Greenberg

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is single, forty-ish and at a crossroads in his life, finds himself in Los Angeles, house-sitting for six weeks for his more successful/married-with-children brother. In search of a place to restart his life, Greenberg tries to reconnect with old friends including his former band mate Ivan (Rhys Ifans). But old friends aren't necessarily still best friends, and Greenberg soon finds himself spending more and more time with his brother's personal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), an aspiring singer and also something of a lost soul. Despite his best attempts not to be drawn in, Greenberg and Florence manage to forge a connection, and Greenberg realizes he may at last have found a reason to be happy.

I'm not Stiller's biggest fan. He usually does this very lame and silly comedies which aren't really my thing and that's what I was expecting from this film. Instead, Greenberg turned out to be something completely different and Stiller's performance was amazing. I hadn't been so surprised by a film in a while. And even thought you will laugh several times, this funny and moving tale is far from being a comedy. In fact, there's a sad and melancholic tone throughout the entire film and it doesn't really light up as many viewers were perhaps hoping for, which for me, made the all experience much better, because, let's face it, life isn't always great and happy endings are rare.

The script is incredibly refreshing, the dialog is brilliant and the direction was absolutely impeccable, really some of the best I've seen lately. The opening shot, for instance is a good example of what I'm talking about and it kinda set the tone for the rest of the film. There's also a lot of conceptual scenes, like Greenbelt trying to swim in the pool, which I love. Granted, the plot could have a little more direction but each scene as random as it may seem is so delightful and rich in subtext that you find yourself not really caring about that. Even the somewhat abrupt ending, which at first disappointed me but now seems completely fitting, shows how this film refuses to follow any conventional formulas.

As I've mentioned before, Stiller was great as the lead character but so was Greta Gerwig as Florence. Much like Greenberg, Florence is this sort of offish, social out-casted girl and Gerwig plays the weird and awkward "vibe" so well it's astonishing. The supporting cast did a good job too with Rhys Ifans standing out. In conclusion, Greenberg is nice little slice of life and one of the best films I've seen this year. And yes, the fact that I related to some of the lead character's anger helped a bit. Definitely worth seeing.

8/10

I was under the impression that this would be another wacky Ben Stiller comedy. When I started watching it and learned that Noah Baumbach (who had previously made the excellent 'Margot at the Wedding') was the director, I knew this was going to be a different kind of movie that would probably reveal a different side of Ben Stiller's acting. Many have described this to be for Stiller what 'Punch Drunk Love' was for Adam Sandler and 'Stranger Than Fiction' was for Will Ferrell.

Baumbach's 'Greenberg' is a character driven piece that centres on Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), who recently left a mental asylum and is back in town to housesit for his brother who's away on holiday. He falls for his brother's assistant and tries to pick up the pieces of a life he had once left behind while going through a midlife crisis.

Like he did with 'Margot at the Wedding', Baumbach's execution is lowkey and his narration mostly relies on the interactions between the characters and the protagonist's quiet moments when he/she is alone. The art direction is suitably minimal and the camera-work is solid. The dry humour is very effective and consistent with the atmosphere Baumbach creates.

Ben Stiller does a remarkable job with an effortless performance. This is definitely a departure from what he's familiar with and he proves that he can deliver a restrained performance when required. Rhys Ifans is equally good. Jennifer Jason Leigh (who also co-wrote the screenplay) provides fine support on both counts. Greta Gerwig is competent.

Baumbach has done it again, successfully telling a complex story that appears to be much more than what shows on the surface.

"A shrink said to me once that I have trouble living in the present, so I linger on the past because I felt like I never really lived it in the first place, you know?"

Greenberg is a drama about...Greenberg. Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), to be specific. A 40 year-old New Yorker who returns to Los Angeles to stay at his successful brother's home while he and his family are away on a trip. He's not dealing with his life not going the way he planned as well as most of the other people he knows, and he's perpetually stuck in the past. The music he listens to is old, he talks to people about events that happened 15 years ago that they don't even remember, and he's just generally an unhappy guy. His main activity is writing letters of complaint to various companies.  

