'Drinking Buddies': Love Told Through the Lens of Disenchantment
As adult relationships go, they can be pretty childish. Childish in the sense that adults are just that: grown-up children. Still wide-eyed and without answers, hopelessly trying to join culturally warped fantasies of love with real life, grown up-y problems, the result is often an unglamorous reality that deconstructs and dismantles every typical trope that exist in the genre of the romantic comedy. At least that is what is happening here, in mumblecore alum Joe Swanberg's latest, Drinking Buddies.
For framing purposes, the mumble-core scene is distinguished and loosely attributed to films that operate as an extension of "indie" filmmaking, going steps further (or steps shorter) in cinematic storytelling to capture a sense of "real life," at least how that "real life" pertains to 21st century thirty-something caucasian Americans. Which is what this movie is all about. Kate (Olivia Wilde), a "one of the guys" craft beer worker, and Luke (Jake Johnson), are the kind of co-workers and friends with the sort of pal-around chemistry that reads as the most naturally compatible romantic pairing. Their playfulness is all very "charged," in that "we could jump each others' bones right here and now if we just acknowledged the sexual tension" kind of way. Perhaps they feel so free to act this way due because they are both in relationships; her with nice guy Chris (Ron Livingston), and he with the more timid yet Jill (Anna Kendrick). What leads to the foursome going away to weekend at a cabin brings the possible realizations of each finding the other's partner more desirable. This, while beer is so passively poured and gulped that it acts as the cultural cigarette break.
The best way to describe this movie is an adult's rom-com. Where the set-up of star-crossed lovers crossed up in each others' better half would act as any perfect setup for easily slicked Studio comedy-fare, this story is told through the lens of disenchantment, harsh and ugly truths of the real world that the characters have to acknowledge and put up with. Although "harsh and ugly" might be words too bold to use, which in this case, refers to the collectively attractive tribe's dealing with the "un-perfect-ness" of their situations. As in life, things are barely dealt with, and true emotions are scarcely expressed, and that slice of life is exactly with Swanberg and Co. offer here. One man and his cup of tea will appreciate the authentic capturing of this possibly very-real time in a possibly very relatable person's life. Another man's cup might overfloweth with indulgence and vapidness. Both arguments are perfectly acceptable to make, as they each act as a truth that compliment and necessitate the other, like two sides to the same beer-soaked coaster.
"Olivia had great ideas about Kate, and brought a lot of her own life to it, Jake Johnson and Anna Kendrick shared their own relationship experiences with me so that we could blend them with mine to make Luke and Jill as relatable as possible." -Joe Swanberg
The one thing that the movie definitely has, and what it solidly works off of, is its freedom. Working from only a general outline, the actors and director improvised the entire script. This creates an interesting effect, for many reasons. First, in a cinematic sense, we get to see these actors as the most real-life types of people that could be captured on screen in a fictional story. Following that, this allows us to see "Olivia Wilde" as "herself," mainly, and everyone else as "themselves" as they act (and react) and make decisions from their most basic of instincts. In fact, Swanberg even notes of his actors' involvement and contributions to their characters: "Olivia had great ideas about Kate, and brought a lot of her own life to it, Jake Johnson and Anna Kendrick shared their own relationship experiences with me so that we could blend them with mine to make Luke and Jill as relatable as possible." What results is seeing Wilde, Johnson, Livingston, and Kendrick, as the most likable, non-offensive people to exist in cinematic history. They're all so normal that it's not normal. The fact that Kate and Luke are so comfortable with their unacknowledged affections towards each other only heightens the level of non-committed cultural attitude they have towards anything they find "serious" in life, as flirting with another person's partner would prove. These adults are so cool with everything that Kate finds no qualms with skinny-dipping in front of Luke, while Luke finds no problem wearing that yearningly existent beard. Though I'd be remissed to not express how much I liked and enjoyed each actor's onscreen selves, so much so that the film feels very much on this side of a winning outing.
Secondly, since the actors don't (really) know what's going to happen in the moment of the scene, we are can only observe the scene as they observe and find (read: create) the scene in real time. For viewing purposes, this denies all audience participation, really, or at least denies us from having the type of experience where we feel connected to a film by relating to a more universally speaking message. Here, if you're not one of these four "types" of people, you're probably going to ask yourself: Why Is This Important? That answer: this movie, and style of movie-making, speaks more to a type of human than to the human "condition."
But maybe that's what it's all about. Maybe there is no objective "serious-ness" in adult life. That our romantic partners are nothing more than a continuously revolving door of companions to make easy conversation with. Nothing more than Drinking Buddies. As an "adult-movie," it's high-mindedness doesn't really invite the viewer "in." It can be said, then, that this movie acts with how it is; like grown-up kids at a bar with only four seats, as if to say, "You Can't Sit With Us."
