Greenberg

“Hurt people hurt people.” Greenberg is as pleasant as a boil on your backside (like most of Baumbach’s protagonists). He is self-centred, obsessed with control, impatient, unsociable and with occasional outbursts of rage. We only gradually find out the reasons for his behaviour and begin to understand him and perhaps even empathise with him. Like Florence, who is much more open to the world around her and seems to be fine, except she isn’t. Almost no one is. Not even the dog named Mahler, thanks to which the central couple meet and toward which everyone in the film is more perceptive and compassionate than to any human. Greenburg is simply not a feel-good romantic comedy about a flawed protagonist who gains understanding and sees the light, but rather an ironic, unapologetic portrait of an unhappy man who pines for his wasted youth and searches for a fulfilling existence and a soulmate with whom he can get along at least as well as with his friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans in one of the few normal roles). Communication is a stumbling block. The characters don’t listen to each other, as they think and speak only of themselves (the film ends hopefully when one of the characters is about to listen to another, even if only from the answering machine). They are unable to synchronise their rhythms. The main thing that I appreciate about Baumbach is the distance that he manages to keep from the protagonists of his stories (which perhaps helped here by the fact that Jennifer Jason Leigh co-wrote the story with him). He doesn’t pressure us to like them and he doesn’t shy away from ambivalence and awkwardness. With its clever, relaxed humour and numerous casually delivered lines that you think about long after seeing the film (“nobody cares if I get up in the morning”), the dialogue is subordinated to the directing, with precisely timed cuts, compositions that tell us about the relationships between the characters, and a narrative pace that corresponds to the pace of the characters’ lives. Noah Baumbach is an excellent director and screenwriter, and in Greenberg – as compared to the “hip” Frances Ha – he doesn’t feel the need to show it off. And I like that. 75% (07/01/2023)

Ben Stiller calmed down a bit and in this movie he played a wet blanket, who livens up a bit towards the ending and the whole film livens up with him. Nevertheless, I have to say that I quite enjoyed this American indie drama. The characters were interesting, the plot moved along quite well, and it even got pretty good pace towards the end. Seeing Ben Stiller in this intimate movie is rather a surprise as I’m not used to him being in this kind of movies. His movies are usually comedies, sometimes good, sometimes worse, but this is a real life story. (25/04/2013)