Margot at the Wedding

I assume you are normal. Whatever that is. Would you ever stop to question that?

Margot is a fish out of water. She would be 'normal' back home. Her pond is Manhattan. Intellectuals. 'Nice' people. Successful. Words of several syllables that easily slip into popular psychobabble - but in an acceptable sort of way. Social affirmation obscures our faults. The world after all is as we, and our friends, understand it to be. A self-selecting reality.

For Margot's sister Pauline, the self-selecting, self-affirming, 'normality' is different. She lives in the countryside. Fulfilment would be a down-to-earth lifestyle with someone who thinks she's great. That man in her life, played by Jack Black, is a very ordinary sort. He doesn't even have a proper job. But they seem content. They will marry under the family tree. In the garden.

As two worlds collide, flaws that could have been overlooked come nastily to the surface. Margot can only return Pauline's sisterly love in a cold, cerebral way. She becomes easy to dislike. We soon doubt her sincerity. Pauline looks more and more pathetic against her accomplished sibling. She becomes easy to feel sorry for. Blood is thicker than water. But it exerts unbearable strain.

In best scenarios, romantic comedies and feelgood movies, love always triumphs over dysfunctionality. If only life was so reliable. With the uplifting coup of family bonds in such films as Little Miss Sunshine or The Darjeeling Ltd. Those movies provided us with reassuring escapism. And I admit they were more satisfying than the rather bleak Margot at the Wedding. But it is this film that gives such niggling pause for thought.

It is easy for box office comedy to turn on family difference that ultimately heals. But it is the less than fairytale endings that we have to deal with in real life. Not funny. Maybe just a bit painful. Like estranged family. Hurts that don't heal in a neat two hours of celluloid.

Margot at the Wedding is not a great movie. Nor a comfortable one. It looks at the fragility of one's persona - or definition of normality - that we use to interact with society. With society's forgiving and less forgiving parts. Parts that are perhaps within our own families. But it does encourage you to think. And there are too few movies out just now that do that.

Margot at the Wedding (2007), was written and directed by Noah Baumbach. The family in this film makes the family in Baumbach's "Squid and the Whale" look like the the Waltons. They are very strange people.

Margot (Nicole Kidman) and her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) come together before Pauline's marriage to Malcolm (Jack Black). The plot outline refers to Malcolm as "less than impressive." I would agree, although you could make the case that even though he's a loser, he's a lovable loser. (I don't see it, but maybe Pauline does.)

Margot is a destructive person. She manages to drag everyone down to her depressed level, especially her son Claude and her sister Pauline. (Claude has problems of his own, but they aren't helped by his mother, who is in turn loving and supportive and then hostile and destructive.)

Suspension of disbelief is demanded here. Pauline and Margot have a long talk about how they are no longer physically desirable, and so they'll have to settle for any man that will have them. Has Baumbach looked at Nicole Kidman? I know he's looked at Jennifer Jason Leigh, because she's his wife. Pauline and Margot may have to settle for less-than-ideal men, but not on the basis of their unattractiveness. (Neurosis, yes; unattractiveness, no.)

We saw this movie in a theater, but it should work well on DVD. It's worth seeing if you enjoy films about pathological relationships. The acting was solid, and the camera work was interesting. Just don't expect Beaver Cleaver and his family.

Group of erratic, confounding and humorously twisted family members are reunited at a prospective wedding in Long Island, with the estranged Margot (Nicole Kidman) behaving as sort of the ringleader to the inner-chaos (she's not necessarily a reminder of old hurts, but she brings them up anyway, as if it's her duty). Writer-director Noah Baumbach's style is unlike anyone else's in the movies right now; as both a writer and a director, he's amazingly compatible working both sides of his talent (his dialogue is the music while his direction--and the nimble editing--provides the rhythm). Baumbach allows his characters to tease and torment each other with quiet, yet unsubtle prodding, and the free-flowing scenes play out beautifully, just like music. If there is a downside to this style, it's that Baumbach can often be too knowing, and when a line or a performance is too clever it can appear forced. Jack Black was a wonderful choice as unemployed Malcolm, the slacker-bridegroom who finds swimming pools disgusting and the thought of being famous too threatening because of the rejection involved; however, Black is allowed too much time to find the humor in his slovenly character. He's fine when he's made out to be the dupe or the target of girlfriend Jennifer Jason Leigh's frustrations, but when he tries to conform to Baumbach's image of Malcolm as an enraged clown, the affectation shows and we lose both the substance and the irony of this man (we get more than we need--and more than we already perceive to be there). Baumbach is also perhaps too brazen staging talks of a sexual nature between adults and children; this works when the subject matter is touched on by the younger people only, but Margot's relationship with her pubescent son (which Margot already accepts is too entwined) skirts uncomfortable parameters which might be more amusing if the characters on-screen laughed a little bit, too. The movie is brittle, though it has a great, wounded heart and very perceptive ears for passive-aggressive arguments and misunderstandings. This family can't get over their neuroses because they don't see themselves as neurotic--only each other, and the world. It's summed up nicely in a scene with Margot and her gift-bearing husband when she tells him, "I hate getting a present that I already have. It makes me feel like you don't really know me." **1/2 from ****

Baumbach was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his amusing, spot-on study of a New York literary intellectual family in crisis, 'The Squid and the Whale.' As befits one who received accolades and some little box office success, he has moved forward with similar themes and a better budget, and was able to enlist not only several more well-known actors but a famous cinematographer, Harris Savides, and a renowned costume designer, Ann Roth. Baumbach has also moved along in time, as it were. If 'The Squid and the Whale' was a parental breakup mostly considered from the viewpoint of a teenage boy, this family analysis has more of an adult sibling focus--though there's a boy on hand who's important. More limited in its time-span than 'Squid,' 'Margot' is more complex in its specifics and in its conversational delineation of neurotics at play. Just about every scene is a relationship meltdown. It's a wonder nobody comes to violence. In fact one character does get kicked in the chest, and a big tree falls down, doing some damage.

