Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach, 2007)

[domino harvey]

I should have been more clear, I meant huge relative to an art house film. I am not anticipating a Transformers-level of viewership or anything. I just think a lot of people stayed away because of the negative buzz around the film and they're in for a real treat!

[hot_locket]

The characters are all brutal in one way or another towards each other and themselves to a spectacular degree. I can't stop thinking about Margot's response to her son after

Spoiler

Her sister messes herself after the car accident: "It will happen to you some day."

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just thought this line was

Spoiler

a rare act of decency for the benefit of her sister, trying to make her mistake seem less of a total embarrassment.

I could be reading that totally wrong, though.

[domino harvey]

Spoiler

Well, it seemed like one of many moments where Margot starts off doing the right thing (here by her sister) but spoils it immediately (here for her son) by still talking. The mindless cruelty isn't towards her sister but her son for no real reason.

But the beauty of a film this dense is there are a lot of directions interpretations can go and no reading is an absolute "right" way!

[pianocrash]

When the line in question was uttered at the screening I attended, a few old ladies gasped, so take that for what's it worth.

[hot_locket]

Either they were just worried how the line might apply to them personally, or I'm totally missing something here.

[margot]

DVD can't come soon enough.

[Barmy]

When the line in question was uttered at the screening I attended, a few old ladies gasped, so take that for what's it worth.

Did they mess themselves too?

[margot]

I got the DVD today. It's a bare-bones release, hopefully one day Criterion might work their magic on this gem.

[Jeff]

It's a bare-bones release

I know it probably doesn't amount to much, but it does have a short interview with Baumbach and JJL, right?

[souvenir]

I know it probably doesn't amount to much, but it does have a short interview with Baumbach and JJL, right?

Yes, it runs about 12 minutes. There are two trailers for Margot also, including the theatrical one. I'm not really sure what else would be appropriate to have on there. I think it's fine as is.

[margot]

I know it probably doesn't amount to much, but it does have a short interview with Baumbach and JJL, right?

Yes, it runs about 12 minutes. There are two trailers for Margot also, including the theatrical one. I'm not really sure what else would be appropriate to have on there. I think it's fine as is.

Commentary?

[souvenir]

I don't see Baumbach doing a commentary. It's like pulling teeth to get him to say anything of substance about his films. On YouTube, the entire New York Film Festival press conference can be watched, with Baumbach, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman and John Turturro, and it's just not very enlightening.

[Matt]

I don't see Baumbach doing a commentary. It's like pulling teeth to get him to say anything of substance about his films. On YouTube, the entire New York Film Festival press conference can be watched, with Baumbach, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman and John Turturro, and it's just not very enlightening.

And to find out exactly why he doesn't like doing commentaries or interviews, watch Margot's bookstore interview scene in the film.

[domino harvey]

His films seem so personal that it's understandable why he wouldn't want to expand on inspirations. I can't wait to watch my DVD later tonite. "Love" the rental-gray disc too-- gee Sony way to splurge #-o

[bearcuborg]

I don't see Baumbach doing a commentary. It's like pulling teeth to get him to say anything of substance about his films. On YouTube, the entire New York Film Festival press conference can be watched, with Baumbach, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman and John Turturro, and it's just not very enlightening.

Neither was the film...

[Belmondo]

And to find out exactly why he doesn't like doing commentaries or interviews, watch Margot's bookstore interview scene in the film.

Which is where we find that Ciaran Hinds is actually in this movie which is more than I can say for "There Will Be Blood", which he also claims to be in.
I found this fascinating and agree with Baumbach's comment on the featurette to the effect that "this movie can be experienced as a comedy or a drama depending on which day you see it". Today was the funny day, can't wait until tomorrow.

[domino harvey]

... it's just not very enlightening.

Neither was the film...

