Director Noah Baumbach really came out of nowhere with 2005’s Squid and the Whale. Only serious Wes Anderson fans would have remembered him as co-writer of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Squid won over audiences with its sadly hilarious dysfunctional family full of pretension of a brand that is distinctively New York-intellectual. Margot at the Wedding, boasting an ensemble cast of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black, had the independent film community anticipating a slam dunk. It would seem however, that Baumbach is not interested in a victory lap.
From the opening sequence Margot at the Wedding feels weighty. The shots are often very close-up and employ a muted palate of colors, which at brightest take on the bronze flares of over exposed Super 8mm home movies. This seems to intentionally serve the voyeuristic edge of the movie, as the camera wobbles as if there is some other family member holding it. Perhaps, they were hiding from the wrath of Margot.
Nicole Kidman really digs into her role as Margot, the sharp tongued hellion who has arrived to either celebrate, or completely derail her sister Pauline’s wedding. Margot uses a sneer and amateur psycho-analysis to reduce everyone around her to a desperate state. With her already maladjusted adolescent son in tow, it’s clear she is on the verge of meltdown herself; even as she instigates Pauline’s.
Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the much more sympathetic Pauline. With one marriage behind her and a daughter as well, she is wandering in to a marriage with a lovable-loser played by Jack Black. The two have a believable chemistry and Black really excels playing a role that is not as cartoony as his typical flick.
For all its disaster the movie steers clear of melodrama. When Pauline blows up and starts screaming there is no swelling of a string section on the soundtrack, followed by the slamming of doors. Instead she is still in a room with the person she is screaming at and it’s just awkward. At one point after being reduced to tears Jack Black’s character is so heavily sobbing to Pauline over the phone all she can say is: “Honey I can’t understand what you’re saying.” It’s funny, but the laughs get caught in their cruelty.
Baumbach buries the dark humor that made Squid so disarming even further below the surface. At points, as the characters verbally assassinate each other you wonder if it is still there. Kidman may have earned herself an Oscar nomination for being insufferable, as Margot swallows more meds with Chardonnay and chastises her sister for marrying beneath her. If there is any key to the film it is taking the disasters with a grain of humor. With it, they are tragically funny. Without a sad laugh the movie feels suffocating.
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