Film Review: Baumbach skewers the generation gaps
Your response to films revolving around generation gaps is very likely to be informed — or even dominated — by your own generational affiliation. Writer/director Noah Baumbach is in his mid-40s, as are Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, the stars of his new “While We’re Young,” and Josh and Cornelia, the characters they play. Those not in that age bracket may find it harder to sympathize with their world.
Josh is a once-promising documentarian who has spent the last 10 years shooting and editing a film about the ideas of C. Wright Mills, capitalism, socialism, politics, big business and pretty much anything else that even tangentially relates to them (that is: everything). The never-quite finished film is mostly made up of interview footage of an ancient professor (Peter Yarrow, the Peter who used to be teamed with Paul and Mary), whom even Josh describes as ”uncharismatic.”
Josh began his career under the wing of his father-in-law, a renowned documentarian (Charles Grodin, whose “Heartbreak Kid” role Stiller reprised in its 2007 remake). He’s never advanced from the “protege” stage, so he’s immensely flattered when a fledgling filmmaker named Jamie (Adam Driver) sucks up to him.
The timing is perfect. Josh and wife Cornelia (Watts), who have decided to stop trying for kids, are growing uncomfortable with their baby-centric friends. Suddenly they’re hanging out with Jamie and his wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried), roughly half their age and twice as hip... ultrahip... very now. So now, in fact, as to be a parody of the latest incarnation of nowness. Jamie is also a transparent user, and it’s a sign of Josh’s self-absorption that he doesn’t see Jamie’s self-absorption.
Stiller previously worked with Baumbach in the 2010 “Greenberg,” one of the most squirm-inducing comedies of recent years. (Baumbach also made the equally squirmy “Margot at the Wedding.”) The title character there was in many ways a more exaggerated version of Josh’s worst characteristics.
For those of us who won’t see the south side of 50 again until our next incarnations, Josh’s groaning about encroaching old age is somewhere between ridiculous and irritating. (You think you’ve got it bad now...) Cornelia exhibits some of the same, but she’s painted more sympathetically, simply because she’s painted so sketchily. The screenplay gives the women short shrift; both she and Darby are mere garnishes adorning the groaning platter of their husbands’ narcissism.
“While We’re Young” suggests that each generational shift is a variation on those that have preceded, which is doubtless true to some extent. But a comparison with its most obvious forebears emphasizes how our perception of “young” and “old” has changed. That is, Baumbach and his characters are older than Woody Allen was when he made “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan.” But they never feel to us like “adults” in the same way.
That may be one of the points of the story. Josh seems chronologically stunted even when compared to the most chronologically stunted of a previous generation. He’s a victim of a shift wrought by the Boomers before him, who had a proprietary view of “youth”; they defined themselves as “the youth culture” not because they were young but just because it was theirs. (Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.)
Baumbach is better at tearing his characters down than at resuscitating them. He successfully skewers both Josh and Jamie. But any suggestion that Josh has “grown up” at the end is far less convincing.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).