Margot would be proud

[John Cope]

Hate to say it but I wasn't too crazy about this. I will add, however, that I haven't struggled more with my reaction to a recent film since There Will Be Blood. It's so very well done in so many ways (in, basically, every way that counts), I'm loathe to admit how very much I disliked it. Part of my disdain, though, does originate in the very fact that Baumbach is dealing from a loaded deck. If one acknowledges how much is done well, precisely and with great sophistication, one is expected to bow one's head in shame for being put off by the "slight matter" of the film's resolute and aggressively hostile, embittered energy. This is, as has been pointed out above, not the kind of thing any valid aesthetic judgement can be based on. But I would argue that it can; that even when great reserves of talent and dedication have been expended, it ultimately can matter little or not at all. Besides, I don't appreciate the obvious and unsophisticated strategy of confronting the audience in this way; it speaks to a lack of real seriousness and a kind of stunted adolescent baiting.

As to the matter of how complex the characters are, I'm not really sure why this kind of achievement is being extolled here while it was seen as a pathetic attempt at depth when Haggis did it in Crash. The defense, I'm sure, will be that Crash is a shitty, pedantic and shallow Statement Film whereas Margot escapes all that by not being interested in any statement whatsoever other than the depiction of the vagaries of daily, family life. Sorry, but not everything is Hou Hsiao-hsien. Just because it avoids obvious didacticism does not confer it with automatic greatness. Yes, we get a surprisingly supple depiction of reality (so much more nuanced it is true than the boring monotone of Joe Swanberg) but I never felt that Baumbach was truly interested in that aspect of things. In the end, Margot feels conventional to me, irritatingly hypocritical because it's so consistently bracing. Baumbach's Statement is clear: we are to learn that yes even Margot is a human being with good and bad traits! If this is the point he's working towards (and after having seen it twice I think it is) than I guess I'm not sorry at all to be dismissive of it.

It's all very observant, sure, but never particularly profound. And if I'm expected to sit through a veritable orgy of hatred (self-directed or otherwise) it better amount to more than that. In the meantime, I'll stick with Jaglom's Last Summer in the Hamptons and Freundlich's elegant, masterful Myth of Fingerprints.

It's more than a little dismaying that Baumbach's finally found his aesthetic footing (and his critical audience) with these last two films. They're well made, of course, but all the fine acting, writing, editing and camerawork in the world can't elevate what are, in essence, works of purely psychoanalytic and anthropological exactitude. The kid who played Claude/Baumbach kept distracting me anyway because he looked so much like a juvenile Josh Hamilton/Jeremy Sisto.

Oh, and I'm really amazed that nobody found the emphatically un-ironic Ancestral though Divisive Family Tree collapsing onto the Tent of Renewal and Rejuvenation sufficient reason to question Baumbach's intellectual integrity. I mean, Jesus, is this John Cheever? He would have never let that shit slide back in the days of Kicking and Screaming, before the onset of contemptible self-seriousness.

[margot]

Is it me or does this film really feel like it's a novel instead of a movie? I really wish it was a book because I so dearly want to read something of this nature.

[Matt]

I love this movie, but something really bothers me at the end when

Spoiler

Nicole Kidman drops her purse and runs after the bus. Why would any woman leave her purse by the roadside? I mean, it's got her wallet in it. I think there's quite an unhealthy dose of histronics there that betrays the otherwise natural tone and performances.

Margot being Margot,

Spoiler

it surely has no cash in it and her driver's license we already know is expired. The only thing of any worth in her purse is probably a joint credit card (with her husband) or two. Considering that the only thing that really means anything to her (including her family, her marriage, and money) is speeding away on a bus, her decision to leave everything else behind (dreadfully symbolic though it may be) makes sense to me.

I've sort of changed my mind on this, or at least partially:

Spoiler

Watching the scene on the DVD a couple of times, I see that Margot drops her sweater and puts her purse down after Claude's bus starts moving away. It appears that she plans to hang out on the pier, maybe sit on the parking curb for a minute to get herself together before she has to go deal with her mother and sisters. In a split second, though, she decided to race after the bus. I don't think she even knows exactly why she is doing it. Maybe she thinks she just needs a better goodbye. I don't think she decides to stay on the bus until she's actually on it. By the time the credits roll, I don't even think Margot realizes that she's left her purse behind. I now realize that the ending is more hopeful than I originally thought because it appears she is going back to Vermont to give her marriage another go. Maybe.

