Inherent Vice captures an era of dark change in America with twisty, funny detective story
January 9, 2015
It sounded like staid material in 2009 for author Thomas Pynchon when he set a detective story called Inherent Vice in 1970, a time when Flower Power had faded, in Los Angeles, a city in the state that once defined the hippie movement. But Pynchon focuses on creating a marvelous morality tale with great humor and witty layers of experience, perfect for the author known for his postmodernist writing. The time period captures a mythic moment in American history. Ideas of utopia and slogans like “make love not war” that once defined a generation had been overshadowed by the hedonism of Woodstock, the horror of the Kent State shootings, the quagmire of Vietnam, not to mention the Manson murders, which are often referenced in the text. The post-war product of the baby boom were coming of age into an era of idealism and were then suddenly hit with disillusionment. Look up the definition of the phrase “inherent vice,” and it seems a perfect title for a book seeking to examine the transition between the ideal 1960s and the grim reality of the early 1970s.
Now director Paul Thomas Anderson has adapted Inherent Vice, becoming the first director to take on Pynchon, an author whose works have often been called “dense” or “complex.” Working for the first time from a novel instead of an original script, Anderson takes Pynchon’s story and enriches it. After his amazing 2013 movie The Master (The Master harnesses cinema’s power to maximal effect), the auteur once again takes on another mythic era of America to offer another superficial take on the cultural landscape that actually shrouds a compelling tribute to people looking for purpose in the face of nihilism.
Also for a second time in a row, Anderson is working with arguably the greatest American actor of the 21st century, Joaquin Phoenix. He plays Larry “Doc” Sportello, a private detective with a serious marijuana habit. Sporting momentous mutton chops to rival Hugh Jackman’s in the X-Men flicks, Phoenix gives Doc an endearing bumbling character that sometimes feels like a tribute to Jeff Bridges’ Dude in The Big Lebowski. Tasked by his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) to intervene in the looming kidnapping and institutionalization of her current lover, real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), by his wife Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas), Doc finds himself soon over his head. The story twists and turns as more people enter the picture and Doc takes notes in his little pad with big letters like “paranoia alert” and “something Spanish.”
Throughout the film Doc suffers beatings and uncalled for detentions at the hands of his hippie-hating nemesis LAPD Lt. Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (a marvelously intense Josh Brolin). As the film’s most dynamic character, Bigfoot is not just a straight-edge policeman with a disdain for hippies. He also fancies himself a renaissance man who moonlights as a bit actor on TV shows and even the real estate commercials for Wolfmann that slyly lampoon hippie speak while celebrating it. Wearing a bad Afro wig and sunglasses, he tells Doc, “
Right on” from a TV screen before — in a moment of magical realism referring to Doc’s high — his face fills the screen, and he says, “What’s up, Doc?” At every turn, Bigfoot tries to undermine Doc or even arrest him. However, he is also an ally, like a big brother beating on a younger sibling. Though married with children, in a sly, comic dramatic twist, the film later reveals Bigfoot hardly has any love at home, and he and Doc have a bond that eclipses their differences. It’s one of the greatest relationships you will see in the movies this year, and it gives this byzantine comedy its warm heart.
The film features voiceover narration by Sortilège, (a pleasantly benign Joanna Newsom), a friend of Doc’s who provides the first cue in how this film presents its themes through its characters. The film opens with a stationary shot down the nondescript alley to Doc’s beach shack he calls home. The title card reads, “Gordita Beach, California. 1970.” It appears to be sunrise and the only thing on the soundtrack is the sound of the surf. Then there’s a cutaway to a woman’s face backlit by brilliant sunlight. As if born of the California sun, a golden glow shrouding her blond head of hair,
Sortilège sets up the film’s story. She says Shasta “came along the alley and up the back stairs the way she always used to.” It’s a surprise visit after over a year-long absence from his life. Though Shasta’s entrance harkens to the past, somewhere around 1968/69, this is not the same woman. She arrives a changed woman “all in flat land gear … looking just like she swore she would never look.” While Sortilège appears in a halo of light, Shasta sneaks in and emerges from the nocturnal shadows with a whisper.
