Thinking about maturity in the films of Noah Baumbach would be useful in thinking about Greenberg, Baumbach's latest and in my opinion best film. In both Kicking and Screaming and The Squid and the Whale Baumbach's lead characters seem overly mature for their age and situation but no happier for it. Grover (Josh Hamilton) is stuck in a post-college holding pattern and can't seem to articulate a feeling or a desire for most of Kicking while Jesse Eisenberg's Walt Berkman apes his novelist father's selfish behavior but is too bereft over his parent's divorce to realize doing that isn't winning him any fans in Squid. On Baumbach's other films, I'll confess that I've seen but forgotten Mr. Jealousy and sort of wish I could forget Margot at the Wedding.
So we come to Greenberg, the story of a few weeks in the life of Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller). Greenberg is a fortyish carpenter from New York come to L.A. without a driver's license to housesit for his more successful brother (Chris Messina) and ease his way back into the world after a stay in a mental hospital for vaguely explained reasons. Greenberg's self-proclaimed plan is to "do nothing" for a time, a goal that looks especially thin when he attends a party at the home of a successful friend (Mark Duplass) with whom he'd once almost gotten a record deal before Greenberg's last-minute scuttling of the contract. At the same party Greenberg meets an ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who gets a story credit with husband Baumbach) who can barely mask her horror at his lack of purpose. If Greenberg belonged to its title character alone the film would quickly grow tiresome; Greenberg's chief hobby is writing elaborate complaint letters and he's prone to bitterly sarcastic outbursts at those closest to him.
The other major character in Greenberg is Florence (Greta Gerwig), the 25-year old assistant to Greenberg's brother who becomes a (verbal) punching bag and potential lover to Roger soon after they meet. Florence is enjoying her fourth year of post-college malaise; she probably would have been friends with the Kicking and Screaming gang in school but couldn't have kept up with their irony-laced drinking games. I don't know whether Gerwig's unactory style is the product of hard work or just comes naturally (though I loved her drunken dance to "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"), but it's just right for Florence. Although Florence is justifiably hurt by Greenberg's outbursts she's also attracted to his aimlessness, and Gerwig underplays that conflict beautifully. Stiller's performance here is pared to the bone, completely free of mannerism. There are acting moments in Greenberg better than anything Stiller has ever done; a drug-fueled rant at a party full of 19-year olds is hilariously angry and scared and a confessional baring of the soul to another ex-bandmate (Rhys Ifans) reveals Greenberg's deeper issues.
Here we are back to maturity. There's a strong misanthropic streak running through Baumbach's films at least since Mr. Jealousy; anger cloaked in humor and buried resentment give his characters a more specific version of indie movie malaise. (Whatever the male version of the Manic Pixie is, Baumbach's characters are its angry older cousin) Greenberg is the first Baumbach hero looking to push past the shell of irony and disappointment to a deeper connection. One of the charms of Stiller's performance is the way he uncovers Greenberg's surprise at wanting to reconnect with his old life, particularly the characters played by Ifans and Leigh. A lesser director would have given Greenberg his reboot and I'm not suggesting that the character is deserving or even likable; yet there's a poignant pre-middle age need to connect here that I haven't seen in Baumbach's other films. Yes, Greenberg tweaks the expectations we've formed from too many bad romantic comedies, but I don't think that's all the film is. The winter L.A. sun has done something to Noah Baumbach's corrosive spirit, and Greenberg is the beginning of the next phase of his career.
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