October 10, 2008

Nights and Weekends.

Nights and Weekends "What's bold one day becomes blasé the next, and the sub-subgenre known as mumblecore had no sooner been declared cinema's lo-fi savior than people started sharpening their knives," writes David Fear in Time Out New York. "The result: We've seen a few emerging talents (viva Aaron Katz!) and suffered through a lot of twentysomething filmmakers who mistake solipsism for insight. The jury is still out regarding which category Joe Swanberg fits in, and his latest collaboration with the Julie Christie of no-budget indies - actor, cowriter and codirector Greta Gerwig - doesn't clear up the matter. There are elements of this relationship drama that reflect both what these homegrown, handmade miniatures have to offer and what makes them unbearably grating."

Updated through 10/12.

"[I]f Nights and Weekends distinguishes itself from other films of its kind (and of its admittedly white, urban, yipster demographic), it is because of its surprisingly structured depiction of this relationship and its many private rituals and performances, which the film's unforgiving style continually strips bare," writes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE.

"The subject of the movie is the gulf between persona - how people project an idea of who they are to others - and true self," writes Nathan Lee in the New York Times. "The problem with the movie is that James and Mattie exhibit little but shallow, infantile neurosis, with next to no hint of a complex - or even legible - inner life."

"If Cassavetes's films inspired future filmmakers with their DIY aesthetic, then Swanberg and Gerwig's efforts seem calculated to discourage enthusiastic amateurs from getting anywhere near a camera," writes Andrew Schenker in Slant. "Everyone thinks their bull sessions with their friends are fascinating, but Nights and Weekends serves as ample proof that unless you can structure these conversations into coherent chunks of exposition, then these sessions are just bull, plain and simple."

"Looking beyond the squirmy exhibitionism, let's allow that the filmmakers' project is basically a good one: trying to create situations that dial up elusive, little-seen emotional frequencies (a/k/a The Truth) and catch them on camera," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "But this packaging of facile recognition as The Truth can be awfully close to flattery, reinforcing a ghettoized and meager idea of reality."

"It's a masterpiece of subtext and suggestion, abounding in subtle symbolism," argues Henry Stewart in the L Magazine. "And though the romantic dissolution loses steam in the middle, it's only because the film's inexhaustible authenticity organically sinks into distressing melancholy. Soured relationships on film are rarely so painfully credible."

Earlier: A podcast, Aaron Hillis's talk with Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig.

Updates: "Mattie and James are more often emotionally naked than physically naked, though frequently these times overlap," writes Dave McDougall in the Auteurs' Notebook, "since sex and desire are so frequently moments of vulnerability (in Nights and Weekends, elsewhere). This exploration of the interpersonal elements of desire is one element of the 'anthropological' aspect of Nights and Weekends. One reason I admire the films lumped together as 'Mumblecore' is this anthropological aspect. For all of their aesthetic differences, they tend to share an interest in vernacular realisms that share the realistic mannerisms and cadences of life as its lived by my peers, the privileged solipsism of young optimistic city-dwelling liberal-arts grads, and uncertainties about the tiny worlds in which they live."

Karina Longworth in the SpoutBlog on Greta Gerwig's big weekend: "Gerwig hasn't resisted the suggestion that the roles she plays grow out of who she is, but Nights and Yeast add two disparate but fully realized characters to her repertoire. Yeast is, for some, an endurance exercise; for me, it's a comedy, and on the contrary, it's the comparatively gentle but fundamentally flawed Nights and Weekends (on which Gerwig is billed as co-writer/director alongside Swanberg, and co-producer alongside Swanberg, Anish Savjani and Dia Sokol) which tries patience. If the latter shows Gerwig pushing a character way beyond adorable, it often feels like an exhausting exercise for all involved. It's her work as Yeast's only semi-relatable comic relief that throws up a middle finger at the ingenue concept, literally."

Sara Carduce talks with Greta Gerwig for Vulture.

Update, 10/11: "Nights and Weekends knocked me out when I saw it last March at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas; I wrote at the time that it offered exactly the “prickly, flawed, urgent SXSW experience I'd been waiting for." Andrew O'Hehir in Salon: "[T]his is a movie that people will react to strongly, in both directions. Swanberg is a brave and ambitious young filmmaker who's been taking chances, and taking his lumps, in public. I think Nights and Weekends is the movie where his talent, and his earnest Cassavetes-meets-Spike Lee-on-IM searching, begin to find a mature expression."

Update, 10/12: "How is this a film?" asks Michael Sicinski. "Why are people making it, apart from the narcissistic thrill of seeing oneself projected really big up at the IFC Center? Why are otherwise rational filmgoers playing ball with this art-annulling process? I just want to pound my head against a desk, and then weep as Cinema is slowly interred to an already-waterlogged grave."



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Posted by dwhudson at October 10, 2008 6:09 AM

Comments

I want to punch Joe Swanberg in the face. I know you are not going to post this comment, but I wanted at least one person to know this.

Posted by: Luc Lafferty at October 10, 2008 1:47 PM

Actually, you posted it. I've just "approved" it. Though, of course, I don't, really.

Posted by: David Hudson at October 10, 2008 2:10 PM

who needs to punch him in the face when you have something like the voice review. a solid, considered rebuttal to nights and weekends and their ilk, and hopefully the first nail in the coffin.

Posted by: Dan at October 10, 2008 4:05 PM

Joe Swanberg is a no talent douche. All the festivals he's played in have been second and third tier too, so I don't think he can even call himself a critical darling either. He even looks like a smug asshole in the poster for the film.

The thing about art is that its all opinions. Everyone's taste is different. The problem with that is it opens the door to fraud. Joe Swanberg is a fraud. And a boring one.

