Monday, December 20, 2010

Mumblecore: A Definition

OK - it has come up a few times that I like to throw around the term 'mumblecore', but it's a bit of an unknown thing. So I'll take a moment for an brief definition before proceeding with more reviews:

The so-called mumblecore movement (I guess it's a movement, but it really has no manifesto or rules or strict adherents, like, say Dogme 95) is a small, independent American film aesthetic begun in the middle of the aughts that is created by moneyless post-college kids who generally only have a passing connection to the film production world. It is generally about directionless twenty-somethings and focuses on their relationships with a very frank treatment of nudity and sex. The scripts are mostly dialogue-based and are much more form-less than anything you'd ever see coming out of Hollywood. Most of the time, there is no three-act structure and stories move along like real life moves along: one thing happens, then another thing happens, then another thing happens and then the film ends.

These films are made on shoe-string budgets (like tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands or millions), which leads them to have very low-budget looks employing hand-held, (generally) digital cameras, no fancy editing or technical details. There are generally no "costume" departments and the actors wear their own clothes. In some cases there are only crews of six people total (the writer/director/producer will generally edit them and maybe have a fried do the music... if there's any music at all). Sometimes the film is shot in the director's apartment. It is sometimes known as "D.I.Y. cinema" and that is exactly what it is and what if feels like.

There is a brutal (sometimes dull) reality to these films. At a recent talk I went to, filmmaker Joe Swanberg said something to the effect of how if he wrote or made movies that were "less real" he would have a much more active, lucrative career. There is something about the name that is very much on target. Most of the time when people talk to one another they do mumble. It is only in Hollywood movies that people speak in perfectly formed, clever banter. Most of the time, there are lots of silences and 'uh's and 'um's.

A typical dialogue in a typical mumble movie would go something like, "What you up to today?" "Nothing." "You wanna hang out tonight?" "Uh, maybe... I dunno." "OK - call me later." This isn't really interesting, but it's how people talk. This frankness and unpolished quality is part of what really appeals to me.

Due to the teeny tiny budgets, directors are frequently forced to make due with what they can and come up with clever solutions to production problems that they might not have if they were bigger. In Joe Swanberg's LOL, the film opens with a guy watching a girl do a strip tease online. This was basically done by them getting the permission from this woman (who strips online) to put her in the movie. She's not an actress, she's just doing what she would normally be doing. In may ways this shows exactly how direct the movement is. There is less mediation between the viewer and the content.

The genre has been dramatically helped by the South-by-Southwest film festival and its biggest players are generally based in Williamsburg, Chicago and Austin, with other satellite films produced and set in Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. The best mumblecore writer/director/producers are Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg and the Duplass Brothers. Actress/writer/director Greta Gerwig has participated in lots of them as an actress, but has also written and directed wonderful stuff in conjunction with Swanberg. (I would consider her more of an actress than a writer/dierector at this point, though her writing and directing is really wonderful and better than Buj and the Duplasses). Most of the time the directors act in their own films; they frequently act in one another films too.

Some of the best works in the genre are Funny Ha Ha (Bujalski), LOL (Swanberg), Greta Takes the Stairs (Swanberg, written by Gerwig), Nights and Weekends (Gerwig, co-written with Swanberg), The Puffy Chair (The Duplasses), Mutual Appreciation (Buj), Baghead (Duplasses)and Kissing on the Mouth (Swanberg)(in no particular order). I would also mention and put an asterisk on Medicine for Melancholy (Barry Jenkins), which is mumble-like, but sorta outside the movement per se. There are also Humpday (Lynn Shelton) and Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs), both of which I think are lousy. Filmmaker Alex Karpovsky acts in a bunch of the films (and is clearly friends with these guys), but his own movies are not really mumble.

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