Things do change in this world, as Sortilège notes after Doc and a friend join her to share some pizza and beer. She gets vibes that Doc’s mind is racing about the unexpected visit of Shasta, a former intimate who had transformed in a way he never anticipated, so she recommends he do a little change. “Change your hair, change your life.” When he asks her what he might do with his hear, she suggests, “follow your intuition.” Then there’s a smash cut to a close up of Doc’s face with his hair in twists to enhance the curls of his already curly hair.
Change and surface presentation are a big part of Inherent Vice. Everybody is someone else below the surface or in a state of flux — well, maybe everyone except our protagonist Doc. It’s a role that won’t stand out much for Phoenix, which is a shame because he is terrific as a man caught in stagnation yet hoping for some connection. Some will find the developments in Doc’s case confusing as characters enter and leave the narrative. Though other characters come in and out of the picture, there is always something
unforgettable about them. Maya Rudolph (Anderson’s wife) plays Doc’s alert secretary, a very aware being never short observation. Owen Wilson plays a musician lost in his own myth, and there’s even Martin Short who plays a dentist with a coke habit, a taste for young, runaway girls and nefarious connections to a drug cartel called “The Golden Fang.” I’ve left out about seven to 10 other import recurring characters. But it doesn’t matter. As the film falls further down a rabbit hole of narrative that will confuse many hoping to keep the story straight, the viewer should keep in mind that this is a detective story with a pothead hippie as the protagonist.
Beyond dialogue and characterization, as ever with Anderson, he never misses a chance to define his characters visually. Though The Master had an intensely measured pace and a precise mise-en-scène, consistently shot with an exquisite and meticulous quality by Mihai Malaimare Jr., Anderson has called back Robert Elswit to photograph his vision, and the result is not only wonderfully 
evocative of ‘70s era TV and movies but also speaks to the film’s themes of the unknown change ahead. Much of the camera movement is handheld, and many scenes are shot against the light. On the other hand, there are scenes deeply saturated by shadow and darkness, especially as the film barrels through some more nerve-racking moments for Doc, as he gets deeper and deeper into trouble with more dangerous characters, from Aryan brotherhood bruisers to drug dealers connected with The Golden Fang.
As ever with Anderson, the music is brilliantly curated. The choice early in the film to not use some tired, overly familiar pop song from the era but an underground hit by the Krautrock band Can is inspired. I don’t say this because I’m a big Krautrock fan. The song, in this case “Vitamin C,” though not entirely accurate to the era (it was released in 1972) has deeper resonance because it represents a new form of music born of a need to revolt against the establishment, even if it came about in Germany. It also helps that it’s a good tune, abstract yet catchy, involving enough standard rock instruments and a chirpy organ to be cool but quirky.
Anderson has also once again hired Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood to provide a score for the film. Greenwood provides a fantastic, sometimes romantic soundtrack that’s very aware of the era it’s representing, a sort of mix of Neu!, Soft Machine and Ennio Morricone. His music either features strings and oboe or quietly grooving rock instruments. It’s spacey sometimes, and other times it’s pastoral. As with the more subtle, earthy camera work of Inherent Vice, the music, from songs to score, is not as intrusive as it was in The Master. As great as the score for that film was, Inherent Vice is a movie concerned with a different tone, after all, something much lighter and less intense. Again, it all fits the theme of flux and an obscured core defying clear comprehension, reflective of the era and the people struggling in it.
Much as I love the deliberate, controlled artistry of The Master, even more so than this loose-limbed film, Anderson proves he is in terrific control of his approach, and it serves the story and it’s deeper concerns very well. Inherent Vice actually features some of the most hilarious moments in an Anderson film since 1997’s Boogie Nights, another film where Anderson explored the dark side of the 1970s. Both films tangle with humor, from slapstick to witty dialogue and an ironic sense of discontent not really apparent to the film’s characters. It’s ironic, but it all culminates with great affection for the film’s hero and even his nemesis, Bigfoot. They are this film’s terrific beating heart. Change is inevitable, just go with that flow and enjoy the ride… man.
Inherent Vice runs 148 minutes and is Rated R (expect drug use throughout, graphic sexuality, cursing and several violent encounters). It opens pretty much everywhere today, Jan. 9. Warner Bros. provided a DVD screener for awards consideration last year.
