Medicine for Melancholy (Thursday, November 12, 2009) (161)

I have to admit, I only learned about the independent film movement 'mumblecore' recently. This summer, I was speaking to a friend about the film Humpday and he asked me if I had seen other mumblecore movies. I didn't know what he was talking about, so I started researching. The rather ad hoc genre focuses on young post-college kids in their 20s and 30s who are sometimes lost in life and entirely hip or post hip hipsters. The films are made on shoestring budgets and with basically no special effects, digital or camera optics. They frequently employ improvised dialogue and amateur actors. It is sometimes called 'bedhead cinema' both for the unpolished look of the pieces and for the general zeitgeist that pervades the films. After seeing Medicine for Melancholy, I have now seen two mumblecore movies. Because of this film, I am definitely interested in seeing more.

Easily the biggest draw to the picture is the lead actor, Wyatt Cenac, the infrequent but funny contributor to the Daily Show. In the film, he plays Micah, a San Franciscan who wakes up one morning after a one-night-stand with Jo, a woman he barely just met. Awkwardly they go for breakfast where he tries to make conversation with her. She sits stone-faced, ashamed and embarrassed by her reckless behavior from the night before. After he cracks a few jokes and is able to break her tough exterior, the two set off on a weekend-long date adventure getting to know each other and exploring a world outside of their mundane lives.

The film is a modern-day romance, a cross between Noel Coward and David Lean's Brief Encounter and Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It. There is an intense immediacy to the action and an urgency to their love affair. The feeling that it could be all over the next minute pervades every shot. It is interesting to see these two characters, who have no reason to trust one another and no reason to tell the truth, fall into a profound relationship in a few scenes - a relationship that has an expiry date of a few hours later.

Director Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton do a very interesting job with the visual style of the film showing most of it in super exposed color stock, leading us to see it almost in black and white with some dull accent colors. More than standard black and white, which can add depth and plays with shadows and light well, this technique mutes and flattens everything and gives a dreamy quality to the couple's story. At specific moments, the outside world is seen in full color, which reminds us that the inside story here might be a fairy tale or a dream.

This is a very small movie. There are not big scenes in it, there is basically no action and there are certainly no special visual effects. It is mostly shot on hand-held cameras with what looks like totally natural lighting. The film has a very cool soundtrack filled with hipper-than-hip bands. In the credits, there is a roll of music linked with stills of the scenes where the songs were played, as if it was another actor in the film.

There is a very 'home-made' quality to this movie - almost like a very polished film-school piece. This is not a negative comment - it's a sign of the film's freshness. I don't think this film could have been made in the standard Hollywood structure - or if it was, it would have been totally banal and uncreative. I would not say yet that I'm totally sold on mumblecore (I really didn't like Humpday, for what it's worth), but I'm very interested by the frank, fresh nature of the movement and the un-processed view of the world it allows. This film gives me hope that not all independent movies have to have super-edgy, wordy scripts with Parker Posey or Donal Logue. A good, solid story is sometimes all you need.

Stars: 3 of 4