Author: Anahid Yahjian
In the midst of this month’s CG-infested, violence-laden and otherwise sterile theatrical releases lies Noah Baumbach’s latest depiction of adult angst, Margot at the Wedding, released November 16.
At the center of the film is Margot (Nicole Kidman), a writer on the run from her way-too-normal marriage and her last-ditch effort at sanity via reconciliation with her estranged sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). She makes an impromptu visit to her childhood home, where Pauline has settled with her daughter and fiancee Malcolm (Jack Black), a “professional” editorial letter-writer who has yet to grow out of teenage depression. Seeming to serve little purpose other than to keep Margot company and remind her that she shouldn’t be institutionalized is her teenage son Claude, played by newcomer Zane Pais.
The film echoes Baumbach’s Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale, another story about writers who fail at life and about their impressionable children. It serves the dual purpose of a coming-of-age film in its destruction of Claude’s innocence and a character study of a woman desperately fighting off her own intellect. Kidman delivers a performance that is, if anything, completely different from her previous work. Though heralded for the emotional grace with which she portrayed a stylized Virginia Woolf in The Hours, she enters a different realm as Margot, cursing and masturbating like a real human being.
On the surface, Margot at the Wedding is premised on Margot’s disapproval of Pauline’s impending marriage to Malcolm. She feels he is an inadequate candidate for her sister who, despite years of talking behind each other’s backs, she finds far beyond his level of intelligence. The paranoia of having family speak of each other in absentia drives the recurring element of mistrust and insecurity—put best when Margot grills Claude for details on what Pauline said about her, telling him, “it’s okay for you to think bad things about me. Some of the time. I’m not always good.”
Despite his supposed shortcomings, however, Malcolm serves as a personification of all of Margot’s insecurities. His child-like frankness puts the very core of what’s driving Margot insane into words: “Make sure you can handle rejection,” he says to Claude. “I can’t.” Malcolm is also the main source of humor in the film—perhaps partly because of Black’s reputation as a screwball—although Baumbach’s trademark raw writing and mastery of dialogue also gives otherwise heart-breaking lines an endearing quality.
During the question and answer portion of a preview screening organized by Los Angeles-based Film Independent on November 1, Baumbach commented on the aged feel of the film, which is depicted in hues of blue, green and grey on a cliff overlooking the sea.
“I wanted the movie to look like how I see things,” he said. Older lenses on handheld cameras and natural lighting were applied to several takes of the same scene, each from a different perspective. The result is a sometimes unsettling organic feel, especially in the last shot of Margot running after a bus, where the camera swings violently in the operator’s effort to keep up with her, creating an almost nauseating effect.
The film has several elements that serve symbolic purposes, such as a tree in Pauline’s yard whose roots, the neighbors claim, have grown onto their property and are rotting their home’s foundation. More symbolism comes in the form of a rat’s corpse on the filter of a swimming pool that Claude fixates on as he nearly drowns, as well as the dismembered body parts of a pig in the neighbor’s trash. Although several explanations could be given for the meaning of these objects, Baumbach insisted that he “stay[s] naive to symbolism.”
“The world can be seductive and scary,” he said, commenting on the attraction of letting things remain ambiguous.
As with Squid—as Baumbach refers to it in conversation—the autobiographical nature of Margot came into question. Baumbach once again insisted that his process is not a conscious act, making it unavoidable for parts of himself to sneak into the artificial world he creates. “Writing is a complete stew of stuff,” he said.
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