A great teaser trailer released a few months back hinted that Nightcrawler would present a character study of a manic man determined to get a job (watch it here). Jake Gyllenhaal certainly delivers an intriguing performance as Louis Bloom, the man at the center of Nightcrawler. It’s too bad the film fails to deliver any worthwhile insight into this character. This guy could have been something as interesting as Joaquin Phoenix’s character in The Master. Instead, we get an enigma so opaque you cannot tell whether this man has Asperger’s or is a genuinely psychotic misanthrope.
The movie, a first-time feature for screenwriter-turned-director Dan Gilroy, is a flashy affair on many levels beyond the lead performance — the cinematography, the music, the overall atmosphere. It’s a shame that the idea feels so unsubstantial and even condescending. We meet Louis as he scrounges metal at a rail yard. When a security guard catches him, he beats the guard and steals his watch, which Louis slips on, despite it being too large for his skinny wrist. He then takes the metal he has gathered, which includes manhole covers and chain-link fence, to a scrapyard where he negotiates a price with the taciturn owner. After settling on a price, Louis pitches that he hire him. His eagerness and breathless self-hype are grating. The scrapyard owner shuts him down with, “Why would I hire a thief?”
There’s always freelance work, and Louis finds the right gig after coming across the aftermath of a collision on a highway and watching freelance cameramen gather footage at the bloody wreck. The next day, Louis steals an expensive bicycle and trades it in at a pawn shop for an old handheld camera and a police scanner. He soon finds Rick (Riz Ahmed), a skinny, young homeless man to 
assist him in his search for car crashes and crime scenes in the early morning hours that freelance newsmen thrive on. Louis’ lack of empathy and gusto for the job gets him close to victims and bloody scenes. A news director at a local TV station with faltering ratings (Rene Russo) is happy to pay his inflated prices for the footage. We follow the two nightcrawlers, as Louis gets more brazen in stepping over ethical boundaries and Rick grows more nervous about the acts.
Gyllenhaal deserves credit for losing himself so deeply in the role of Louis. He lost a ton of weight to give this man a look of having been eaten away from within. But he’s far from fragile. There’s a dynamo inside driven to survive. He’s a kind of vampire, using people with a cartoonish charm that’s sociopathic in its lack of any genuine warmth. He brings a nerve-rattling intensity to the character who seems to hide behind a thin but impenetrable mask of phony, fast-talking charisma. There’s a trapped desperation to Louis behind a surreal composure that seems on the edge of breaking down. He’s like a feral creature with attitude but little substance, which could also describe the movie as a whole.
Louis Bloom should also be recognized as a team effort. Makeup enhances his ashen, wraith-like appearance. Cinematographer Robert Elswit (who’s done amazing work with Paul Thomas Anderson in Magnolia and There Will Be Blood) mixes the light and shadow so expressively there are several moments when he looks like a cartoon. There’s one scene where he commits a flagrant, ethical no-no as a news photographer: tampers with the scene of a crash for “the shot.” He backs up with his camera to record the aftermath of the wreck, lifts the camera over his head. His eyes bug out.
They appear as large white orbs out of a comic panel, shining forth in the wide, dark, distant landscape shot. His face expresses an ecstasy of revelation, seemingly entranced and impressed by his handiwork. As wide as they are, his eyes remain as impenetrable as ever. There’s more to read in his mouth. His jaw drops open to expose a blackness in his maw — once again, the impression of a wraith. He looks like Munch’s Scream, and makes no sound, just like the painting. It’s an impressive moment when the film comes together on the level of image and actor.
There are great action sequences and a dark atmosphere certainly saturates the film. James Newton Howard’s soundtrack is probably the sliest element, oscillating between calm, brooding echoing guitars and hyper-pumped drumming and humming synths as if it were something out of the ‘80s. It’s ironic that the film has the atmosphere of an ‘80s movie because it also feels as dated as one of those films.
In the grand social scheme, Nightcrawler tries to present a critique of superficial news reporting, which has little resonance in today’s era. Any comparison to Network would be pointless. That 1976 film mattered because it was prophetic of today’s current TV anchors/personalities who wear shrill opinions on their sleeves. Nightcrawler’s critique is old news. The idea of “it bleeds, it leads” took over local news reporting in the
early ‘90s (and, seriously, must Gilroy have a character in the news business actually use the line in the movie?). Had this film appeared in the ‘80s, it may have been a bit more interesting, but as it stands, it’s like a joke that has fallen flat. That the film only ever builds toward a joke ending instead of a worthy moment of revelation, or at least a vague ambiguous notion of insight, speaks to the slightness of the story.