[Murdoch]

Is it me or does this film really feel like it's a novel instead of a movie? I really wish it was a book because I so dearly want to read something of this nature.

I just recently saw this and I agree with you, but I've always felt that Baumbach's films had that sort of feel. I think it's because he's very gifted at showing the subtle emotions characters are feeling, which is something more easily expressed in a novel than a film.

[flyonthewall2983]

I couldn't stand this movie. I loved The Squid And The Whale, but I just found this grating on the nerves. I understand that Margot is supposedly going through some mid-life crisis, but I really don't need to hear her belittle someone every single minute of the movie.

My feelings exactly. It had it's moments, but overall I found it to be painfully boring.

[Anhedionisiac]

Spoiler

Watching the scene on the DVD a couple of times, I see that Margot drops her sweater and puts her purse down after Claude's bus starts moving away. It appears that she plans to hang out on the pier, maybe sit on the parking curb for a minute to get herself together before she has to go deal with her mother and sisters. In a split second, though, she decided to race after the bus. I don't think she even knows exactly why she is doing it. Maybe she thinks she just needs a better goodbye. I don't think she decides to stay on the bus until she's actually on it. By the time the credits roll, I don't even think Margot realizes that she's left her purse behind. I now realize that the ending is more hopeful than I originally thought because it appears she is going back to Vermont to give her marriage another go. Maybe.

Huh. I thought it was pretty clear that the whole point of the scene is to show how utterly bug-fucked Margot's son is. Since his mother won't let him leave her clutches and he doesn't want to, his chances of maturing and becoming a decent person, or at least one able to take care of himself in the real world (remember the way he was incapable of fending off the Tyson-wannabe that lives next door to Pauline?), are more or less nil.

Margot sending him off in the bus was a sound decision but she simply didn't have the will to face separation from him, it frightened her too much. To put it a certain way, being away from her son turned out to feel so different to what she was used to that she thought it wrong and panicked.

Anyways. Not a hopeful ending at all, if you ask me, but certainly a human one. No illusions about the way things are going but they 're not so bad, really, people being people. I could be wrong, of course. Merely projecting or something like that. Do carry on.

[flyonthewall2983]

I guess I should elaborate on my rather brief review. I had three problems with the film, one of which I'm coming to terms with.

The first one is that it was really obvious that Jack Black was really unfit for that kind of role. I'm sure anyone who saw it gave into fits of giggles when he's yelling all of a sudden in the car. Seeing that, I finally got what Chris Rock at the Oscars meant about producers settling on actors when they could have gotten better ones *coughPaulGiamatticough* for a certain role.

The second one is pretty clear as day. How do you cut from the scene of the child cursing at the mother rather loudly after the horrible incident with the hick next-door, her slapping him, and the next scene (oddly enough, that one in the bookstore is one of Nicole's highlights in the film) just goes on as if that last scene was just one that was meant to be excised but lazily left in anyway?

The last one is one I have less misgivings about. The dysfunctional dynamic between this group (Margot's individual relationships between her son and her sister specifically) of characters seemed at first to be very static and not easy to consume as a viewer. But as time has gone on from seeing it, that in itself is more true with dysfunctional families than most things on film about it already. From personal experience, I've seen it happen but not with as much dramatic license as they take here of course. That may explain the sudden emotional 180 I described in the previous paragraph, I don't know.

[cerealiscool]

Although I enjoyed the movie overall, I also thought Jack Black was miscast. He is the perfect type to receive the disdain of Margot, but he just couldn’t pull the acting off in certain places. He was fine up until the tree cutting scene—a cringeworthy attempt at Philip Seymour Hoffman.