Margot at the Wedding (2007)
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Written by Noah Baumbach
Starring Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, John Turturro
Release Date November 16th, 2007
Published November 30th, 2007
Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is getting married and her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman) has relented to come in Noah Baumbach's latest ponderous wade into the world of the over-educated and under-socialized Margot At the Wedding. This oddball little movie about horrible people torturing each other over their shared ugly pasts is one of the more unpleasant movies I've seen in a while, and I've seen two Martin Lawrence comedies in recent weeks. It's not that Baumbach is not talented. Rather it's his use of his gift with words for evil. By evil I mean his characters are constantly manipulative, backbiting. Their whiney self involvement and their constant state of fucked upness.
As he did with his debut picture The Squid and The Whale Baumbach abuses another teenager, young Lane Pais plays Claude the son of the evil Margot and throughout Margot at the Wedding he is treated to abuse after abuse from his mother to a strange neighbor boy to having to hear far too much of Pauline and her fiance Malcolm's (Jack Black) business. This is the kind of mother-son relationship from which serial killers are born. It's a shame because Pais' performance has great potential. That potential is stifled unfortunately by Baumbach's fascination with Kidman's Margot.
Margot and Pauline were abused by their father, abuse that their unseen sister Becky never recovered from allegedly and thus still lives with their unseen mother. Naturally, Margot and Pauline delight in their sisters' misery. Then again, they seem to delight in each other's misery just as much. Margot doesn't just delight in hearing of misery however, she likes to instigate it and watch it unfold. With her own marriage faltering, John Turturro appears briefly as her masochist husband, Margot immediately sets to finding fault with Pauline's soon to be husband.
There is plenty to find fault with. Malcolm is a manchild, quick to bursts of impotent rage. He has no job, music is now his hobby we are told, he's a painter now. Malcolm has zero social skills and tells embarrassing stories. It's actually quite well played by Jack Black who rages in various directions, we assume looking to make us laugh, and occasionally finds a truly funny moment. These moments are rare, squeezed as they are between the palace intrigue of two sisters trying to emotionally decapitate one another. Then you have the poor children thrust into the middle of all of this. Pauline has a younger daughter named Ingrid who somehow manages to remain on the periphery of all of the evil.
There are laughs in Margot at the Wedding and even what passes for insight among these disturbing characters. Unfortunately, the whole thing is so damn repugnant to those who have the will to search for the good in it. Noah Baumbach is a talented writer who has gone over to the dark side. He simply doesn't like people and demonstrates that by crafting characters that reflect how awful he thinks they are. He uses children in his films to reflect that evil and how it is passed on generation to generation. There may be a valuable lesson to be learned there but I can't stand his characters long enough to figure out what that lesson is.