The problem is Gilroy, who also wrote the script, cannot seem to find his way out of this dark character study. It’s as if he’s written himself into a corner. Louis is presented as a rather impenetrable character, and he remains that way until the end. His only moments of weakness are when he has a solitary tantrum, all alone at home, letting out his frustration on a mirror. The most Gilroy can do to remind us of the compromised moral character of this guy is make sure the giant, loose-fitting watch he stole from the security guard is in frame.
But Nightcrawler still has a fundamental flaw in that there’s hardly anyone to play off morality to. The best we get is the assignment editor (Kevin Rahm) at the news stations who pronounces disapproval and wags a finger at the news director for humoring the footage Louis presents her with. Louis’ homeless assistant also shows a profound sense of right and wrong, but Louis always out reasons the poor, meek man. Their conversations go nowhere except one moment that just might settle the question whether Louis is a misanthrope or a man with Asperger’s. But it remains only a possible glimpse left unexplored.
Nightcrawler runs 117 minutes and is rated R (gore and sex talk). It opens pretty much everywhere today, Friday, Oct. 31 (check for tickets here). Fox Searchlight invited me to a preview screening earlier this month for the purpose of this review.
‘The Master’ harnesses cinema’s power to maximal effect – a film review
September 21, 2012
Before I get into the aesthetic beauty of the Master, including the film’s music, cinematography, editing, mise-en-scène and—most of all— the acting, allow me to present you with a test. Watch these two teaser trailers the film’s director Paul Thomas Anderson put together to build anticipation for the film. The first one, released earlier this year, featured Joaquin Phoenix:
Then there arrived one featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman:
Now, if those two clips excited you about what you will see acting-wise when these two extremely different characters meet in the film, you should love the Master. If you expect anything else, you may be just a tad disappointed.
Though the chatter of buzz surrounding this film has been around Anderson’s take on the birth of Scientology, his preoccupation seems more focused on the two men at the film’s heart. Beyond their dynamic, the cult created by Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd only serves to magnify the intense relationship of these two men. Phoenix’s Freddie Quell is sucked into the world of “The Cause” only by the interest Lancaster shows in Freddie. Freddie, a rapscallion before he meets Lancaster, easily falls in line with calling him Master, as the followers of the Cause do. Anderson stays so in tuned with Freddie and the Master that the film becomes more about the cult of personality than the cult of any pseudo religion.
The film first sets up the rootless Freddie as a sailor in the Pacific during World War II who seems to have missed most of the fighting. 
He and his mates kill time jerking off on the shoreline and making sand sculptures of female figures in the wet sand. As a radio transmission announces VJ Day and the end of combat, Freddie crawls around artillery shells in his ship’s armory, making a drink from whatever chemicals he can find: an alcoholic beyond alcohol.
After the war, he receives a psychological exam via a Rorschach test where all he sees is “pussy” and “cock.” After his discharge, he floats from one job to another. They both end in violent confrontations. Freddie is one lost, primal soul. Phoenix plays him brilliantly, speaking out of only the left side of his mouth. Even his left eye stays wider open than his right. He laughs whenever someone asks him to share what he thinks or feels. He walks hunched over and stands crooked with one arm twisted backward, the heel of his hand resting on his hip. He looks like a 70-year-old man with osteoporosis.
After being chased off a farm at his last job, Freddie stows on to a cruise ship departing a harbor. He springs over the railing just as the vessel pulls away with a zest unseen until that moment. Again at sea, Freddie seems to have rediscovered his verve. This is where he meets the Master.
There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson’s previous film, featured no dialogue for the first half-hour. In the Master, a similar thing occurs, as Freddie never seems to connect with anyone in a true give and take conversation until he meets Lancaster. During their first conversation, it is revealed they had met on board sometime off-screen on the night the ship had set sail. However, Freddie seems to have been too drunk to remember. “I don’t have any problems,” Freddie says and squeezes out a laugh/sigh. “I don’t know what I told you.”
“You’re aberrated,” the Master tells him, and Freddie laughs again with his crooked uncomfortable smile. 
This marks the first dynamic conversation on-screen— a true exchange— and the start of bonding between these two men. These two may have not only met earlier but may have met in another life. It will soon turn out past lives are a part of Dodd’s doctrine.
