In the early moments of While We’re Young, writer-director Noah Baumbach’s charming, glossy, and freshly funny exercise on aging and generational anxiety, a childless forty-something couple, Josh and Cornelia (lovably played by Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts), are lectured by their friends on the wonders of parenthood. Baumbach stages a hilarious visual duel as the camera rapidly shifts between an arrogant, norm-abiding parent couple and a pair that takes pride in their cool, spontaneous lifestyle. Baumbach grants his audience with some very well-known, deliciously juicy social stereotypes, but only to turn them all on their heads later. And this is precisely why the initially slight-looking While We’re Young bares continuous complexity, with characters generously allowed to take a transformative journey and slowly unveil imperfections and insecurities. Thus, with the exception of Frances Ha, Baumbach’s troubled, lost-in-life, somewhat neurotic characters (reminiscent of those in Greenberg) have never been more accessible.
It turns out Josh and Cornelia, a documentarian/professor and producer, respectively, aren’t necessarily childless by choice and most of the incentives their unchained lives offer seem to go unclaimed. They realize, for instance, that their last trip together semi-impulsively was several years ago. But they have a pool of excuses to dip into to justify missed opportunities and unlived experiences. Josh’s unfinished and long-in-the-works documentary—about an essential yet indecipherable American subject matter that he can never describe succinctly—is at the top of that list. But the feeling of wanting to do everything yet doing nothing in particular seems to have taken hold. Often buried in their electronic devices, we get to see them browse but never actually engage, until a young, hipster couple, Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried), come into the picture, claiming to be fans of Josh’s work. Awakening Josh and Cornelia’s dying connection to life, Jamie and Darby seem to have all the answers in their artisanal ways and in-the-moment lifestyles, lavishly one-upping all the good things the older generations willingly dropped the ball on. They “make” things, travel by bike (natch), wear hip clothes (those damn fedoras), learn how to dance to hip-hop, and, in one illuminating scene, refuse to look at their smart-phones to get a piece of information. “Let’s try to remember it instead,” says Jamie whimsically. “Let’s not know it,” he continues, drawing shocked looks from Josh and Cornelia.
But are Jamie, a nascent documentarian, and Darby really that naïve, and authentically dismissive of capitalistic, success-driven methods? Or are they products of an increasing sense of entitlement within a generation whose smug disregard of “process” directly clashes with the brand it has established for itself? While Josh struggles with cutting his own rambling, overlong film (refusing notes from Cornelia’s dad, Leslie Breitbart, a legendary filmmaker about to be honored by Lincoln Center), he helps Jamie with a documentary project only to uncover Jamie’s corner-cutting, poor ethical choices.
While We’re Young opens with a segment of Henrik Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” on title card, when Hilde advises Solness to let the young people in through the door. Having done exactly that, Josh and Cornelia not only come to terms with their own age limitations, but also understand the divide between themselves and a generation already filling their shoes. Meanwhile, back within their age group, their friends prove to be not as square as they have suspected. They have trendy parties and own up to all those things parenthood and aging have stolen from them, finally presenting the challenges certain milestones in life bring with a comforting inclusiveness. And Baumbach makes sure these interconnected pieces all fit in, and add up to something enlightening. Like some of Woody Allen’s best New York-based work, his observant writing truly blows the lid off many preconceived notions about labels various age groups decisively wear on their sleeves. There are no definite heroes or villains here—just shifting values that reward the good old human vanity in a new, locally-grown/artisanal/organic (insert your own buzz word here) way.
