Noah Baumbach’s new film, While We’re Young, is his most mature (no pun intended) and funny
film to date. Each of his films (The
Squid and the Whale, Margot at the
Wedding, Greenberg and Frances Ha) combine funny dialogue with
the painful drama of relationships.
While We’re Young
opens with a middle-age couple, Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts),
watching over their friends’ baby, trying to calm it by telling fairy tales
they can’t remember. Soon we’re awash in dialogue that pokes satirical fun at
people’s anxieties and obsessions with parenting, career and where their lives
are heading. Serious subjects, but Baumbach handles them with such a light
touch that we find ourselves laughing at these characters before we realize how
much we may resemble them.
After two miscarriages, Josh and Cornelia have given up
having children, and they feel alienated from many of their friends, who are
first-time parents. Josh is a documentary filmmaker who has 100 hours of footage
recording an old professor lecturing in his home on the meaning of power,
though the old man interrupts the filming with calls to his wife or trips to
the bathroom. Cornelia is a producer, and her father is a well-known filmmaker.
He and Josh don’t get along.
After a lecture Josh gives at a college in New York City,
where they live, he meets a young couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda
Seyfried). Jamie gushes about Josh’s film work and about Cornelia’s father. The
two couples go out to eat, and Josh and Cornelia are struck by how carefree the
young couple is. Josh especially is attracted to Jamie’s in-the-moment approach
to life. Soon they’re spending more and more time with this young couple and
ignoring their older friends.
Jamie, who is a budding filmmaker, pitches a film idea to
Josh and soon lures him into helping him with it. The film appears to be based
on a serendipitous meeting with one of Josh’s high school classmates. Josh,
meanwhile, can’t procure funding for his film, while Jamie gets support for
his.
Later, Josh discovers that the subject of Jamie’s film is
actually Darby’s classmate, and the whole thing was staged. When Josh confronts
Jamie about it, Jamie admits it was fabricated but says it’s still a good
story. The satirical jabs at filmmaking is one more layer to the story.
While We’re Young
performs a delicate balance between satire and drama. In today’s world, where
irony reigns, it’s difficult to portray the emotions of a relationship or the
anxieties of aging, as when Josh has a bike accident, then learns from the
doctor that he has arthritis in his knee. Josh and Cornelia’s relationship is
the emotional center of the film, and these two actors carry it off well, again
combining laugh-out-loud humor with pathos.
Baumbach’s milieu is usually New York, and his characters
are frustrated intellectuals whose skill at relationships is limited. Many of
us who watch the film may not fit that profile, yet we will connect with the
humanity of the characters and the anxieties they face.
While We’re Young
is rated R for language.