But Lancaster is not the only one with power here. Just as the Master has created his own culture, history and rules of living, Freddie too is an inventor. He has brewed up a drink of household chemicals that can possibly kill. “You have to know how to drink it,” he tells the Master. Lancaster is charmed and fascinated by this concoction. The only reason he seems to allow Freddie aboard the chartered cruise ship wedding of his daughter seems to be for the stowaway’s ability to concoct this cocktail. But Freddie also offers honesty unparalleled by any of the followers of the Master’s Cause. While everyone else, including Lancaster’s wife (Amy Adams playing cold and distant), 
seem like sycophants who follow the Master in order to be like him, Freddie offers something better. He is Lancaster’s best friend, and I mean best friend with the devotion of a dog. Freddie enjoys the teachings for what they are: games to play for the Master’s love.
One of the more intense moments of the film occurs early in Freddie and Lancaster’s relationship, on board the ship, when Lancaster offers Freddie “processing” (a reference to Scientology). This indoctrination involves a ritual in the form on an interview that is recorded. The Master asks Freddie a series of yes or no questions about his personality. When the Master asks Freddie whether he is unpredictable, Freddie responds with a fart. “Silly animal,” the Master tells him.
When Lancaster declares Freddie has finished his first round of processing, Freddie asks for more like an eager child. The Master agrees, but only if Freddie promises not to blink during the next series of questions. If he does blink, he will have to start over from the first question. During this second level of processing, the questions and answers prove stomach-churning, probing even deeper into Freddie’s personal life (“Have you ever had sex with a member of your family?”). 
Not only does Freddie not blink, but he sheds tears from holding his eyes open. For what some will consider trauma, to Freddie it’s about complying to the rules of a game. The fact that he “cries” as part of the game and not the trauma, heightens the character. It’s a powerful moment for Phoenix. I have only seen that done once before: in one of Andy Warhol’s screen tests when Ann Buchanan, a Bohemian follower of the art scene that thrived among the Beat generation, resists blinking for the entire 4-and-a-half-minutes of the reel of 16mm film that comprised these series of “screen tests.” It offers an interesting dichotomy with response to a true-life figure with the cult of personality.
Freddie’s primal mannerisms are further highlighted later in the film when he sits in the corner of a home where Lancaster has paid a visit in order to share his teachings. As the room erupts in song, Freddie sits there like a resting beast… staring. If one thinks Freddie has seriously bought into the Master’s preaching, watch as all the women suddenly appear naked as the singing and dancing continues. They do not react to their own nudity, as this clearly represents what Freddie is “seeing.”
When police take Lancaster away from the home in handcuffs on a warrant for malpractice, the Master yells about the preposterous idea that police of this city would dare think they have jurisdiction over his body (his belief is that his soul has lived trillions of years, after all). Freddie lashes out to defend the Master, and the police need four to five men to hold him down and cuff him. Meanwhile, the Master yells, “Freddie, stop!”
The paradox of these two men is further on display when they are thrown into two neighboring jail cells. Freddie continues his rampage at the cell’s furnishings while the Master leans against one cot with one arm. “Your fear of capture and imprisonment is an implant from millions of years ago,” he yells at Freddie, “implanted with a push-pull mechanism.”
There is no belief system going on with a devout follower. This is a scary representation of programmed fundamentalism, one of the scariest aspects of our society. There are Christian movements whose members will murder abortion doctors to save theoretical lives, as there are Muslims who blow themselves up for their own cause. But these are news stories, things on paper or things that pass in 20-second soundbites. What more powerful way to shake up the film-going, escapism-searching audience than through two intense character sketches on the big screen?
The director achieves this masterfully, if you will pardon the pun. Not only is The Master about a love affair between these two but a third man: the director himself. Everything he does in the film serves to magnify these two great actors’ performances. He did the same for Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, Tom Cruise in Magnolia (1999), Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love (2002) and Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. All of those films and performances served to enhance their careers as actors.
The dialogue in the Master (Anderson also wrote the original script) is never more efficient than in that “processing” session described earlier. Phoenix does much when he spits out one-word answers to the Master’s terse, biting questions. The film may sound long at two hours and 15 minutes, but I can appreciate a film that earns a long runtime, and the Master does this, even if it is only about the dynamic of two men in a relationship. The film has a hypnotic quality. The camera is allowed to linger in order to activate the viewer’s own imagination and knowledge of history of the times, as the film is filled with subtle postwar trauma. 
