“Your first film was entertaining. It was honest. This feels so ungenerous, like you took your ball and went home.”
This slap to the ego is delivered in writer-director Noah Baumbach’s latest serio-comedy, While We’re Young. The recipient, Josh (Ben Stiller), is a middle-aged, childless husband with a floundering film career and early stage arthritis. The assailant is his father-in-law, Leslie (Charles Grodin)—a highly accomplished documentarian and the embodiment of Josh’s unrealized success—in his effort to, essentially, pull Josh’s head out of his ass. The undercurrent of shifting social strains swirls around them.
In his 20 years as a filmmaker, Baumbach, a shah of contemporary indie, has navigated the waters of human dynamics and self-discovery—messy, sad, funny, banal, and hopeful self-discovery. From the angst of liberal arts college grads, to the looming threat of patriarchal disapproval, to fallout of hyper-rationalized parenting, to fear that even the sharpest socio-cultural savvy has an expiration date, he’s built a career cataloguing imperfect people doing the best they can. And although the objects of his attention vary through the years, ultimately, you write about what you know—even if all you know is you don’t have the answers.
On a recent episode of Girls, Hannah’s father confides in his wife about a long-held secret and she, in reliable fashion, spins his vulnerable moment into a court session about her struggles, her needs, and her wants.
“This isn’t about you,” he tells her.
“But… it’s not not about me.”
The autobiographical component of Baumbach’s work is raised repeatedly in press conferences and interviews. The question warrants reiteration. His characters, primarily malcontents without a cause, are vastly similar throughout his films—disarmingly in touch with their lesser instincts and sweetly unaware of their place in the world, their conflicts reflecting many that Baumbach has dealt with himself. He’s also a shameless recycler of old material, often rewriting lines from his previous films and repurposing character or situational descriptions. And for two decades, Baumbach has given a variation of the same answer whenever there’s a new film to answer for: it’s not not about me.
Baumbach’s attitude on life as material for movies is well-documented and autobiographical elements appear in most all his films, sometimes down to the dialogue. There’s a scene in While We’re Young when Amanda Seyfried says, before throwing back hallucinatory root juice, “This is our twenties!” It’s what Greta Gerwig, his girlfriend and writing partner, said after meeting Laurence Fishburne at a theater in New York many years ago. Baumbach, with Woody Allen-esque neuroses and sensibilities of a less pungent Philip Roth, is a better tour guide than storyteller in the director’s chair, having dedicated his life to surveying every square inch of the timeline and landscape of his life.
Baumbach graduated from Vassar in 1991 and premiered his first film, Kicking and Screaming, in 1995 to modest fame and critical acclaim. His entertaining and honest debut follows a group of recent college graduates who pride themselves on their postmodern intellect but lament an ennui-filled post-collegiate world where their classroom acumen won’t cut it. They brood over losing an identity their parents paid for (“Eight hours ago I was Max Belmont, English major, college senior. Now I’m Max Belmont who does nothing,” one character states) and dismiss their girlfriends’ plans for grad school in Prague as exhausted clichés (“Oh, I’ve been to Prague. Well, I haven’t ‘been to Prague’ been to Prague, but I know that thing, that ‘stop shaving your armpits, read Unbearable Lightness of Being’… thing”).
Kicking and Screaming showcased Baumbach’s pointed social observations and devastating wit, now cornerstones of his work. It displayed an acute awareness of the perks and paralysis of high-culture upbringing through an onslaught of self-referential jabs—like mocking twenty-somethings who reference Kafka, while Baumbach himself is a twenty-something referencing Kafka.
Kicking and Screaming, added to the Criterion Collection in 2006, circles some of the material that would later become Baumbach’s meat and potatoes: insecurity, fear—not so much of failure as not achieving the right success—and destructive family dynamics, especially between parent and child. But his plunge into profundity wouldn’t come for another 10 years, and his next move was instead to attempt a genre film, the plucky and easily forgotten Mr. Jealousy (1997). Starring many of the faces seen in Kicking and Screaming — Eric Stoltz, Carlos Jacott, Chris Eigeman—Jealousy is Baumbach’s rom-com submission, and one he wouldn’t repeat. In a 2013 interview with The New Yorker, he recalled that when his good friend Wes Anderson delivered Rushmore in 1998, “I saw that he really was doing what was interesting to him, and he was trusting that that would be interesting to other people … I thought, ‘He’s comfortable making his own genre.’”
Seeing Anderson carve his own style had a life-changing impact. Following Baumbach’s since-annulled Highball in 1997, which was released without his blessing, he took an eight-year hiatus, during which he helped pen such Anderson staples as Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr. Fox. He also spent a lot of time in therapy, which he credits with allowing him to access the more personal material for his next three films.
His Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale (which Anderson produced) came in 2005. It’s pegged as Baumbach’s most autobiographical film, and introduces the crippling anguish and affectionate humor that became his trademark character molds. “It’s just I find the same thing funny and sad simultaneously,” Baumbach said of Squid and the Whale. The movie centers around a Brooklyn-based family dealing with divorce and both parents are highly cerebral writers, as Baumbach’s are. Bernard (Jeff Daniels), the father, is a shamelessly self-involved author who resents his wife’s commercial success. He pans A Tale of Two Cities as “minor Dickens,” and refers to Kafka as “one of my predecessors.” As the son of two writers—both part-time film critics and part of the NYC cultural literati—many of little Noah’s evenings were spent listening to his parents wax intellectual around the dinner table, one of the memories re-created in the film. And the Park Slope, Brooklyn native has talked about scarfing down the denser, lesser-known works of famous authors at a young age—even if the subject matter was too advanced to appreciate or comprehend. Ultimately, The Squid and the Whale, equal parts tragic and hilarious, is about son Walt’s (a budding Jesse Eisenberg) relationship with his dad, and forgiving him for not being the god among men he, in Walt’s mind, promised he was.
