Review: Greenberg (2010)
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Greenberg (2010)
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Written by Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh
Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig in “Greenberg”
In this odd romcom, Ben Stiller plays a man who is an absolute mess. Just released from a hospital where he recovered from a nervous breakdown, he goes to house-sit for his brother, who has taken along his whole family, minus their german shepherd dog, to Asia on a business trip.
Stiller's character Roger is still pretty impaired: he has no impulse control, almost no empathy, and seems determined to spoil whatever relationships he has left. Circumstances throw him together with Florence (Greta Gerwig), his brother's "assistant." (Apparently it is standard for people in Los Angeles, if they are rich enough, to employ a domestic servant who performs shopping, errands, and administrative tasks at the employer's whim; this is called an "assistant.") When the dog falls ill, Florence helps Roger get the dog to the vet, and then the two of them -- Florence and Roger, I mean -- embark on an utterly disfunctional relationship.
The other plot thread has to do with an incident 15 or 20 years in the past of Roger and his friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans), a former guitar player. Back in the day, their rock band was about to sign a recording contract, but Roger torpedoed the deal, and the others in the band resent him to this day. Actually, Ivan is willing to be a friend to Roger as he recovers from his breakdown, but Roger is the kind of neurotic white man who picks at a scabbed-over wound until it bleeds again, so he must find an excuse to scream at Florence, at Ivan, at his brother on the phone. He doesn't deserve the redemption scene at the film's end, but this -- even this movie featuring staples of the indie film scene of the day -- is Hollywood.
The only thing stranger than the notion that this insufferable man-child is interesting and sympathetic enough to be the focus of a story is that the film was co-written by one of its female co-stars, Jennifer Jason Leigh. If an actor co-writes a film and appears in it, you'd expect their part to be prominent, but to be honest, I have a hard time even remembering her character. I think her character Beth is his ex? So with "Greenberg," Leigh performs a difficult feat: co-writing a movie about an insufferable man and making her own character forgettable.
On the other hand, Gerwig is, as always, supremely memorable. Probably the most important thing about this movie is that it marks a turning point in the careers of Gerwig, its co-star, and Noah Baumbach, its director. Up to this point, Gerwig's main collaborator was Joe Swanberg. Together they made three films: "LOL" (2006), "Hannah Takes the Stairs" (2007), and "Nights and Weekends" (2009). But the following year writer-director Baumbach, who was already an established filmmaker a decade older than Gerwig and Swanberg, cast Gerwig here.
By the time Gerwig and Baumbach made their next film, "Frances Ha" (2012) they were lovers, and that film made Gerwig a breakout star. The rest is history. After a decade of collaboration, he co-wrote and she directed "Barbie," a worldwide hit, and one of the most successful films -- both critically and financially -- in many years.
This film is painful enough to watch (Netflix or Amazon Prime), but if like me you're interested in tracing the careers of Gerwig and Baumbach, it's worth it.
