There isn’t a single truly likeable character in Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding, and there are quite a few that are downright intolerable. It’s an issue that Baumbach, in his follow-up to 2005’s The Squid and the Whale, never completely finds a way to overcome, as the wholesale unpleasantness of most every self-absorbed East Coast intellectual involved in this Rohmer-ian talkfest frustrates attempts to tolerate, let alone empathize with, their myriad dysfunctions. Nonetheless, the odiousness of his protagonists – writer Margot (Nicole Kidman), who having just left her husband, shows up with son Claude (Zane Pais) at sister Pauline’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding to schlub Malcolm (Jack Black) at their old Hamptons family home – isn’t as problematic a factor as is the redundancy (and occasional mean-spiritedness) of his psychological portraits, which are rooted in tangled issues of class, sex, exploitation and honesty. Baumbach’s depiction of these deeply fucked-up people has a consistency that’s admirable, the writer/director never betraying their essential nature. However, their unhealthy patterns of behavior – specifically, those displayed by Margot and Pauline, who want to be close yet share a deep, bitter resentment for each other, as well as between Margot and Claude, with the former simultaneously clinging tightly to, and denigrating as mean and vindictive, the latter – don’t progress so much as repeat in increasingly monotonous ways. Repellent roles aside, Kidman and Leigh are both superb, and Black, embodying an intentionally humorous doofus who’s clearly meant to offset the negativity of those around him, exhibits a reasonably subtle touch. Out of place, though, is the unwarranted nastiness sporadically directed by the filmmaker at Margot and Pauline – such as a public speaking humiliation that culminates with a gratuitous shot of Margot tripping, or Pauline crapping her pants – that eventually calls into question whether Baumbach is interested in examining his characters or just demeaning them.
I watched this one last night (right before "Helvetica" - what a double feature!), and am still trying to wrap my head around certain aspects of it. I don't buy all that Armond White selfishness interpretations stuff (a whole other discussion unto itself), but at times I wasn't sure whether to accept the film's characters as nasty, wounded individuals being given a humane and sympathetic portrayal, or just as siphons for some deeper kind of judgment, as if Baumbach were channeling past experiences into an embarassing display in the same way Margot did (inadvertantly?) in her own writing.
Still love "The Squid and the Whale" though. And I did kinda love all the performers here, even Kidman (which surprised me), and Black most of all. After suffering through Angelina Jolie's carefully calculated wails of agony in "A Mighty Heart" (an opinion I was unsurprised to see expressed in your own review, which I only followed up on after seeing the film myself; some people have told me how similar they think our tastes align), his naked exhibition was a much-needed dose of genuine emotion.
Posted by: rob | December 21, 2007 at 11:47 PM
Rob: There's definitely a sense that Baumbach is working out his own personal stuff in a way similar to Margot's writing, though his feelings about these characters at least seems mixed, whereas Margot seems to be more of a full-on exploiter of her relatives and her past.
And agreed about Black's turn, especially in comparison to Angelina's skin-deep performance in A Mighty Heart...
Posted by: Nick | December 24, 2007 at 02:38 PM