His next film, Margot at the Wedding, came in 2007 and is loosely based on his mother, Georgia Brown, starring Nicole Kidman as an author and imperious narcissist. Margot wears a wide-brimmed red hat like a crown and warns her son he’ll get cancer if he uses deodorant. Margot is melancholy, crass, and at the time, was Baumbach’s least sympathetic film. It goes harder on the bitter and softer on the sweet tone Baumbach had previously exhibited in his work. But, like Squid, it was his exercise in reconciling irredeemable qualities in characters he loves, where Greenberg (2010), his third production of material mined in therapy, starring Ben Stiller as a wayward misanthrope fresh to Los Angeles, was his attempt to reconcile those qualities in himself. And weaved through the apprehensive grumbling and anxious ticks remained a refreshing, almost communal sense of calm resignation. Nothing is good, everyone is terrible, but hope is sacred and there’s much to laugh about, so just smile through your eye-roll.
Greta Gerwig bounded into Baumbach’s life during the making of Greenberg, where she starred opposite Stiller as his brother’s younger assistant, who’s “been out of college for as long as I was in.” Jennifer Jason Leigh filed for divorce in 2010, and soon after came news that Baumbach was dating Gerwig. They began writing together and their early work culminated in their first production as co-writers, 2012’s Frances Ha. Baumbach likened the whimsical jaunt to a three-minute pop song and it was certainly an unanticipated departure. While We’re Young, which just hit theaters in limited release, might be his most commercial, but Frances Ha is his most cinematic—the quintessential love letter to New York. Shot in black and white, he captures Gerwig twirling and tripping through the streets of New York with forgiving affection and elegance. It’s delightful—gracious, caring, and funny. He guides Frances Ha with selfless optimism and adoration for a world reintroduced, an ode to a new life made richer by young hearts, young love, shared cigarettes on a fire escape, and afternoon beer.
While We’re Young is Baumbach’s return from romantic sabbatical and back to his 9-5 routine of surveying the social and emotional landscape inside and out, although this time he doesn’t seem as taken with the terrain.
Minimal plots, deft dialogue and understated, naturalistic performances are guiding elements Baumbach uses to magnify realistic everyday nuance and eliminate the distraction of theatrical bombast. He is typically a man of shrewd subtlety. He doesn’t ask or try to answer the big questions and he doesn’t wrestle angels—he’s on a microcosmic quest to find out what it really means to wear a leather jacket. But as a filmmaker, his ability to afford his characters profound sympathy while maintaining at least the illusion of impartiality dignifies his work with goodwill and overall trust. He has great adoration, if not always the utmost respect, for his characters. While We’re Young is a separation from his other films because of his palpable emotional struggle with one position over another. He’s careful to avoid outright endorsement, but some things you can’t wipe off your sleeve.
When Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) befriend a fresh n’ easy bohemian chic Brooklyn couple 20 years their junior, it reignites a spark in their marriage. They’re drawn to their youthful enthusiasm like wasps to the light of a country club brunch hall, treating them with the borderline-creepy fascination host families sometimes treat an au pair. Jamie (Adam Driver) is an aspiring documentary filmmaker and commissions Josh to mentor him, much to Josh’s flattery. Entitled and obnoxiously detached, Jamie, with his YouTube jam bands and ironic cowboy hat, makes his own furniture “because it’s cheaper” and uses a typewriter the same way families sometimes take the subway for fun. His wife, Darby (Seyfried), walks a line between aloof and unimpressed, and keeps busy with hip-hop classes and making organic almond-milk ice cream. They’re exhausting.
Baumbach’s use of documentary filmmaking as the occupational focus of While We’re Young, a profession built on capturing “the truth” on camera (a metaphor also called on in Life Aquatic), helps reveal its true colors. In one culminating scene, after Josh learns Jamie took undisclosed liberties while making a documentary, he tracks Jamie down at an awards ceremony to confront him, expose the truth, and save the day. For a few moments, Jamie is backed into a corner to the side of the frame, the camera swiveling for sparring effect, while Josh tells him he’s a fraud and a piece of shit. It’s the biggest triumph of the film. After all, it’s about ethics in documentary journalism.
Baumbach has always taken great care not to compromise integrity, however self-involved his candor may be, and with honesty inherently comes vulnerability. Much of Josh’s fascination and contempt for Jamie is borne from Jamie’s reckless confidence. He’s unfazed by the possibility of failure or disappointment. At first, Josh is reinvigorated by his gall and supposed appreciation for art and commitment to craft. Seeing in Jamie the untapped potential of his younger, hipper self, Josh jumps onto Jamie’s film project. But Josh soon realizes Jamie doesn’t follow the same code. Jamie is committed, but emotionally adrift. He buys a record or plays a board game for their novelty, and without sincerity. He’s surrounded himself with copies of artifacts from the stories he’s been told; the things in his life are his toys, not his treasures.
Few toil over the many interpretations of ill-fitting outerwear the way Baumbach does. The nuance in everyday culture and chemistry that accompanies the burden of privilege is overwhelming to his and Josh’s generation, whereas Jamie’s is simply over it. While We’re Young signals Baumbach may be going through the motions of convincing himself the new normal has as much merit as the old, but when Darby says to Josh, “You know how Jamie and I are going to get old? Just like everyone else,” it lifts the curtain on Baumbach’s deeper convictions.
A scream becomes a yawn and the truth won’t set you free. While We’re Young is Baumbach’s most vitriolic film and represents a small white flag that stood in place of the ball he walked home with. Nothing is good, everyone is terrible, but hope is tiring and he’s running out of things to laugh about.