Posted by: Daniel Semel at October 10, 2008 4:29 PM

Wow. It's just like a McCain rally in here...

Posted by: at October 10, 2008 7:05 PM

You betcha!

Sigh...

Posted by: David Hudson at October 11, 2008 3:50 AM

um, no. you have two mccain comments, and my, shall we say, obaman comment extolling cool reason. do not let the objectionable content above drown out legitimate critique.

Posted by: dan at October 11, 2008 5:33 AM

Yeah, because anyone who doesn't like turgid, solipsistic, artless 'independent' cinema is an irrational, right-wing fundamentalist hell bent on sucking the earth dry of all it's resources and in denial about the coming financial apocalypse. Long live John Milius! Praise be Kirk Cameron!

Lame.

Posted by: Luc Lafferty at October 11, 2008 9:27 AM

swanberg *is* a fraud. did he not mention in an interview that what he really wants is to direct romantic comedies, a la sleepless in seattle? and yet he's lauded as cassavetes 2.0. i don't want to hit anyone in the face here, but seriously, it drives me batty when people compare the mumblecore crowd to cassavetes. other than superficial similarities, the mumblecore lot have nothing in common w/ cassavetes. cassavetes made films about people in some sort of crisis; mumblecore movies are about narcissists gibbering about "like, what i want to, like, do w/ my life and how you're, like, bringing me, like, down, man." cassavetes' films feature people from all walks of life; mumblecore movies are strictly about privileged white twentysomethings. hasn't "the real world" been showing us that for over 15 years now? cassavetes stepped outside his comfort zone and made films about people he didn't understand (richard forst, cosmo vitelli)--would swanberg ever do that? *could* he? i don't think he has it in him. he makes movies about him and his friends because that's all he cares about. awesome. so he's a blogger w/ a camera, then. also, and i'm surprised that no one has really pointed this out, but there's a real laziness here. not writing a script, not stretching, not being anything other than basically yourself in everything you do--it's lazy, it's tired, it's boring. i haven't seen nights & weekends, but hannah takes the stairs and kissing on the mouth were just embarrassingly bad. it makes me cringe that people think this is what my generation is like. honestly, the joker has much more to say about life and the human condition than anyone in a swanberg film ever has.

Posted by: aaron g at October 11, 2008 11:25 AM

I agree with Aaron G. Swanberg is just another Henry Jaglom or Eric Schaeffer, a proponent of the Cinema of Cock. There are plenty of exciting young filmmakers on the margins - Andrew Nenninger, Jenni Olson, Aaron Katz, Ron Bronstein - but Swanberg is not one of them. He is a hell of a networker, though. I'll give him that. And judging from his movies, women sure do like him, which in the end, just elicits a shrug from me. So do his movies.

Posted by: Chris at October 11, 2008 12:44 PM

If Joe Swanberg was as cool as he thought he was then Nights and Weekends would've been hardcore. Joe and Greta in the bathroom, fucking, Greta on top, Joe with Greta's underwear in his mouth. My problem with his movies is that he thinks he's going too far, and he's not even going anywhere. It's all just bland and precious and nice. He risks nothing because there is nothing to risk. This is airhead cinema, A Warhol-Morrisey Production with the tension, bite and black humor stripped away. It is exactly what it pretends to be and nothing more. It's Masterpiece Theater for cable access. It would take exactly one scene of gore and surrealism to make these movies seem futuristic, but that idea is never explored because these are not interesting people making these movies. They are smug and happy and at one with their bodies and it all just feels a little too New Age-y for me. Every scene seems to start the moment after the two characters are done taking a post-yoga shower. It makes me wonder whether or not Joe Swanberg lives in a community for single people, like that Apartment Complex from The Wild Life. Or maybe I just need to relax. Maybe it's all just not that big of a deal. Isn't that what they always say as they're trying to enter you from behind without your permission?

Posted by: George Benjamin at October 12, 2008 2:51 AM

What a disappointing batch of comments. Making a film without writing a script is not lazy, it's just a different approach to the end result. Putting out the amount of work that Swanberg does, whether you like it or not, should forever exclude him from being called "lazy". Pointing out that mumblecore films are about privilaged white people and their emo problems is what I would call lazy. If you think the movie is boring, fine, then you have some issues with its pacing, structure or direction. But pinning the blame on the characters themselves illuminates how little thought you are putting into what the film is and what it's trying to accomplish, which is finding universal truths. I've seen countless enjoyable films about 1930's American aristocrats and their romantic foibles or troubled youths in the inner city even though I'd not consider either group exciting or attractive to be around in real life. I just don't see how mumblecore existing can personally offend anyone.

Posted by: Chad at October 12, 2008 9:38 AM

Chad, to act as if there is no difference between a diarist and a novelist is also pretty lazy. Most of the people here have put more thought into their comments than Swanberg has put into any of his movies. Don't mistake quantity for quality. Prolixity does not equal profundity.

Posted by: PDF at October 12, 2008 10:45 AM

I am not saying there is no difference between a diarist and a novelist. But I am saying that one is not necessarily less valid than the other.

Posted by: Chad at October 12, 2008 11:02 AM

Wow. Single greatest comment thread ever...

Posted by: at October 12, 2008 4:49 PM

It's sloppy attention-starved navel-gazing at its finest. It's also important to note that Gerwig deserves much credit for making Swanberg's lil batch o' movies as cloying as they are. I think the Eric Schaeffer analogy is pretty spot-on, except for the fact that Schaeffer only metaphorically jerked off on camera in a quest for "depth". Yawn.

Posted by: jessica at October 12, 2008 10:04 PM