Two strong recommendations, for films which I only coincidentally saw in sequence yet share a comic narrative structure that seems complementary: the very funny Superbad and the very unnerving, sly and riveting The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Both detail a one-night quest (for booze and sex, for medical attention) marked by many small and unforeseen conflicts and a reframing of the quest by journey’s (failed?) end, and both films display a compelling comic humanism, despite the derisive energies (scatological and satirical) which underpin the filmmakers’ visions. In each, the detailed and energetic search (to get laid, to get cured) is something of a mcguffin, and the movies open up to broad and specific portraitures of how we treat one another (and how we ought to treat one another).
I don’t need to say much to set up Superbad, eh?, as plot summaries and discussion seem to be everywhere at the moment. But I will without spoilers toss a few comments out:
–one strand of the plot involves Fogell/McLovin’s intersection with two infantile cops (Seth Rogen and Bill Hader) who take him under their wings, getting him beers, driving too fast, talking about guns and giving advice on “ladies,” in between their repetition of dialogue from various Star Wars films. A lot of critics have seen this as too cartoonish, or a distraction from the central relationship between Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (the astonishing Michael Cera), but I was struck by the wish-fulfillment element, the generous fantasy of coming upon two cops whose aggression easily peels away to reveal the same kind of confused seeking of pleasure and real human connection that the boys in the movie face. I.e., the movie’s emphasis on the misbegotten actions of the young might (as with many teen comedies) suggest a narrative about growing up, about a time/space prior to maturity, about salad days and green judgment all to be lost. This isn’t that kind of pastoral youth comedy; the adults, few and far between in the film, are straight out of other Apatow-produced films, equally bound up in the tribulations of desire, etc. In other words, I think this film avoids the nostalgic uses of teen sexual energy, and redirects our attention to an unromanticized yet still idealized vision of human error and corrigibility. Everybody in the movie fucks up, trying to fuck or at least trying to be attentive to fucking (like they’re supposed to be)… but what everyone really craves is someone to hang out with, to talk with, to be yourself with. The cops are plain funny, but they also tie neatly into this larger vision, I think.
–And in keeping with that sensibility, I think the film’s predecessors are less Fast Times or Porky’s and more like Diner — endlessly talky, character-driven rather than sociological (Fast) or situation-and-mishap-bound (Porky’s), and…. well, male. There are two lovely performances by the respective objects of Seth and Evan’s desires, and the film has real respect for Martha MacIsaac (Becca) and Emma Stone (Jules)–they too fuck up (or get fucked up), are confused about what they want… yet they’re also pretty clearly sidelined as “objects of desire,” and the movie while exceedingly wonderful about masculinity hasn’t a clue beyond its general empathy about the particularities of women as living characters worth exploring, too.
–My favorite sequence is a flashback, full of penis drawings.
Mr. Lazarescu opens slowly, as we watch an old man (Ion Fiscuteanu) shuffle about his apartment, talk on the phone (to request an ambulance and to combat his sister’s lecturing), take medicine, fawn over his cats. Eventually he shuffles out the door, the pain in his head driving him to the neighbors. The whole film painstakingly follows his attempt to get some relief, with the help of first neighbors then health-care professionals; once he’s out the door into the ambulance, the film corrosively and completely details the dehumanizing indifference toward the aged and the ill which persistently stymie Mr. Lazarescu’s quest. It is shot handheld with performances that seem beyond realistic — it’s as if we’re watching real life, completely unadorned and fully revealed (without the judicious editing of the “irrelevant” details or the symbolics of the purposeful narrative). I think the film succeeds simply on this level: a blackly-funny indictment of the patronizing, the incompetent, the bureaucratic, the SYSTEM in which the human is adrift and (ultimately) forgotten, undone.
That said, what made the film far more engaging for me is how often the film lingers on conversations that are not simply illustrations for that satirical rage. While misreading (and/or selfishly sidestepping) Mr. Lazarescu’s condition, his neighbors truly care about him–they fuss about his room and stroke his head, offer him food, complain about his drinking but not to merely belittle him (and seem wholly understanding about why he–or anyone–might drink a bit too much). Lazarescu lucks into an Emergency Tech (Mariora, played by Mirela Cioaba) who quickly and erroneously diagnoses him but really pays attention to him, realizing her mistake, and advocating for him from frustrating hospital stop to hospital stop.
Between or at these stops, we see Mariora embrace and whisper about an upcoming wedding with a lab tech she knows; she learns that her partner (the ambulance’s driver) is divorced and has a kid. And even some of the doctors–aside from a pair whose aggressive arrogance seems the easiest ‘central’ target for the film’s critique of health care–are doing their best and really care; one doctor flirts with a technician and at her behest gives Mr. Lazarescu more attention, and even as he talks with bleak certainty about the patient’s eventual doom he also really tries to communicate with the man on that bed, displaying a compassion and care despite the flood of patients around, the lack of resources, the failures of the system.
