I saw my first “Mumblecore” movie last night. I am no longer a Mumblecore virgin.
Mumblecore is a “movement” of filmmakers who specialize in twentysomething relationship movies shot on HD video. The core of Mumblecore are Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, 2002, and Mutual Attraction, 2003), Joe Swanberg (Kissing on the Mouth, 2005, and the recent Hannah Takes the Stairs, 2007) and Jay Duplass (The Puffy Chair, 2005). The films themselves share common themes and production styles, such as micro budgets, non-professional actors, and party-set tales about the difficulties of romantic relationships among people in their 20s. There are also subtle differences. Bujalski’s films appear improvised, but are in fact carefully scripted, like those of a major Mumblecore influence, John Cassavetes. The Chicago-based Swanberg does allow improvisation, and his films are also notable for their explicit sex scenes. Swanberg is also an advocate of Internet-based distribution for his films.
To this tribe one might add Aaron Katz, whose films thus far are Dance Party USA and Quiet City, both of which are playing right now at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. I don’t know if Mr. Katz is an official Mumblecore member or even if Mumblecore keeps a sacred log of its priesthood, but at least in style the film is much in the spirit of its brethren films. Hand-held HD video, non-professional (seeming, at least) actors, and a party-romance-slacker milieu. In the case of Dance Party USA the film concerns teenagers and a boy and a girl who find love. The boy is Gus (Cole Pennsinger), something of a rogue in his high school class, whose sexual adventurism is the envy of his pal Billy (Ryan White). The girl is Jessica (Anna Kavan), a disaffected girl who, in the film’s opening minutes, wakes up in the aftermath of a party somewhere, red plastic cups stranded everywhere. Later that night, Jessica and Gus meet at yet another party, and Gus, trying to cut through the gauze of his reputation, confesses that half the stories he tells are untrue, and that he was once moved powerfully by the situation of a drunk girl at yet another party. The girl, Kate (Natalie Buller) was drunk and about to be date raped. Gus intervened and was about to date rape her himself, but drew back. Somehow, this story draws Jessica closer to him. The next day, Gus tracks down Kate, goes to her house, and tries to confirm that she is “alright” after that terrible event that she doesn’t even remember. Then he visits Billy, where he confesses that he “likes” Jessica in an extra-typical way. They go to Oaks Park and there he runs into Jessica. They enter a photo booth, snap pix of themselves, and then enjoy their first kiss.
Though relocated to Brooklyn, Mr. Katz filmed Dance City in Portland, and aspects of the film have a love-letter quality celebrating the city’s visual if suburban diversity. He also has a knack for capturing teen angst; but then, being a mere 24, Mr. Katz is himself a recent graduate from teen-hood. Dance City has the script-level slightness of an anecdote but the moral imperative of a Russian novel. The moral arc follows Gus as he “grows” (overnight) into a person worthy of Jessica’s love (though his “change” has been brewing since the incident with Kate).
Mumblecore, like most film movements, seems both old and new at the same time. On his MySpace Page for the film, Mr. Katz lists as his favorite films such diverse precursors as Y Tu Mama Tambien, Ratcatcher, Stranger Than Paradise, the documentary High School, All The Real Girls, Slacker, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Days of Heaven, You Can Count On Me, Gerry, and The Last Detail. Van Sant’s Gerry seems a likely influence, but not Days of Heaven, aside from the fact that its near silence as a film matches the inarticulate feelingness of the Dance City players (rarely has a film capitalized on the transparency of kids yearning to speak the obviousness that hangs in the air). I can think of different influences, or perhaps just antecedents, such as Rebel Without a Cause, at least for the aching inarticulacy of the characters (though Dance Party has no parents in it), or Over the Edge, Jonathan Kaplan’s 1979 masterpiece about suburban anomie. There’s also Kitchen Party, the superb but silently influential film by Canadian Gary Burns from 1997, and there are also hints of Larry Clark’s Kids, thanks to its swordsman braggadocio, and Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Eric Bogosian’s play sUburBia, from 1996. But I would argue that the biggest influence on the film is The Graduate.
John Cassavetes is supposed to be the patron saint of Mumblecore filmmakers, but it’s important to point out some differences. Actor-turned-director Cassavetes upended the art form he had worked in so long as an actor by throwing out much of the “tradition of quality” that distinguished Hollywood movies in his own films, such as Faces and Husbands. His characters were workaday men and women shot in grainy 16mm black and white in a manner that went the other way from flattering his casts. Bumpy cameras and extreme close-ups at times contravened narrative clarity, the supreme goal of commercial cinema. Open ended narratives, black humor, exposed-nerve emotions, and a sense of life itself as a performance permeated his films.
There is actually quite little of this in, at least, Dance City, though there is no law dictating that one must swallow a mentor’s aesthetic whole. The world of Dance City is a work-free, hedonistic place where pretty people fret about their boredom and loneliness and future. When a couple does finally form out of this morass, their future is as uncertain as that of Benjamin and Elaine at the end of The Graduate. In other words, outside of certain formal gestures toward independent style moviemaking like Cassavetes’s, Dance Party USA is cinematically traditional and morally conservative. With higher (though imprisoning) production values, Dance Party could play on a double bill with Graduate. In fact, these qualities make the film good, indeed several steps above most achingly predictable independent and amateur features. What this comes down to for me is that I am much more optimistic about the Mumblecore movement than I thought I’d be, thanks to Mr. Katz’s excellent work on Dance Party USA.