Anderson does wonders not only in these moments that linger, recalling Kubrick and Malick, but he does something miraculous and rare with placement of a camera and the scenery it captures. He catches almost tactile moments of the time. The viewer will notice transporting details when the camera pans over part of a car, allowing a moment for the viewer to notice the gap between the door and the quarter panel, the dust on the paint, the sheen on the glass, the design of the side-view mirror. Early in the film, as sailors back from the war climb a circular staircase, the grime in the corner of the stairwell and the echo of footsteps says more about the era than the uniforms alone. It’s a refined moment of attention to detail unparalleled in any earlier film by Anderson. He has attained another level of mastery of mise-en-scène.
Clearly tempting the director and his cinematographer, Mihai Malaimare Jr., in some indulgence in imagery is the fact they shot on 65mm film stock. This makes the film perfect for the big screen, especially if you can find a theater screening the movie in 70mm. However, as an intimate drama, it sounds counter-intuitive to have bothered with such film for such a presentation. It is not. These are some large personalities that inform the film, and what better testament to such grandiose figures than large format film. Their occasional juxtaposition to the open sea and vast desert landscapes translate to not only breathtaking imagery but as a metaphor for these people who indeed believe they have souls older than the earth.
Another grand element of the film is its score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who also worked with Anderson on There Will Be Blood. The clunk in the music’s soundtrack that introduces Freddie and his fellow seaman is the same sound of Freddie squeezing the lost drops of his drink from a flask later in the film. From the creepy clarinet that provides the score to Freddie’s “mixology” in the photo lab at the store where he is first seen working to the sweeping strings that augment the open sea, Anderson does not waste a single note of the score. Meanwhile, Greenwood seems to channel Ligeti in the mix of beauty and cacophony of the ever-shifting music.
The director also uses popular music of the era with enthralling results. Just as Anderson used Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” to ominous effect in Boogie Nights (1997), he re-contextualizes Ella Fitzgerald singing “Get Thee Behind Me Satan,” early in the Master. Though it does not feel nearly as stressful as the botched drug deal in Boogie Nights, the song is just as effectively utilized, as the placement of the lyrics and images are not left to haphazard atmospherics. Anderson’s framing flows as musically as Fitzgerald’s patient, silky voice. Edits are placed at the right moments as the camera glides along, always watching Freddie, as he flirts with a female co-worker.
But the real love affair is that between Freddie and the Master, and it is an epic thing to watch unfold. Like any fiery love affair, it does burn itself out by film’s end. When it does, Anderson presents a pair of enlightening moments that seem to reveal an unseen depth to Freddie, best served for the audience to discover. The Master will beguile those starved for a powerful character drama, and, once again, Anderson does not let down, as he continues to grow into one of the handful of great original directors who can maintain a vision and pull it off within the high-profile world of the Hollywood system.
One more trailer:
The Master is Rated R and runs 137 min. It opens in wide release today. If you want to know where to catch the Master in 70mm, jump over to this great Paul Thomas Anderson fan site. Annapurna Pictures hosted a preview screening for the purpose of this review.
Greenberg: The Great Projector
March 24, 2010
With Greenberg, director Noah Baumbach sharpens his usual focus on the greedy tics of self-absorbed protagonists by pointing his camera on nothing less than a formerly institutionalized misanthrope, probably his most extremely dysfunctional character to date. But the title character is something much more than a self-centered egoist who hates people. He re-directs the hatred he has for himself into disdain for the behaviors of not only what he perceives are the common masses but the actions of those that love him. Baumbach and his wife, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, craft a masterful script to form Greenberg, and Ben Stiller does an amazing, patient job at bringing this character to life.
Greenberg is a carpenter with an attitude fueled by a passion for letters of complaint to companies like Starbucks and American Airlines and wistful memories from the 80s of playing in a new wave/post-punk trio that nearly signed a major label deal. But the only real talent he has is finding something to complain about in every situation he stumbles into, especially with those he thinks he knows. His letters are nothing compared to the anger he throws on those closest to him.
