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A Life Better Left Unexamined
By bukkhead | December 14, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘MARGOT AT THE WEDDING’
Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach
Rated R
91 mins.
Although Margot at the Wedding features an ensemble cast, the focus is on Nicole Kidman’s Margot, and quite literally, the lens. Noah Baumbach both writes and directs the film, and allowed to his cinematographer to use “old” lenses and natural light to give the film a darker look (and this is darker in the literal, not the poetic sense.) But even under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult for the other actors to merely be supportive. Jack Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh, not to mention Ciarán Hinds (from HBO’s “Rome”) don’t end up stealing scenes from Kidman, but they do distract from Baumbach’ story, about a neurotic woman’s slow breakdown in the only environment where she can be herself.
Margot and her son Claude take a train from Manhattan to her childhood home on the occasion of her estranged sister’s wedding. There are dysfunctional families, and then there are dysfunctional families; that Margo has been able to use her family as source material for her short stories has been the one crime her otherwise free-spirited sister can’t forgive. Although it’s right there in the title, the looming wedding seems to be the least of anyone’s concern, and even the audience is left to wonder if they should care about that at all.
Baumbach is not afraid to drop symbols for everyone to keep track of what is going on: a lost shoes, a lost dog, a tree that needs to be cut down. Unfortunately, these too are lost in the dark lenses, and its only towards the end of the film when one realizes the movie was about Margot, and only Margot, all along. It’s not that she’s losing her mind, just that she’s losing her sense of self. That she projects her own fears onto others is obvious, but virtually no one is sympathetic enough for the audience to identify with.
This is one of the movies where the director probably had some really good idea about what it all means, and would have been nice if he had let the audience in on the secret. The actors, for their part, do an excellent job of creating tension, frustration, disappointment and a neurotic edge that makes one feel unsettled throughout the film. But to what end? Some scenes are literally too dark to make anything out, and others involve discussion that are irrelevant in that their subjects never come back up again.
So in the final analysis, this is a movie to watch for the actors alone. Because this is a talented bunch. Jack Black once again shows his versatility, not in acting style, but in the way his character acting fits so many different moods. Nicole Kidman is good, almost too good, making you love and hate her as much as the rest of her family. Especially interesting is newcomer Zane Paris, who plays Margot’s son Claude, managing to evoke an almost morbid curiosity in his environment, a perfect foil for his mother’s too-self assured self-destruction.
(An edited version of this review was printed in the Newport Mercury.)
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