Baumbach himself may understand what all this is about, but the choppily edited and shot piece has too little dramatic structure (despite being very much like a play) to go anywhere or make much overall sense. Despite good buzz from some quarters and urban (especially New York) fans, the young director may lose with 'Margot' a sizable slice of the credibility he gained with 'Squid.'

Pauline (Baumbach's wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh), who lives on the family house on an island, is about to be married, for the second time, to out of work artist Malcolm (Jack Black). Her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman) comes with her young adolescent son Claude (Zane Pais). Ingrid (Flora Cross), Pauline's daughter, is there, and a playmate for Claude. Margot is a well-known short-story writer, and it turns out she's scheduled for a reading at a local bookstore with a former flame, Dick (Ciaran Hinds), whom she seems to want to get together with again. Dick's sexy daughter Maisy (Halley Feiffer) is also on hand. Margot has told her husband Jim (John Turturro) not come for the wedding (though briefly he does appear).

Pauline and Margot haven't been getting on well for years, but they both approach this occasion with the misguided assumption that they're nonetheless still each other's best friends and that things are going to be rich and consoling.

But as soon as the good-looking and accomplished, if thoroughly neurotic Margot lays eyes on the fat layabout Malcolm, she goes to work on Pauline to cancel the wedding--even though Pauline reveals she's pregnant. There is a family of nasty neighbors, the Voglers, who want the big tree in the backyard to come down. Its roots are spreading to their property, it's rotting, and it's poisoning their plants, they say.

Margot wants Claude to become more independent, but neither of them is ready for that yet. Nobody seems to be ready for anything, relationship-wise. This is about the only thing that clearly emerges.

One of the problems is in the conception of the main characters. This is not the anguished, edgy Leigh we've often seen in the past but a mellow woman, and despite lack of accomplishment and temper tantrums (which he credibly argues are justified in this crazy situation) Malcolm may have been a sweet guy who clicks very well with Pauline. Margot seems to make trouble for everybody, beginning wit her son. But since she's the most accomplished family member, it's a bit hard to know how to take her. It's a bit hard to know how to take anybody. Complex characters are fine, but nobody in this piece is going in a consistent direction. And this is equally true of the action. Was the wedding meant to have a meltdown before it ever happened?

This is a slice of life in more ways than one. Scenes are constantly cut off and linked to the next by jump cuts, an effect meant to be vérité and sophisticated that tends at times merely to look sloppy. Though Baumbach says he got exactly the look he wanted, it's surprising that the Savides of 'Elephant' and 'Zodiac' would give us so many shots that are seriously under-lit. Again, the effect hovers between original and amateurish.

All this is a shame, because all the actors do great work. The young newcomer who plays Margot's son Claude, Zane Pais, is indeed miraculously natural and believable. Leigh and Kidman do some of their best work, and Jack Black has perfect pitch in every line. There's no doubt that weeks of careful rehearsals on the set, in the house, helped the cast work so well together, and Baumbach knew what he wanted. But it reads as a series of vignettes rather than a film.

Baumbach's 'Margot At The Wedding', in the centre, tells the story of a writer who reunites with her sister at her 'wedding'. Margot is a neurotic borderliner who would go around picking flaws at and diagnosing other people to avoid her own issues. She is so afraid of loss that she keeps her son dependent on her but at the same time she keeps everyone at a distance. Her sister Pauline, also a borderliner, is pretty much an extension of her EXCEPT that she tries to stay optimistic and is trying to heal and dealing with her own issues. Their awkward reunion creates a clash of their personalities, reveals clues of some disturbing family history and results in chaos.

Baumbach's execution is raw and simplistic. The minimal use of music, slightly washed out colours, unpolished visuals and hand-held camera-work allows the audience to be involved in the characters' lives as voyeurs. Either the viewer is peeking into the private moments of the sisters or he/she is there as a silent observer. Baumbach's writing is terrific. Even though the dialogues are of few words, they speak volumes and go back to years of experience. The characters are superbly written. Even though you resent them at some point or even laugh at them, you care about them throughout. In the dialogues between the sisters, Baumbach hints some dark underlying themes such as incest, rape, abuse, over-dependence, dysfunctional relationships and abandonment. He does not fully explore them but cleverly suggests them allowing the viewer to ponder. There are also plenty of subtle themes that are introduced.

Nicole Kidman, once again, delivers an excellent performance. She proves that she can handle any complex role and this is why she is among the best. Jennifer Jason Leigh is equally stupendous as Pauline. Watching Margot and Pauline really felt like watching two real sisters who have had a chaotic unsettling family history. Both Kidman and Jason Leigh display raw emotions that move the viewer. Jack Black too is great as Malcolm. Zane Pais and Flora Cross are good and John Torturro is brilliant.

'Margot At The Wedding' is one of the darkest comedies that centre around a dysfunctional family. It's disturbing but also funny and keeps you pondering. It might not appeal to all but there are some of us who can appreciate this kind of movie.