Note: I found the movie's soundtrack to be quite enjoyable, and after the movie's climactic offering set to "It Soon Will Be Fire" by Richard Young, I felt compelled to find the music online. Follow the jump to hear all the songs (more than a few from Grammy Award winning artist Bon Iver's recording label 'Jagjaguwar') from one assembled Spotify playlist: http://playlists.net/drinking-buddies-soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsYBCof6NHU
Mumford & Sons (& Friends) & The Inevitable Unraveling Of Credibility In 'Hopeless Wanderer' (Analysis)
All dust-paved roads were leading to this.
How could they not? In an age whose generational youth can be broadly (or unfairly) understood by their misguided sense of identity through contradictions, by extension of the manipulative second life that digital communication allows, it should come as no surprise that the biggest band in 21st century American pop music is a folk quartet who play the banjo and still wear suspenders. And are from England.
The Times, They Are A-Changin'.
Grammy Award-winning music group Mumford & Sons, having released only two proper full-length albums to date, have already cornered the pop-folk market on the backs of such foot-stomping hits as 2010's "Little Lion Man," and 2012's "I Will Wait," whose rollicking hootenanny spirits have infected the airwaves as well as paved the way for more folk-type outfits' successes (warranted or not). But their latest move might have just undone the false facade that the Mumford gang had been so successfully operating under. Through the guise and get-up of old-timey ramblers, Mr. Mumford and his Sons might have just unintentionally ended the hoe-down.
"Hopeless Wanderer," a track from the band's 2013 Grammy-Award Winning Album of the Year Babel (not ironically defined as a confusion of sounds and voices), has just gotten its music video release, and the internet has (predictably) responded in unified approval. Conceived by Sam Jones, director of the thoughtful and stirring Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, the initial concept was to feature well-known comedians acting as the band.
As the video begins with familiar golden hues of sun rays and close-ups of vintage threads and stand-up bass playing in a vast field, the audience finds comfort in knowing they're watching the right video. But a few pans and rack focuses later, we find that our folk heroes are not actually themselves; leading Hollywood comedians Jason Sudeikis, Ed Helms, Jason Bateman, and Will Forte instead are finally revealed as Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall, and Ted Dwayne, walking down the dust-beaten road with a comedic amount of instruments strapped to themselves, while pushing an upright piano.
Yes, this is funny. The readably parodying shenanigans that ensue, set against the backdrop of such a forlorn and angst-ridden folk ballad, achieve that intended effect of being funny. We are allowed to laugh because now the joke is out there in plain, HD sight. Perhaps unconsciously, or even knowingly, fans of Mumford & Sons have all the while had to accept the slight ridiculousness in favoring a band whose image was so consciously contrived in modeling a time of antique fashion without the existence of Gangnam Style or Honey Boo Boo. To listen and sing along to one of their songs is to be transported back in time when times were simpler (at least what one may think that version of simpler is). American folk music, from its beginnings, was built on the foundation of Singers as Social-Activists, with a political consciousness where lyricism and songwriting were only as powerful because of the larger message that trumped their technical instrument-playing abilities and de-amplified acoustic instruments. The music acted as an extension of the mind, with such pioneers as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez bringing folk music to the forefront of pop culture, through social-activist grassroots movement. It was a music of the everyman, which validated its status as authentic and original, true and good. And perhaps the only move that can not be justified as authentic and original, is when A-list leading funnymen assume the characters of these folk-hero types. Forte (read: Dwayne) weeping singular tears, while Bateman (Marshall) wiping away and tasting them, Sudeikis' Mumford furiously making out with Forte, and the band's straw hat banjo breakdown, the joke is fully realized. And Mumford and Sons are now in on it too.
This is not all to lead me to drawing the conclusion that I find Mumford & Sons to be bad. Their music is infectious and plays to the widest common denominator, which spurs economic activity, which is (probably) a good thing. The commercial appeal of the band's music being at odds with the music's original roots devoid of capitalistic aspiration was until now, the irony that the band didn't need to openly address. While they toured internationally on private jets (I wonder if they still call them aeroplanes?), the elephant sat earnestly in the room, while all parties suspended their disbelief to let the music sing for itself.
Though now it seems obvious. While the fans have always had the ability to choose to accept the nature of the band on an as-needed basis, perhaps peppering in "The Cave" after Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" felt overplayed, the members themselves could never join in on the 21st century modernity of it all and assume a look that doesn't read "I Have To Walk To The Well To Get My Fresh Water." Although now it seems, they too, would like to take a break from "themselves," having let SNL and Arrested Development stars satirize their country-aesthetic cliches. Unfortunately, the move has poked a hole rather than poked fun.