After supposedly being released from a mental hospital, Greenberg, a New York transplant, finds himself house-sitting for his brother in Los Angeles. While Greenberg’s brother heads off to enjoy Vietnam with his wife and kids, Greenberg is left to tend to the family dog, who has grown weak with an autoimmune disorder (Greenberg at one point worries about catching the dog’s illness, but it’s as if the dog actually caught it from him). In the meantime, he takes advantage of his brother’s personal assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig), an aspiring singer in her mid 20s with a weak self-esteem. 
Despite his crude manner of canceling a date with her at a bar to instead split her only bottle of beer at her place, she accepts his advances for a brief sexual encounter that ends as abruptly as it had begun, doing nothing for either one of them.
As their relationship turns on but mostly off, the care of the dog seems to provide the only glue that can hold them together. Greenberg also spends much of his time catching up with his former band mate and longtime friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans), a soft-spoken man whose 10-year marriage with the mother of his only son has begun to unravel. Greenberg is more happy about the marriage’s dissolution than he is about signs Ivan can work it out. During a dinner out with Ivan and Florence, Greenberg suddenly shuts down an attempt by Ivan to celebrate Greenberg’s 40th birthday by having the waiters bring over a cake and sing “Happy Birthday” with a tantrum. These two characters’ generous attempts to show Greenberg some affection coupled with their own sorry states provide the perfect foils for Greenberg, whose weak anger could find no more comfortable place (there are some brief moments when Greenberg tries to confront strangers to sad but funny ineffectiveness).
Stiller’s performance is nothing short of brave because you can bet lots of people will come to this movie expecting the buffoonery that helped get him the popularity he currently enjoys. But this movie is no Dodge Ball or Tropic Thunder. The last time Stiller did something this low-key was in Reality Bites, though the Greenberg character is probably as ugly as the one in Permanent Midnight, a hardcore tragic drama of a man’s rise and fall in the world of writing a sitcom for TV, based on the true story of the writer behind “ALF.” That film remains one of his least popular.
In Greenberg, Stiller captures his character’s complex as much with his pauses and silences as with his harsh opinions. 
At Greenberg’s low-key 40th birthday celebration, when Ivan says, “Youth is wasted on the young,” Greenberg responds by saying, “I’d go further,” while staring down at his menu. “I’d say life is wasted on … people.”
I was hoping this to be a laugh-a-minute, though self-deprecating film like the Squid and the Whale, but Baumbach has taken the self-deprecation to a whole new level, along the lines of Margot at the Wedding. Greenberg is a dark glimpse into a man who only seems misanthropic but is actually more in love with his sad, negative self than anyone else around him. Greenberg is a walking pile of hang-ups that he constantly projects on others. What he hates about people is what he hates about himself. Throughout the movie, Greenberg meets people who have moved on and grown up, while Greenberg seems to delight in his therapist’s analysis of his issues. Toward the end of the movie, he attempts to bond with Florence telling her, “My shrinks says, I have trouble living in the present, so I linger on the past because it felt like I didn’t ever really live it in the first place.” Again, his attempts to bond with others turns to himself.
The movie culminates with a drug-fueled party, where Greenberg finally gets a look in the mirror per se, as scores of young people surround him, and it’s literally an unrecognizable, lifeless creature floating in his brother’s pool with a single eye staring back at him. From here on, he can either choose to run further from himself and his life or dive in and start to finally live. In the Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus wrote, “This world has a higher meaning that transcends its worries, or nothing is true but those worries. One must live with time or die with it, or else elude the greater life.” Baumbach offers no clear answers as to whether this lump of wounded humanity has learned to take personal responsibility for maintaining a relationship. The audience can only hope that Greenberg’s choice at the end of the movie to not run away from his developing sense of self is but the start of something remotely caring of others.
In the end, Greenberg proves itself as one of those rare character studies that keeps you hooked with interest thanks to a strongly drawn out and naturally played unstable protagonist (reminiscent of Adam Sandler’s turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s under-appreciated Punch Drunk Love). Stiller’s subtle acting is a refreshing change from his usual shrill, over-the-top clowns. Credit is also due to the supporting work by Gerwig and Ifans, who play people with more subtle hang-ups, yet know how to live in their skin with just enough comfort. Baumbach has turned one of the darker corners of his film career, but it shines an amazing spotlight on human behavior.
Greenberg is rated ‘R’ and opens in wide release on Friday, March 26.
Independent Ethos 