Filmmaker Jonathan Noah Baumbach said he was happy for any excuse to come to Brooklyn as he stood in front of a packed audience at the BAM Rose Cinema for a sneak preview screening of his new film, Margot at the Wedding.
He was, however, unable to stick around for a Q&A afterwards because Paramount had double-booked him and he was expected somewhere else.
Boo.
Baumbach promised to return for a Q&A during the run of Margot at the Wedding BAM Rose Cinema.
Yay.
A handsome fellow of few, well chosen words Baumbach told the crowd that the film says it all and hoped that everyone would enjoy it.
Margot at the Wedding is the sister film to end all sister films. Nicole Kidman plays Margot, an unlikable, judgemental and moody writer (descibed as a “borderline personality” by OTBKB reader). Very Type-A, she’s highly competitive and in one tour-de-force scene climbs a tall tree just to prove she can.
Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Pauline, her more laid back and bohemian sister. Jack Black is hilarious in the role of Pauline’s sympathetic layabout fiancee.
Two young actors are incredible as the children of Margot and Pauline.
The film proves that family members make the best and the worst company; it is the anatomy of the fascinating and sometimes insidious ways siblings influence each other’s sense of identity.
Like the talky and psychological films of French director Eric Rohmer, Margot at the Wedding gathers its characters together for a country wedding and waits for things to implode. Implode they do.
Go see this film with any member of your family and go out for some conversation and wine afterward.
You’ll need it.
Jonathan Baumbach is indeed the father, who was the director of Brooklyn College’s MFA program in fiction writing for decades and a good teacher to many of us graduate students and undergrads at BC. He was also the co-founder of the Fiction Collective and the author of numerous innovative novels and short story collections.
But he too has film credentials as well: for many years Jon was the film critic of Partisan Review.
NOAH Baumbach is the filmmaker.
Jonathan is his professor/author father, whom the father in “The Squid and the Whale” is allegedly based on. (And not a flattering portrayal, either.)
Not an easy film to sit through, but some incredible performances. Kidman, as a dysfunctional borderline, is terrific. No spoilers, but the ending is sufficiently ambiguous to leave room for much discussion over that glass of wine.