The Jerk

Ben Stiller plays an asshole Peter Pan in Noah Baumbach's Greenberg.

by Shaun Brady

[ City Paper Grade: A-]

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), fresh off some sort of nervous breakdown and recently arrived in L.A., insists to everyone he encounters that his goal for the time being is to simply try to "do nothing." It's a claim that, given the way hostility and uncertainty seem to hover behind everything that comes out of his mouth, rings hollow even at first; the more we get to know Greenberg, the more evident it becomes that this is a defensive attempt to transform self-doubt into ambition.

Not that anyone's buying it. His return to the West Coast, after 15 years in New York, means that Greenberg, with a combination of reluctance and veiled hope, spends much of his time reuniting with old friends, most of whom seem to grow wary and uncomfortable in his presence.

While the events of his past decade-and-a-half remain unclear outside of an unspecified stay in a mental hospital and sporadic work as a carpenter, what becomes painfully obvious is that for Greenberg, nothing has happened. Bitterly angry (he spends his free time penning complaint letters to companies, agencies, whoever may have crossed his path), nervous and prone to spiteful outbursts, he is a 40-year-old frozen at 25, at the instant just after his life went wrong. His coked-up encounter with a party full of twentysomethings, though, exposes the gap between his self-perceived and actual ages. Stiller's wide-eyed nerviness, typically played for high-strung comedy, here becomes something more unpredictable and potentially harmful.

In his former life, Greenberg was a musician whose self-destruction scuttled an opportunity at success. His return home is an attempt to unmake his bad decisions, wholly tone-deaf to the fact that everyone else involved having moved on with their lives renders that impossible. His "nothing" aims are met with either bewilderment or feigned encouragement, barely covering pity or, worse, indifference.

Or, perhaps worse still, both, which is the reaction of Greenberg's ex-girlfriend, Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who co-conceived the story). The two cross paths at a party and subsequently share a lunch at cross-purposes: he anticipating a resumption of their relationship, she keeping one eye on the exit, barely able to recall the details of their time together.

The major casualty of Greenberg's initial meltdown was his bandmate and best friend, Ivan. The two settle back into something like a friendship, though one characterized most by what goes unspoken. Ivan's marriage is on the rocks — a development which the self-absorbed Greenberg sees as entirely positive, removing an obstacle to re-creating the old days — and he seems ready to forgive, if only Greenberg ever gets around to realizing the necessity of being forgiven.

The sole new relationship that Greenberg strikes up is with Florence (mumblecore actress/director Greta Gerwig), his brother's aimless personal assistant. Her gofering services come with the house, where Greenberg is staying while the family is off on a jaunt to Vietnam, and he quickly proceeds from appending "whiskey and ice cream sandwiches" to her shopping lists to engaging in brutally awkward and inconclusive sex.

Most films would paint Florence, the younger woman, as Greenberg's savior, the ray of light that leads to redemption. Noah Baumbach, however, has never seen other people as the solution to anyone's problems — given that those problems arise from the grievances and contradictions of a single psyche, adding more perspectives to the mix only serves to complicate things. The romance between Greenberg and Florence veers between shrugging acceptance and angry miscommunication, a love story not about finding the right person but about finding reasons to put up with whoever's around.

Florence is the embodiment of passivity — she is unable to assert herself enough to even change lanes in L.A. traffic, and even her pregnancy is something that happens to her, akin to catching a cold. But Gerwig imbues her with a remarkable range of emotion, her uncertainty arising from too much feeling rather than not enough, an utter inability to sift through her own conflicting thoughts.

If Florence finally emerges as one of Baumbach's most positive inventions, it's due to this amorphous neurosis; unlike so many of his characters, her neuroses and pettiness have yet to calcify. This is the process of maturing, Baumbach seems to suggest: The joys of youth are undermined by responsibility and compromise, while the uncertainties and fears harden and sour. A tossed-off line like "I'm watching Just My Luck with Lindsay Lohan on Starz" improbably becomes both hysterical and sad, the picture of how much of life passes in trivia and comfortably wasted time. It's a bleak outlook, but one which the director observes with the eye of a cynically bemused, highly literate anthropologist. The film, as a result, is often incredibly funny, and even holds out something like hope at the end.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Greenberg | Directed by Noah Baumbach, a Focus Features release, opens Friday at the Ritz TK.