I watched Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha last night after reading a lot of accolades (particularly A.O. Scott in the Times and the Slate end-of-the-year critic’s discussion which Reynolds referenced a couple of weeks ago). This film is a stripped to the bones, no-budget portrait of twentysomething post-graduates trying to figure it all out (work, love, freedom, obligation). During the first twenty minutes I was put off by the amateurish quality of the filmmaking, but the performances were believable, the writing honest and unaffected and there was nary a note of hipster irony (these kids aren’t overeducated slackers spouting off the greatest hits of Heidegger and Nietzsche and McLuhan) so I stuck with it . . . and I’m glad I did. Funny Ha Ha is unassuming—a comic work of “slice of life†naturalism in the tradition of John Cassavetes and John Sayles (the closest I can come to finding an appropriate analogue is Sayles’ The Return of the Secaucus Seven). Bujalski’s film develops real poignancy over its 90+ minutes offering up a genuinely believable collection of psychologically complex (and confused) characters who both embrace and resist the randomness of human existence in order to defend themselves from the encroaching responsibilities of adulthood while consciously moving in that very direction. My only criticism concerns the way Bujalski makes invisible the very integuments of class privilege which provides these kids the time and space to work it all out. Worth a look.
what the hell is an integument? is it like a negative accolade?
It is something that covers up, veils, encloses. Sorry about the double positive.
okay, now that i have the smartass comment out of the way, is this available on dvd yet?
Yeah, I got it through Netflix but saw it at a local Blockbuster. Speaking of . . . Arnab, is Boulder’s Video Station still open? That was the best video store I have ever patronized . . . they had everything. Everything! But I left Boulder in 1998 before the DVD revolution, so I’m not sure what’s up with one of my former favorite places on earth.
yes, the video station is still here and still widely praised. i am embarassed to say that i have never passed their doors–you see, with netflix i don’t have to leave the house.
I rented this on a whim, from Jeff’s review, and I think this is one of the best acted films I’ve seen in years. Now, sure, it looks and sounds amateurish; recording is fuzzy, shots are often poorly framed, but the dialogue is spot on. One would think it’d have to be improvised, except there’s reaction shots, cut-aways, and key mumbled phrases that the other actor picks up on and uses.
In fact Jeff, I wonder how much better the actors and camera-people got during the making of the film. It seemed to me that the first 20 minutes really is the worst part, and they all just got better at their jobs as filming went on.
The embarrassment and shame of the characters were all dead-on real; not squirm-inducing in the hyper-sexed way of Todd Solondz, but much more gentle, believeable.
I was reminded of some of the better sections of Slackers (like the two girls on the bikes at night riding to a party), but as Jeff points out, it’s without any of the cynical irony and “display” that those characters have (and not just Slackers – this film avoids traps that most screenwriters of this subject matter fall into – like Baumbach’s early films, much as I also like those).
Finally, on the DVD there is a full audio commentary by a Russian lit. major. Funny as hell, and probably funnier for most people on this board.
Like Solondz (or a less egocentric Woody Allen), the most pitiful character is played by the writer-director himself. I hope he gets a chance to make another film, and that the lead in Funny Ha Ha gets to act more as well. Though in the hands of a “real” director – or a “real” budget – I’m afraid the magic may get lost.
Highly recommended.
