Guy Ritchie or Roger Avary. Do you feel this type of attitude falls in line with teenage life that certain movies capture more authentically than others? Have you reached a point where you find yourself saying, "These kids today don't know anything about good movies and music?"

Glenn: Good God, no. And I hope I never do. Which is not to say I'm going to make a point of justifying/valorizing pop taste the way that so many music writers do these days, but I would hate to be so out of touch as to reflexively dismiss "the kids." The kids are great, as far as I'm concerned. To cite but a single, random example, I don't think the Casavettes revival would have happened without the curiosity and passion of younger movie lovers. I do think that Go, shall we say, overemphasized the unattractive traits of its characters to an irritating degree, but my "all asshole dramatis personae" line should have been framed as an observation rather than a dismissal. I must have been feeling particularly tetchy when I wrote that, because overall I think Go's a pretty lively, energetic, conscious picture. I actually like it a lot better than Liman's Swingers, which some might say is a picture that someone like myself could more easily "relate" to. But I don't care so much about "relating" when I watch a film. And I don't mind if a picture is lacking in "sympathetic" characters, but I get annoyed if I suspect that the unpleasant characters in abundance are there in order to up the movie's "edge" quotient. Or make you keel over at the stark reality of it all, as I believe We Don't Live Anymore's cavalcade of solopsists were intended to.

I still disagree that Liman's characters were nothing more than strutting examples of attitude. Sarah Polley in particular created amazing sympathy for a young woman who seems to be independent because it is the only way she can survive.

While I agree with you that dismissing movies like Raging Bull simply because the characters aren't "likabke" is kinda, sorta stupid, there's something to be said for the moment of recognition one sometimes experiences while watching a movie. Liking and identifying with a character doesn't necessarily make said movie superior. One just needs to be aware that the fillmakers aren't coasting on a combination of nostalgia and laziness.

Any critic worth their opinion would probably admit to recognizing themselves in both Crowe's Almost Famous and Payne's Sideways. I recently did quite a bit of squirming through the hilariously painful (or painfully hilarious?) Superbad. (Don't ask.)

[Anne Thompson]

the comparison to eric rohmer is quite apt. the writing is very precise about this specific social milieu. Nicole Kidman gives a terrific fearless performance that takes you beyond dislike to some sort of compassion. The character reminds me of McMurtry's Aurora Greenway.