{"id":1275,"date":"2017-09-06T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/2017\/09\/while-were-young\/"},"modified":"2018-06-30T10:02:42","modified_gmt":"2018-06-30T14:02:42","slug":"while-were-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2017\/09\/while-were-young\/","title":{"rendered":"While We\u2019re Young"},"content":{"rendered":"

2014, USA, 97 min.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Getting old doesn\u2019t just happen. You age every day, until like Cornelia and Josh in writer-director Noah Baumbach\u2019s While We\u2019re Young<\/em>, you wonder how the hell you got here<\/em>. The bittersweet fun of Baumbach\u2019s tart comedy is how Cornelia and Josh keep dodging the hard truth: they don\u2019t have the energy\u2014or the stomach\u2014to stay young. Yet they try longer than they should. We understand why. We\u2019ve been there or soon will be. Reality bites.<\/p>\n

The irony is that Cornelia (Naomi Watts) and Josh\u2019s (Ben Stiller) life together is, by any measure, enviable. They live in a lovely, New York City apartment and seem to make a comfortable living in documentary filmmaking. They\u2019re attractive and fit. But they\u2019ve reached their 40s, the great middle. Routine has calcified. Ambition has been put on hold. And with kids off the table, what\u2019s left?<\/p>\n

Josh, however, is keeping busy. His rambling documentary\u2014\u201cReally, it\u2019s about America\u201d is his go-to description\u2014is six hours long and in its eighth year of production. And he\u2019s teaching a community college course. That\u2019s where he meets Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a 20-something couple who don\u2019t embody the hipster label as much as parody it. Jamie says he\u2019s auditing the course. It is the first lie of many.<\/p>\n

Jamie is a fan of Josh\u2019s obscure first film and he\u2019s an aspiring documentarian. Could they talk? Josh is delighted, considering he\u2019s not even the best documentary filmmaker in his own family. Cornelia\u2019s father (Charles Grodin) has that honor. Josh relishes the attention, but Jamie is more than an appreciative audience. There\u2019s a youthful, infectious confidence to him. Cornelia, who joins them, is skeptical: \u201cIt\u2019s almost like he was studying you.\u201d Josh is smitten, and when he and Cornelia visit the youngsters\u2019 apartment and sample Darby\u2019s homemade ice cream, they\u2019re both officially enchanted.  <\/p>\n

Darby and Jamie\u2019s apartment\u2014dig the huge, album collection; check out the handmade desk\u2014represents Cornelia and Josh\u2019s frozen youth. They\u2019ve spent their life trying to stay relevant. Now, Cornelia and Josh get permission to sit with the cool kids while their friends\u2014saddled with babies and adult responsibilities\u2014suck up to the teachers.<\/p>\n

What Cornelia and Josh don\u2019t ask is why<\/em> Darby and Jamie are so smitten with them<\/em>. That\u2019s where Baumbach\u2019s refusal to deify his characters proves effective. He shows Cornelia and Josh away from the block parties and fedora shops. They are deep into the vast, vanilla middle of adulthood: fussing over the brightness of the bedside lamp\u2019s light bulb and justifying how the beauty of their independence is that they can choose to waste it.<\/p>\n

For all their experience, Cornelia and Josh can\u2019t see that Jamie and Darby aren\u2019t befriending them out of human kindness. Baumbach unfurls Jamie\u2019s motives. Sometimes it\u2019s done in front of Josh, like not picking up a check or asking Josh how he staged a scene. Sometimes it\u2019s less subtle, like Jamie giving Josh a pep talk and then his face turning to stone as soon as Josh leaves. Driver\u2019s performance is arguably the best in the veteran cast. We don\u2019t know whether to slap him or emulate his drive. Neither do Cornelia and Josh.<\/p>\n

Despite his cynicism, Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale<\/em>, Greenberg<\/em>) has sympathy for this screwed-up bunch. Jamie\u2019s ambition and craftiness would be admirable if he didn\u2019t use people as props, or kitsch as a guiding principle. He\u2019s misguided, just like Josh, who napalmed his relationship with Cornelia\u2019s father in the name of integrity. And it\u2019s why he gravitates toward Jamie and agrees to work on his film. Jamie is Josh\u2019s last chance at redemption, a concept that\u2019s as poorly defined as his documentary\u2019s plot.<\/p>\n

Baumbach\u2019s bristling honesty is what makes While We\u2019re Young<\/em> so vibrant. Nobody is right. Age doesn\u2019t give you answers and youth doesn\u2019t make you pure. It\u2019s easiest to be yourself. The real problem, Baumbach tells us, is discovering exactly what that is\u2014and whom we allow to show us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting old doesn\u2019t just happen. You age every day, until like Cornelia and Josh in writer-director Noah Baumbach\u2019s film, you wonder how the hell you got here<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Read more While We\u2019re Young<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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