He has made another film and no one has yet released it, but the critics have been kind and you can get a copy from the director himself: http://www.mutualappreciation.com
I wanted to write something about this film before I went back and read what someone on Slate said. But I was happy to see that the praise was directed in the same areas as mine (For my own self-satisfaction). But I’ll post a clip from the Slate review anyway if it will encourage more people here to see the film:
“Irony, indecision, and a wary refusal to signal the difference between the earnest and the coy—you can see these traits in Jake Gyllenhaal (especially in Jarhead), in Tobey Maguire, and in just about everyone in Me, You and Everyone We Know. But for me no movie pushed further in turning the scattered, fuzzed affect of modern twentysomethings into a viable aesthetic than Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha. At first I thought Bujalski, who made this movie a few years ago and finally got it into a few theaters last spring, was the next Cassavetes. Lately I suspect that he could be the new Rohmer. I first watched the DVD of Funny Ha Ha late one night in my sister-in-law’s basement on my laptop screen—surely a paradigmatically alienated post-theatrical viewing experience if ever there was one—and I found myself going back to certain scenes (especially the last one) over and over again to catch the little gestures and sentence fragments by which the characters communicate (or fail to). Marnie, the drifting college graduate whose romantic malaise is at the center of the movie, is played by Kate Dollemeyer in one of the saddest, loveliest, and most completely unaffected performances I think I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t have the enigmatic opacity you often get from nonprofessional actors so much as a quality of intelligent realness. You just feel like you know her, which means, since her level of self-consciousness exceeds her self-awareness, that she’s at times completely baffling. Which makes you—which made me, in a way I don’t usually feel about characters in movies—really like her.
“Bujalski is currently selling his second movie, Mutual Appreciation, from his Web site. I think both Scott and David have seen it. I think I’ll order a copy tonight.”
I’m thinking of ordering this guy’s new film, Mutual Appreciation from his website to check out – then send around to others on the list that’d be interested in seeing it.
Foundas seemed to indicate it was as good as Funny Ha Ha.
I liked this, perhaps not so much as Mark or Jeff. It had a perfect ear, and as remarked a flat but faithful eye, for the rhythms of a certain kind of discomfort and ill communication among the young. I think my lesser appreciation stems from my own tropism toward those who handle confusion, ambiguity, shame, and discomfort of all stripes with garrulous chatter–writers like Benjamin Kunkel or the dreaded Eggers, or filmmakers like the Wes Anderson/Owen Wilson duo.
There was a moment in Funny where the lead writes her to-do list which echoed for me a brief cut early in Bottle Rocket to Dignan’s 5-, 10-, and future plans. Hers are small but distinct; his vision loopier, more outlandish. But the scenes and lists, despite Bujalski seeming like a realist and Anderson/Wilson like fantasists, as kissing cousins, speaking to a hopefulness that all of these younger writers capture. In fact, that’s what I might emphasize–as apart from Solondz, or even (sometimes) Baumbach–the younger generation of writers, artists, filmmakers who exploit the rhythms and subtexts of irony and indecision in order to capture something much more earnest and emotional than their predecessors might have. (Even writers prone to texts of glorious excess, like David F. Wallace and Colson Whitehead and Eggers and Zadie Smith et al., seem to be re-imagining the “postmodern” sensibility as a tool for reinvigorating the desire for real emotion.)
I’d be happy to go in on the cost of that film, Mark.
Caught Bujalski’s latest tonight, Mutual Appreciation. It is another smart, slice-of-life comedy of manners about privileged white alterna-indie kids awkwardly sorting through youth’s difficulties while pursuing their dreams in the Big Apple. Boy with a guitar moves to the big city, meets a girl but seems to have a thing for his old best friend’s girl. Maybe she has a thing for him too, but the whole set up feels a bit stale. Unlike the first film, I knew exactly where this one was going. It rambles, the dialogue, once again, feels improvised while being pitch perfect. Bujalski truly cares about these twentysomethings. It just didn’t catch me by surprise like Funny Ha Ha and one wonders how many of these chronicles of urban white privilege Bujalski has in him before he actually has to stretch himself as a writer and filmmaker (not to mention actor). Shot in black and white, the filmmaking does feel more self-assured without “selling out” but I can’t really recommend it. It is a sweet film but there’s not a lot of there there. That being said the lead character can really play the guitar and sing incisive little pop gems (I’m assuming he wrote them); now there’s a story that interests me but all this nervous, twitchy meandering about grows wearisome after a while.