101 Marvellous Movies You May Have Missed by David Stratton

Author:David Stratton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2018-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

58

The Meyerowitz Stories

(New and Selected)

(USA, 2017)

Netflix Original–IAC Films. DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: Noah Baumbach. ACTORS: Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel, Grace Van Patten, Candice Bergen, Adam Driver, Judd Hirsch, Rebecca Miller, Matthew Shear. 110 MINS.

New York. Septuagenarian Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman), a sculptor, lives with his third wife Maureen (Emma Thompson), in a cluttered three-storey house. Bitter because he has never been afforded the recognition he believes to be his due, the grumpy Harold has an ambivalent attitude towards his three children. Danny (Adam Sandler), who once showed promise as a musician, is drifting aimlessly through life, but is proud of his daughter Eliza (Grace Van Patten), who has enrolled at film school. Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) lives alone, while Matthew (Ben Stiller) has found success in the finance business in LA. Both Danny and Matthew are recovering from broken marriages, while Jean has always been single. Matthew and his father are planning to sell the New York house, and its entire art collection, at a knock-down price, while Danny is bitterly opposed to this. Harold is persuaded to participate in a retrospective of his work at Bard College, where he taught for many years, and where Eliza studies film. But the old man suffers a stroke and is hospitalised. This brings the quarrelling siblings closer together, and both of them speak for their father at the show’s opening.

This is the best film to date from Noah Baumbach, a director who, in movies like The Squid and the Whale, Greenberg and While We’re Young, has specialised in exploring the collateral effects of selfish behaviour. Divided into chapters, the film—as its title proclaims—is structured around a series of family anecdotes: the inebriated Maureen serving up an inedible fish dish for Danny and Eliza; Matthew attempting to have a restaurant lunch with his crotchety father, while the old man regularly antagonises both waiters and other diners; the hospital experience where there seems to be no continuity of either doctors or nurses; the snobbery and politics of the art scene. Much of this is extremely funny in a Woody Allen kind of way, with running gags and non-sequiturs in abundance (at one point, Harold complains that in his opinion the reason the Republicans control the government is a result of the public’s indifference to art). But it’s also painful. Speaking of their father, Danny tells Matthew: ‘He loves everything you do.’ ‘He doesn’t tell me,’ replies Matthew. ‘He tells me!’ cries the under-appreciated Danny.

The performances are simply wonderful—Hoffman has rarely been better than he is here as the curmudgeonly old self-promoter whose self-absorption has seriously affected the lives of his children. But the next generation offers hope in Grace Van Patten’s lovely performance as the skittish Eliza, who cheerfully sends home for her father and grandfather to view copies of the provocative film-school movies she has created (Pagina Man about a man with a penis as well as a vagina is her latest creation).

The Meyerowitz Stories is included here as an example of Netflix Original productions.

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