And it struck me by film’s end that on one level we were seeing this bleak vision of our own decrepitude, physical and moral, but at another level Mr. Lazarescu also displays a generous vision of how, despite the inevitable breakdown of the body and irritating failures of the body politic, we try to console and help one another. Most critics of the film seem to emphasize its scorn rather than its compassion, but I think its great strength is in unfolding both.
Interesting post, reynolds. I imagine After Hours fits in here as well–insofar as it, too, is structured around a detailed and energetic search. I know it’s one of your favorites, and when I first read this post I thought of it as not-so-subtle PR for Scorsese’s film. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t use it as a means of illustrating the comic narrative structure.
Anyhow, I like the idea that the comic is perhaps a very useful mode in which to address, as you say, the ways we treat one another. Comedy, in this sense, creates an ethical space in which we confront the proximity of things (other people). There’s no structural analysis of, say, charity or kindness. We just participate in it at a ground level. And the comic narrative structure keeps us at ground level. This is why I like Magnolia so much, in spite of its faults (one of which is that it cannot win over that rapscallion Arnab). Anderson’s film, too, is comic (in the braodest sense–it admits sadness, anger, fear as part of the overall scheme of things).
I’m looking forward to Superbad obviously. I haven’t seen it. But David Denby says something about it that comes close to what reynolds is saying: “The movie succeeds as a teen’s wild fantasy of a night in which everything goes wrong, revised by an adult’s melancholy sense that nothing was ever meant to go right.”
Superbad is funny; I give it three stars or 6 out of a possible 10.
There are plenty of big laughs (and I’ll probably see it again in the not too distant future if only to appreciate it without the Generation AA audience that LAUGHED. AT. EVERYTHING!). Still, I missed an obstructing character or two (the cops are just as much boys as the boys themselves). The film, for me, lacks tension as nothing is ever really at risk (the boys aren’t really outsiders as much as they think they are outsiders; the girls already–oddly–“like” them, they are just too dorky to figure that out). The film manages to be both subversive and warm and fuzzy; raunchy and chaste! I disagree with Mike about the female characters; they were nonentities. And though it isn’t entirely fair, Jonah Hill doesn’t do it for me; I found his character and his acting a bit insufferable (though he does have some lovely moments toward the end); Michael Cera and McLovin, however, are priceless throughout. Though structured similarly to Dazed and Confused, Superbad lacks that film’s epic scope and its ability to delve into stereotypical characters in order to reveal interesting, even surprising contradictory layers. On another note, Seth Rogen talks in EW about how “real” he wanted the film to be, but his definition of real seems to center around how many obscenities his character can spew out of their mouths in any given sentence, but I think Apatow’s “Freaks and Geeks” to have delivered a much more believable representation of adolescent awkwardness than anything in Superbad. Ditto for Michael Cera’s George Michael Bluth. And none of these TV characters needed to say fuck, vagina, blow job, fuck, dick, fuck every other word to accomplish the task.
I also appreciated The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Mike’s take, particualarly his final paragraph, is spot on.
just finished the death of mr. lazarescu. mike’s review is great, and i’m just going to agree with it, especially the last paragraph. the film seems to me to turn on compassion–i’m surprised to read that critics emphasize scorn at all.
at one point lazarescu tells a doctor that his head hurts; the doctor responds, that’s how you know you have one. this is straight out of beckett, and “i can’t go on/i’ll go on” about sums up the film’s comic vision for me.
superbad will have to wait till i get back from india.
May as well put this here. A. O. Scott on a (maybe) new wave in Romanian film. I’ve seen but two of these (Lazarescu and 12:08), and hope to see 4 Months etc. soon–but I am keen to snap up some of the other films he referenced.
That is all.
it’s not much of an epic but i really enjoyed the brothers solomon. i’m not sure if anyone here other than mike and john will like it. i don’t really know how to describe it except to say, think dumb and dumber directed by bob odenkirk; with the physical comedy replaced by straight-faced absurdity.
makes an interesting companion piece with juno, actually.
Thanks for the Solomon rec, Arnab! Kris watched about 2 minutes before leaving the room, wondering why I was laughing. Maybe you and I should move in together.
i could have sworn mike had posted about “step brothers” somewhere on the blog, but i can’t find it. sunhee and i watched it last night and loved it, but i don’t want to write more about it here if there’s already a discussion somewhere else. mike, any memories of posting about it?
I guess I didn’t–or it’s buried somewhere, saying little. I liked it, too–maybe not as much as you two, but I appreciated how unsentimental it was. Ferrell’s at his best when no redemptive superego is around to mute his rages, his ridiculous self-importance — and he’s often at his best around a partner like O’Reilly.
So, post away.