If you were making idle conversation, say, with a friend of yours – not a good friend mind you, more like somebody that you have an ongoing cordial relationship with – and let’s say that this acquaintance was a self proclaimed independent ‘filmatic’, and this friendquaintance suddenly, and without warning, off the cuff asserts that, “mumblecore is the next big movement in film for any new director who is serious about the art of film-making”, then you would probably be pretty pissed off at the world, wouldn’t you? And rightly so. I mean, where do these f#$king hipster’s get off?
I reject the idea of a world where people can use a term as stupid as “mumblecore” in a sentence without repercussion. It’s just a stupid stupid word. It’s so infuriating to me. And here’s what’s more annoying. I’m now going to do you the honor of explaining what mumblecore is, and I guarantee you that I’ll get emails from hipsters telling me that I got it wrong. To me it’s the equivalent to confusing ‘Manga’ with graphic novels. Don’t ever make that mistake around a hipster. You need to trust me on this. To a hipster Manga and graphic novels are entirely different things. To the rest of the world they’re both comic books.
Even directors that make mumblecore films dislike the term “mumblecore”. Andrew Bujalski and Joe Swanberg are two of a handful of directors that, since 2002, have generated the 20-25 films that comprise this echelon within independent films known as mumblecore. According to a NY Times article on the subject, Swanberg referred to the term as “obnoxious” while Bujalski issued an apology for ever mentioning the word, which he did during an interview with Indiewire.com and apparently from that point on introduced the disgraced word into the wider film society vocabulary.
The reason why the volume of mumblecore films is so small is certainly not due to any hurdles involving cost or talent. Most films cost in the area of several thousand dollars, tend to be funded by the director and/or cast, and make use of unpaid actors, in some cases people with no prior acting experience. My guess is that the limitation comes down to how strictly the genre is defined. As I understand the definition, a film is mumblecore if it captures the post-graduate college existence as one struggles to transition into a larger world, where characters have a non-professional or nonexistent career, tend to be poor, and tend to enjoy talking about ideas, but commonly in an indirect manner, kind of like Clerks, but minus the unnatural grandiose dialog. The content tends to involve casual sex and nudity, to an extent where movies would get an NC-17 or worse rating if they were actually of large enough budget to be rated. The films are of lo-fi production quality, and are filmed using a handheld camera, in many cases with the cameraman using jerky motions and uncalled for changes of focus. In short, these are “micro-budget independent movies”, as one New Yorker article puts it. I prefer the term micro-budget independent movie, and so will use it from this point on.
Cyrus (2010), a new film written and directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, two notable mumblecore directors, employs 3 outstanding actors in the form of John C Reilly (Walk Hard, Drunk History Vol. 6), Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny, The Wrestler, Seinfeld), and Jonah Hill (every funny movie since 2007 including Superbad, Funny People and Get Him to the Greek). Due to this, and other things such as the subject matter and the fact that the movie was released by Fox Searchlight, the film is decidedly not of the mumblecore – er, micro-budget independent movie – persuasion, though one can see influences within the shaky camerawork and improvised acting. It is instead an eloquently subtle comedy about the fragile endurance of love between two people when confronted with the baggage that each one carries.
Reilly plays a familiar role (Magnolia) as John, a likable, vocally honest and quick to fall in love single guy who has just found out that his ex-wife is getting married. Despite the fact that he is 7 years divorced this comes as the 400th blow to John, who is already in a self-described tailspin and living a solitary life in his own filth. His ex-wife Jamie (Catherine Keener), who also happens to remain his best friend, is determined to not let this news sink him further, and takes John out to a party so that he can reintegrate himself into society. John is handed a vodka drink by Jamie and her husband and is then coaxed into talking with the ladies at the party. As John tries and fails in several attempts to meet somebody he steadily drains down one vodka drink after another until he is suddenly slurring words, talking to himself, and pissing on bushes. Just when the audience expects things to spin outrageously out of control, John meets a beautiful single woman named Molly (Tomei) who he impresses with his stellar mixture of karaoke and dance moves.
John and Molly soon find themselves in a quickly developing yet very sweet romance. But Molly is strangely reluctant to spend long periods of time with John and he soon realizes that she never invites him over to her house. Suspicious, John follows Molly back to her place and stakes out the scene. When Molly leaves for the day John performs reconnaissance on the home where he is discovered by what ends up being the other man in Molly’s life – Cyrus, her twenty-something-year old live at home son. When Molly comes home she doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with this intrusion of John into her home, but she allows him to stay the night.
We soon suspect that something is just not quite right with Cyrus. Following a touching scene in Molly’s bedroom where Cyrus tells John that he is happy to finally have a father in the house, he proceeds to walk past John into the bathroom where Molly is showering and close the door. Moments later they both exit, Molly in only a towel, and we begin to wonder if there is something strangely Oedipal happening here. Another scene that occurs later in the kitchen involving a knife takes it a step further into the realm of Psycho. When John awakes the next morning to find his Adidas sneakers missing he is completely confounded and perturbed. Did Cyrus steal them? Did Molly steal them? Did the two of them conspire together to take the sneakers?
Cyrus’s attachment to his mother and jealousy towards other men in short time sets the two men at odds and relations deteriorate in the direction of an all out war where each man struggles to show Molly that the other man is evil and should be banished from her home. Yet, because Molly loves both of them, each man struggles to find a means to stain the character of the other while still keeping up friendly appearances while in her presence.
It is at this point that most comedies would spend an hour dwelling on the two as they heroically battle over the woman that they love. With two actors gifted in comedy such as Reilly and Hill, one almost expects it, and I think it is safe to say that some people attending the movie will be turned off by the fact that the movie takes a much more nuanced approach. This is actually a consistent device used throughout the movie, whether at the party early in the movie, during the rift between John and Cyrus as they fight for Molly, and even at the end. The climax becomes anti-climatic, which surly leads to a lost opportunity in generating laughter but at the same time results in a much more realistic and heartfelt movie.
Reilly, Tomei and Hill deliver outstanding performances throughout the film and the improvisation certainly works here to deliver a more candid and immediate experience despite the strange and dark subject matter. Hill plays his character exceedingly well, and despite the laughs that he generates one expects throughout the movie that at some point he is just going to snap and kill a couple of people. The directors’ use of the handheld camera is a little gimmicky and unnecessary. Though the filming is indeed shaky, I found the main issue to be the use of arbitrary shifts in focus during a scene where the technique was both unnecessary and distracting. I only noticed this a few times, but during these times I did find myself suddenly aware of the camera, thus taking me out of the experience.
Overall I think that this is a movie worth seeing, but check your expectations for a zany and outrageous comedy at the door. I give it 5 puppets!
Cyrus
(5 puppets)