To say that Roger is flawed is an understatement. He just got out of a mental hospital recently, he's self-centered, and he tends to freak out about insignificant things as a way to protect himself from people and the world. Yet, I still liked him. As does Florence, (Greta Getwig) his brother's personal assistant who isn't exactly a model of happiness and mental health, herself, and Ivan (Rhys Ifans), Roger's long-suffering old friend and band mate, who is having family troubles of his own. 

If I had to compare this to another movie, it would be Rachel Getting Married. Not because of any plot similarities, but because of a similar tone and some shared themes. Specifically, being adrift in adult life and how issues and regretted decisions from youth can linger and fester. Also similar to Rachel Getting Married, there's never a breakthrough moment where the flawed characters are suddenly okay, and all the problems disappear.  If you expect grand resolutions from your movies, please avoid Greenberg. All we get is a sliver of light at the end that makes us think that something positive may be happening in some of these characters' lives. We're left to imagine and hope that Roger, Florence, and Ivan are on the road to getting (or finding out) what they need from life.  

So yeah, I liked it. It's a good "indie" drama, and quite different from Stiller's usual thing. Stiller and Gerwig were both great, the characters were well-written, and I've always been interested in these kinds of stories about adults flailing away blindly in this tricky thing we call life. If you're a fan of movies like Margot at the Wedding, The Squid and the Whale (both movies share Greenberg's director), and Rachel Getting Married, I'd suggest that you give this a try.

Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig) is the Greenberg family nanny in L.A. The family goes on a trip while the brother Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) drops by to housesit. She's young trying to find her way. He's a New Yorker misanthrope just out of an insane asylum. He doesn't drive and writes complaint letters. His friend Ivan Schrank (Rhys Ifans) pushes him to go to Eric Beller (Mark Duplass)'s barbecue where he runs into ex-girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh) with her kids. Roger, Eric and Ivan were once in a band but Roger refused to sign a recording deal. Florence and Roger have an on-and-off relationship.

Ben Stiller is going too dark. It's a matter of slight miscalibration. This could be a great indie rom-com but I can't find any likability to Roger. His dialog could have some sharp sarcastic jokes to take off the edge. I need to laugh with him but his dark depressed nature keeps getting into the way. Getting angry over his birthday is probably the only laughable moment although saying Florence's emotional story is pointless gets a small chuckle. His anger needs to have more comedy as an outlet and to balance his dark side. It has some good moments but it could have been better.

Just as he's turning forty, Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) finds himself with no real friends, no significant other, and no actual purpose in life. He's also just been released from a mental institution, so you can well imagine that his neuroses are going to be pretty much off the chart as well. A carpenter and former musician who regularly resides in New York City, Greenberg is currently house-sitting at the Hollywood Hills home of his wealthy and successful brother, Phillip (Chris Messina), while the latter is away on business in Vietnam with his family. While he's staying there, Greenberg meets Florence (Greta Gerwig), a sweet but rather unfocused woman almost half his age, who works as a personal assistant – i.e. dog walker, babysitter and all-around gopher - to Phillip and his family.

Greenberg's mental issues manifest themselves through various phobias and idiosyncrasies, all of which lead us to the conclusion that he is generally just afraid of life, of taking a risk when doing so could possibly lead to failure. To that end, he avoids large groups of people, writes endless letters of complaints to companies he feels have somehow screwed him over, overreacts to other people's words and actions, and makes a general antisocial and sociopathic pain-in-the-ass of himself. And to no one is he more psychologically abusive than to Florence, a girl with her own share of vulnerabilities, who in his own crazy way he is obviously trying to impress but who he just keeps pushing away with his eccentric behavior.

It's hard to really get much of a bead on either Greenberg or Florence, and that is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the screenplay by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Noah Baumbach, who also directed the film. On the one hand, one appreciates the complexity of the characters, their refusal to allow themselves to be pigeon-holed into one neatly delineated box or other. On the other, the coolly objective stance the script takes creates a barrier between us and the characters, the result being that we find it hard to identify or empathize much with them, especially Greenberg, who finally becomes as off-putting to us as he is to those he comes in contact with throughout the course of the picture. In drama, there's a fine line between a character who is intriguingly different and one who is just annoyingly self-indulgent, and "Greenberg" crosses over that line with dismaying regularity.

Still, the performances are excellent – this is probably Stiller's best dramatic work to date – and the inconclusive ending is impressively brave enough to erase a multitude of earlier sins.