(USA, 97 min.)
Written and directed by Noah
Baumbach
Starring: Ben Stiller, Naomi
Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Horowitz, Charles Grodin
 |
| Ben Stiller as Josh and Naomi Watts as Cornelia. Directed by Noah Baumbach. Courtesy of Elevation Pictures. |
Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young easily features the
best and funniest final shot you’ll see this year. The closer of the film offers
a comical two-shot of Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) with their
mouths agape, noses wrinkled, and faces seized in panic. They’re not looking a
dead body or any other ill fortune: they’re looking at a baby, one of those wrinkly,
noisy, smelly poop producers that ruin brunches for some and define success for
others. Josh and Cornelia, a fortysomething husband-and-wife duo of New York’s
creative set, are frozen in horror as Stiller and Watts create some droll
physical comedy with this reaction shot that offers the perfect endnote to
Baumbach’s film. “Is this really what we want from life?” their fearful eyes
ask as they observe the gurgling little brat as it chomps on an iPhone.
The baby overwhelms and dictates
their get-togethers—one can only feign interest in a sleeping blob so much—and Josh
and Cornelia find some energy and excitement in a young couple they meet at one
of Josh’s documentary film classes. Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda
Seyfried) are younger, hipper versions of Josh and Cornelia’s ideal selves.
Jamie makes documentaries and Darby makes ice cream, and together dance, raise
a chicken, take hallucinogenic drugs with a shaman, and enjoy life without any
of the gadgets and doodads on which Josh and Cornelia rely. These young
hipsters are so cool that they become Josh and Cornelia’s new BFFs.
Never mind that Josh and Cornelia
are obviously in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Jamie and Darby are spoiled
posers working an angle and anyone can see that aside from Josh and Cornelia
who behave like a dad finding youth in a sexy new car. How great it must be to
feel young and carefree all over again, rather than pitiable and childless in
the eyes of people their own age. Josh and Cornelia feel so refreshed that the
blind themselves to the finer things that make their marriage so strong.
Stiller and Watts are an
excellent couple, playing the droll intellectual humour with the wisdom of age
and experience. Stiller seems more comfortable than ever in this role, while
Watts is especially good in a strong follow-up to last year’s scene-stealing
one-two punch of St. Vincent and Birdman. Driver and Seyfried are also
strong in the trickier roles that demand the audience to find them self-conscious
and annoying—Driver’s Jamie is an especially irksome douchebag—but the couples
contrast nicely to create a comedy of manners out of Josh and Cornelia’s fall
into the morass of middle age.
While We’re Young, like Baumbach’s previous
film Frances Ha, finds the pleasure
of leading an unconventional life to the fullest. If Frances Ha is Baumbach’s Manhattan,
then While We’re Young might be his Hannah and Her Sisters. This sly new
comedy from the Woody Allen of his generation is a smart and funny look at love
and life at that awful turning point: middle age. While We’re Young, like Hannah,
looks at the ways in which different parties define success and happiness with
a norm (i.e. two kids and a routine) that simply doesn’t suit everyone,
especially creative types for whom life means creating their own mould. The
parallels between Baumbach’s film and the Allen film feel especially strong
when it comes to the conundrum of children, but whereas Hannah and her sisters
(namely Holly, played by Dianne Wiest in a well-earned Oscar-winning
performance) find children and traditional relationships as the answers to
their unhappiness, While We’re Young
remains firmly current right through its very last shot. While We're Young puts adulthood and youth, Ibsen and vomit, hand-in-hand as it celebrates a scatterbrained life in which no answers are clear and uncertainty is fearfully freeing.
This sharp and observant film
signals a shift in values with its amusing opening title cards that quote a set
of lines from Ibsen’s play “The Master Builder,”
in which a weary husband fears the next generation knocking at his door and his
wife matter-of-factly suggests letting them in. The lines of the play
reverberate through Josh and Cornelia’s up-and-down relationship with Jamie and
Darby, especially when Josh sees Jamie’s own success and ambition as a direct
threat to his artistic integrity and manliness alike. The quote offers a funny
counterpoint to the final shot, since the film asks audiences to identify with
the new tide while seeing the comedic horror that lies in a babbling baby.
Baumbach’s contemporary study of
these two WASPy DINKS (Dual Income, No Kids) comically and confidently shows
that the values of our parents’ generation simply don’t define happiness today.
It’s okay to be childless. The nuclear family doesn’t hold the same stock that
it used to, even in comedy, which traditionally reaffirms family as the
institution that prevails above all. Having kids simply isn’t the same option
it was twenty years ago, especially for couples like Josh and Cornelia, who
likely graduate from arts school with crippling debt, no job prospects, and an
endless cycle of unpaid work. The choice to have kids these days comes much
later in life, and While We’re Young
smartly and refreshingly shows that a good career and a mutually rewarding
relationship is just as strong a marker of success as anything is.
Childlessness isn’t failure; it’s simply a lifestyle. And a potentially great
one at that for those who choose it.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
While We’re Young is currently in theatres from Elevation Pictures.
Update: It screens in Ottawa at The ByTowne beginning July 8.