The wagon wheel has spun full circle. And Mumford & Sons might have just accidentally, yet ironically, authentically, put the "Hopeless" and "Wanderer" into, well, "Hopeless Wanderer."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rId6PKlDXeU
Did Spike Jonze just cast ex- "Sofia Coppola" as love interest in newest film 'Her'?
If the above title sounds a bit too "National Enquirer"-y for you, I apologize. I am usually the first to acknowledge that there is rarely any time when gossip-style news should be discussed, let alone deemed "important," especially in relation to art, whose definitive artistic motivations shouldn't allow for any culturally-reflexive speculation to add further meaning to.
Spike Jonze, however, being the most self-reflexive (read: "meta") working director in American cinema today with such existential art-house hits as the Academy Award-nominated Being John Malkovich and the Charlie Kaufman-penned Adaptation, makes it impossible not to make culturally commentating mountains out of every mole-hill that arises in his work as a postmodern commentary on (his) life as art.
Which makes it impossible not to conclude that when he makes a film with the tagline "A Spike Jonze Love Story," he has indeed just cast his famous auteur-ex as the female love interest in his newest movie, titled simply, Her.
Now before I get too far along, I must acknowledge that the use of quotes around "Sofia Coppola" in the title is imperative to the theory at hand. As a quick debriefing, and as is my basic understanding of the situation, Spike and Sofia first met on a Sonic Youth music video set (of course), were soon married afterward, and four years later, divorced. And how else would any yearning artist document and internalize the experience? Enter: Sofia Coppola's Academy Award-winning Lost In Translation.
As can be substantiated by movie critics, perhaps probably by its cast, and (arguably) definitely by Sofia herself, the acclaimed indie was loosely based off of her frustrating marriage with (then) husband, Spike (or, Adam). The film told the story of a beautiful, yet neglected, girlfriend of a bumbling jet-setter photographer, whose shared trip to Tokyo resulted in him ditching her to photograph a beautifully dumb celebrity blonde, and leaving her to fall in love with Bill Murray. As rumor goes, this dumb blonde, "Kelly," played by Anna Farris, was supposedly based off of "Cameron" Diaz, who (allegedly) aroused a mutually-shared affinity for a married Spike on the set of his 1999 film, Being John Malkovich (While doing press for the film, Farris was suspiciously cryptic about who her character's inspiration was drawn from). The "Spike" in the Translation equation was played by Giovanni Ribisi, whose fidgety, nasally-sounding photographer character reads Spike to a comically obvious degree. And who did Sofia cast to play "herself," the quiet, introspective, lovelorn heroine?, but Scarlett Johansson.
And who did Spike Jonze cast as the leading lady of his newest love story, but Scarlett herself.
As the first trailer, released today, shows, Jonze's latest film (his first writer/director effort) tells the story of struggling, single, LA writer Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix. In hopes to better organize his schleppy life, and upon selecting the voice of a "woman," whose voice should pop up from the computer speakers than that of the faint, sexy, rasp of Ms. Johansson's, voice of the operating system, named "Samantha." Now, the film was shot with a different voice actress on set (Samantha Morton, whose name I'm sure is in no way linked to that of the OS's self-given name in the film), who acted offscreen to Joaquin, and whose voice was switched in post-production so that Johansson's dialogue was re-recorded to be the HAL-like voice in the movie. Was this intended all along? For any other director, whose work isn't as pointedly self-aware as Spike's, I'd say probably not. But in looking at a self-actualized species like Spike, all evidence should point to the obvious. And what is this obvious? That Spike would take the once "Sofia" character, and repurpose her as his own muse, trapping her in a lifeless, prison of a machine, developing an unrequited love for a sad-sack writer whose impossible love reads tragic, as the feelings and love shared by both lovers ultimately fail to bring the two together to live happily in reality.
As I (or anyone) have yet to see this movie, the above speculation should be taken as just that. Also, there is (supposedly) no bad blood between Sofia and Spike, and the rumor is that Spike himself was even on set for Translation, and fully aware of the deeper subtext of the film, and his role in it. But that's not to say that he doesn't still harbor any unresolved feelings about his failed marriage, as would any rational human being. And how else would any meta-working director deal with the emotions felt for the one that got away? Well, he'd probably make a movie.
A movie about Her.
Her arrives in theaters November 20th.
In the not so distant future, Theodore (Phoenix), a lonely writer purchases a newly developed operating system designed to meet the user’s every need. To Theodore’s surprise, a romantic relationship develops between him and his operating system. This unconventional love story blends science fiction and romance in a sweet tale that explores the nature of love and the ways that technology isolates and connects us all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6p6MfLBxc