Baumbach and "Margot"

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In his N.Y. Times profile of Margot at the Wedding director-writer Noah Baumbach, Dennis Lim notes that Baumbach has always "specialized in characters whose verbal acuity outstrips their emotional maturity. In Margot at the Wedding, family members use information as a weapon, disguise cruel judgment as insightful concern and extend or withhold intimacy as part of a power game.

"It's a family where if you show your belly, people are going to pounce," Baumbach tells Lim. And, Lim says, no one pounces as often or as recklessly as Nicole Kidman's Margot, a seething bundle of anger and self-loathing who swings unpredictably between aggressive and passive-aggressive attacks.

"Margot is me at my worst, probably," Baumbach says. "I try not to analyze the characters when I'm writing, but I'm very analytical in my life."

But perhaps too analytical as a dramatist. At least as far as a clan of serious Deliverance-style creeps living next to Margot's family of malcontents (Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, et. al.) is concerned.

Make no mistake -- Baumbach has created a family of foul people who treat their kids harshly, slaughter pigs in their front yard, dump garbage on their neighbors' lawn and demand that a beautiful tree near their property be cut down. Worst of all, they have a teenage son (maybe 14 years old) who attacks Kidman's young son and by all appearances is a malicious hillbilly monster. There's no way to avoid despising these people and not wanting the good guys to stick it to them in some way, and yet Baumbach never writes a confrontation or payback scene of any kind. He presents us with malignant fiends and yet he lets them skate. This is deeply unsatisfying.

Imagine The Wizard of Oz in which Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West (i.e., Miss Gulch) isn't melted to death when Dorothy douses her with water. And yet this is what Baumbach gives us in Margot at the Wedding.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on November 11, 2007 at 1:50 PM

comment #1

4th grade army says ...

sounds like a hoot.

Posted by 4th grade army at November 11, 2007 2:48 PM

comment #2

AJW says ...

No Country for Old Men?

Posted by AJW at November 11, 2007 2:49 PM

comment #3

T. Holly says ...

They'd all have to die together of accidental carbon dioxide poisoning, in their sleep, in my book.

Posted by T. Holly at November 11, 2007 3:13 PM

comment #4

JD says ...

No Country for Divorced Misogynist Men?

Posted by JD at November 11, 2007 3:52 PM

comment #5

AJW says ...

"...and yet Baumbach never writes a confrontation or payback scene of any kind. He presents us with malignant fiends and yet he lets them skate. This is deeply unsatisfying."

Seriously, Wells, is that a joke? I hope so.

Posted by AJW at November 11, 2007 4:17 PM

comment #6

erniesouchak says ...

I tend to think Baumbach specializes in creating unjustly overpraised films. That's it.

Posted by erniesouchak at November 11, 2007 4:45 PM

comment #7

aspiringcrackaddict says ...

Couldn't agree with you more Wells.

If I ask me what's wrong with this film, I'd say it was too polite. No one ever really lets Margot have it. No one ever kicks around in the mud with her. No one ever really takes the gloves off and dig down to her bone marrow. For all her cruelty, for all her over-intellectualized precision dismantling of her loved ones, no one ever comes close to sticking it to her.

But I guess thats Baumbach's thing, no catharsis for the audience.

I just don't know how true it rings. I have two aunts just like Margot one a banker the other a Lawyer and they know how to get under your skin and just sit there making life hell for you while they slither around. Grade A bitches for sure and I've certainly seen it come to blows with their sisters on mulitple occasions.

After years and years of being attacked the gloves come off at certain point.

One of those aunts I only say "hi" to, if a conversation veeres into any other territory there will certainly be a confrontation.

With the other I am completly silent around.

Everyone has a different way of dealing with people like that, there's variety in peoples reaction but in Margot everyone was so fucking polite.

I just keep thinking who are these people??

And has Baumbach ever gotten married or been around people who were about to get married??? If there is a time people are apt for a FREAK OUT it would certainly be then.

Posted by aspiringcrackaddict at November 11, 2007 6:05 PM

comment #8