Tag: Noah Baumbach

Film: While We'are Young, Directed by Noah Baumbach (2014)

Another good movie by Noah Baumbach! It’s all about “the old” vs “the young” in art. In Baumbach’s story – it’s film making.
The young can pitch you anything and you will love them for that. You are old and uncertain and self-doubting and you can’t complete things. The young make things with ease. They record stuff and pass it on as “documentaries”…They are shameless, cool, and master the game of appearing authentic. They steal from anybody and everybody and make it their own. They can justify their lack of artistic integrity with irresistible charm. The young can use “fuck you” playfully but — fuck you “young” – for real…It’s all going to pass…Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame while it lasts.

Highly enjoyable – if you are in the “industry” or if you are “old”!

Film: Frances Ha, Directed by Noah Baumbach, Producer: Scott Rudin

Of course, I would never expect a bad film from producer Scott Rudin…

And “Frances Ha” is a nice film. A black-and-white independent, a Nouvelle Vague impersonator, it is a small, cheerful but also sad movie, which does not deserve to be called “charming” as it would be an offensive epithet for this kind of an honest unassuming film. It is a movie about love but without the sex part — which makes it really original. Frances never quite adapts, she is not too smart or too talented but too good, naive, silly, delusional, inept, spirited, “undate-able,” and unselfish to be able to shape her life into something standard. Sophie is her opposite. Frances loves Sophie and this love is not shared, nor is it consummable. Frances just loves this other person but would never be able to share a life with her — a realization she has to accept as a blessing as she looks across the room at the end of the film to meet Sophie’s gaze — gratefully and gracefully. Don’t interpret this as “friendship should be enough”, “be grateful for what you can have”… It is rather – well, there are people like this, like Frances Ha (the last name is nonchalantly cut off), they will never settle down as “normal” people do, don’t pity them, envy them…

On the other hand, the film seems to be a little scatterbrain like its heroine…It is a life-style movie, the style of life as a mess.