Man on Film: The Way, Way Back

Perhaps my life of enabling the aquatic enjoyment of others combined with the sometimes crippling inferiority complex that I've dealt with on-and-off for the bulk of my life make me the extremely specific target audience for this film, but I was completely enamored with Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's directorial debut, The Way, Way Back. Hot off their Oscar-winning scribe work on The Descendants, Faxon and Rash--soon to co-star in their own absurdist hour-long buddy cop dramedy on TNT that will be packaged with Franklin & Bash--elected to wade into the indie waters of the awkward coming-of-age flick.

Liam James and AnnaSophia Robb

Positioning Liam James--who already has quite an extensive resume having already worked on films including 2012 and Horsemen and series including Psych and The Killing at the age of just 16--front-and-center, Rash and Faxon put their young protagonist, Duncan through the emotional ringer of adolescence while trying to acclimate to divorce and his mother's new douchebag boyfriend (Steve Carell) while at that boyfriend's beach house in the Northeast (presumably either the Cape or Long Island) for the summer. James is called upon to play the teen uncomfortable in his own skin, content to sit at home by himself rather than socialize with peers, who eventually comes into his own with the help of the social safety net provided him by his de facto mentor, Owen (Sam Rockwell)--his supervisor at the surreptitious summer job he gets at a run-down water park. As Duncan gradually grows more confident under the lead-by-example tutelage of the irreverent yet juvenile Owen, James sheds Duncan's timidity and awkwardness with aplomb.

To their credit, Faxon and Rash manage to expertly navigate tricky emotional waters, adroitly balancing the emotionally raw and painful with much-needed uproarious laughter. Rash and Faxon's decision to set the tale against the emotional backdrop of a mother (Pam, played by Toni Collette) and son still reeling from the divorce and essential abandonment of the husband and father is what gives the film its weight. Both are damaged, and James and Collette both thrive in their roles as the fragile, beleaguered survivors. As the stunted boyfriend, Trent, Carell channels Michael Scott at his most odious and petty and infuses it with a cocksure swagger masking his deeper insecurities. While entirely unlikable, Carell does good work here, making his early exit from The Office retroactively rewarding (at least for those of whom thought Michael Scott should have stayed on the show despite the fact that the character really had nowhere else to go).

Where The Way, Way Back's dramatic core sits mostly in the seasonal cottage abode of the makeshift family--there is a pretty distinct dichotomy in the film's two spheres that only Duncan and eventually the two neighbor kids, Peter and Duncan's love interest, Susanna, played by AnnaSophia Robb [pictured above] are able to traverse until the final act--Duncan's clandestine work world is where the film's humor is mostly injected (not to take away from Allison Janney's turn as the terrible drunk mother at the beach house next door, which is largely hilarious). The color, the heart, and the joy of the film all comes from the weird world of Water Wizz. Stacked with accomplished comedic character actors (Maya Rudolph, Rockwell, Rash, and Faxon), Water Wizz is the almost forgotten water park staffed by adults whose development was arrested and who could never quite bring themselves to leave the job that was at least as much fun as it ever was work. [Again, I'm kind of the target niche demographic for this movie (there was even a time when a fellow lifeguard and I entertained the notion of moving to the Wisconsin Dells and working at Noah's Ark for the summer).] Faxon, Rash, and Rudolph all do their thing exceptionally well, but to actually buy into the film completely, one needs to have Rockwell kill. He does. Rockwell's Owen acutely intuits that Duncan needs a bit of guidance, and while he never comes out and tells Duncan that he'll take him under his wing, he builds up Duncan's self-esteem like an older brother, or really, like a father. He's far from perfect, but if it isn't for Owen as the mentor, Duncan doesn't come out of this film emboldened. Water Wizz is where Duncan gets to start his life anew, breaking forth from the chrysalis of pubescence and paternal abandonment.

If anyone doubted how much of an imprint Faxon and Rash had on The Descendants, those nagging questions can likely be put to rest. The Way, Way Back has every bit the heart that The Descendants had. Faxon and Rash masterfully tug at the heartstrings while avoiding being overtly manipulative, somehow mining a rich vein of emotional pain within me that I thought had been tapped out ages ago and allowing me come out on the other side both intensely happy and very sad. It is rare that a movie makes me feel anything as much as The Way, Way Back did, but it's a testament to Nat Faxon and Jim Rash's deft touch as burgeoning filmmakers, a path that I personally hope is a long and fruitful one.

Man on Film: The Descendants

While the prospect of sitting through a film in which a family tries to pick up the pieces of their lives as one of their own sits at death's door can often be a daunting one, especially if you've experienced such loss in your own life, Alexander Payne's latest feature The Descendants adeptly skirts around the tedium, melodrama, and depression into which most grief-driven fare often tumbles.

At this point, Payne's curriculum vitae should speak for itself. In his last three features--Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways*--Payne and long-time writing partner Jim Taylor** combined to made films that while often dealing with protagonists who should have been little more than sad-sacks ended up carving out a niche that saw them crafting much less depressive films than the subject (and protagonist) would otherwise have been if in the hands of others.

*I always forget about Citizen Ruth, in large part because I've never seen it. Oddly, I always thought it was a movie made for HBO. This was not the case, as it was a Miramax release. 

**I just found out that Payne and Taylor were two of the three credited screenwriters for Jurassic Park III. What. The. Fuck?

This time around Taylor isn't in the writing mix, just wearing the hat of a producer. In his stead, Payne enlisted the help of Nat Faxon (recognizable to most readers as Garlan Greenbush from Party Down episode "Party Down Company Picnic") and Jim Rash (Dean Pelton from Community). Working from the Kaui Hart Hemmings debut novel by the same name, Payne & Co. have given the movie-going public a movie that doesn't simply deal with death in the typical way of blindly honoring the dead.

As Matt King (George Clooney) learns shortly after his wife's accident, his wife had been cheating. The marriage wasn't exactly on the best of terms, but the typical course in the woman being kept alive by machines is deified is not the one that is run here. In the wake of his wife's boating accident that has rendered her a vegetable, Matt must connect with his daughters, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley of The Secret Life of the American Teenager) and Scottie (Amara Miller). All the while, he must come to his own terms with his strained marital relationship without being able to talk to his spouse. In attempting to reconcile the bombshell that her infidelity was, he tries to balance his duties as sole trustee (in a trust set to expire of his large family's 25,000 acres of virgin land on Kauai with trying to work through the grieving process while trying to step up from his previous role as "back-up parent." He accomplishes the latter by bringing his daughters--and Alexandra's quasi-beau Sid (Nick Krause)--along with him, working through their grief together.

Delving into the plot any further is largely pointless in talking abut the film. It is not the plot of The Descendants that sets it apart. Rather it is the rawness and breadth of emotions covered therein. As Matt works through the anger, pain, confusion, and sorrow, his journey is one that is quietly but intensely affective. The gamut of emotions that Matt runs are easily relatable. The audience can place themselves in his shoes with little thought or energy spent. The verity of his emotional sojourn is naturally evident; quite simply, The Descendants attains a level of truth that most films do not.

What matters the most here is that The Descendants feels genuine. There are lighter moments and clear laughs (much of what happens with Sid), but these aspects of the film are simply complimentary. The backbone of the film is the natural handling of grief with which Payne and Co. have imbued it. At the film's pre-coda close, this obedience to truth pays dividends and the audience is left touched.