Acerbic, coffee comedy (that is, dark and bitter – like me!) mixes flawlessly with deeply affecting emotion in what could reductively be called an off-beat coming-of-age story. Looking at the cast of characters – rebellious teenager, Gordon-Gecko-in-training older brother, icy mother, and schizophrenic father – you might be tempted to write it off as yet another wackily dysfunctional family tale, but it’s a lot more than that. Igby (Kieran Culkin) is an angry, lonely, but acid-witted teenager who openly loathes his mother and brother and does everything he can to get kicked out of school after school (he lands for a little while in a teen detox center with the delightfully Orwellian name of “Clipped Wings – a Teenage Wellness and Redirection Center,” which nobody else laughed at but me). His mother Mimi (Susan Sarandon) is cold and sarcastic in the worst way (in one of the best lines in the movie, again with only me laughing at it, she icily says of Igby, “His creation was an act of animosity; why should his life be any different?”) and cares little about his constant failures except as they reflect on and inconvenience her. His “fascist Republican” brother Oliver (Ryan Philippe, whose flat, detached affect is perfect for his haughty character) alternately torments and ignores Igby. Even the nickname that Igby now goes by came out of cruel childhood taunting from his family. The only warm, loving member of the family is father Jason (Bill Pullman), and he’s mostly off in mental institutions.
As empathetic as you might feel, you have to admit that Igby has a way of making people want to hit him – as Oliver says to him, “I think if Gandhi had had to hang out with you for any prolonged period of time, he’d have ended up kicking the shit out of you.” But the kid has a lot of pressures on him: fleeing to New York in a vain attempt to dodge the emissaries his mother dispatches from her Georgetown mansion to find him, trying to get money without actually having to work, romancing the similarly disaffected Sookie (Claire Danes)… and worrying that he’ll suffer the same mental breakdown as his father.
Everybody hurts in this movie, even the ones who appear to be emotionless. But it’s not about conning sympathy out of you or tugging at heart-strings; it feels real and organic. Writer-director Burr Steers crafts lovely, poignant scenes that string together to a surprisingly moving ending (I was crying for at least the last ten minutes of the film). As funny as the film is at the beginning, it’s wrenching by the end (not without its black humor, though; for instance, Steers throws in a completely unanticipated bombshell that’s hilarious for its off-handed revelation). Steers avoids heavy-handedness and simple resolutions; I particularly liked the understated, touching yearning a couple of the characters voice for “a sunny day.”
The cast are all terrific and have well-scripted, full characters to bring to life. Culkin, defying his family name, is wonderfully natural. Sarandon makes Mimi a cruelly comic character without turning her into a parody à la Mommie Dearest, and Jeff Goldblum (as Igby’s back-slapping, vacantly gregarious godfather) is funny… intentionally funny. Pullman’s kind but incredibly sad father is heart-breaking (and just about erases my mental image of him with a goat; note to my father: if you should happen to see a play starring, say, John Cusack, and he… oh, I don’t know, likes to “play with” the chickens in the back yard, don’t tell me about it).
I really loved this film. The way it mixes humor and sadness reminded me a bit of The Good Girl (maybe just because I've seen it recently), but I found Igby more natural and nuanced. I highly recommend this and hope that it finds a wider audience than I expect, although I also feel like the mindless hordes that put movies like Austin Powers in Goldmember and Swimfan at the top of the box office not only wouldn’t get this movie, they don’t deserve it. (To revive one of my favorite quotes, by Robert Hughes: “I don’t mind being accused of being an elitist. I am an elitist. There are some works of art that stupid people will never understand because they weren’t meant for stupid people. And there are a lot of stupid people.”)
Here I will artfully transition from movie review to audience rant by noting that this might be the first movie I’ve seen where something in the film affected an audience member’s behavior. Sookie often tells Igby pensively and unsmilingly, “You’re funny.” Finally he retorts, “If you think I’m funny, why do you say so instead of just laughing?” And damned if it didn’t stop the woman next to me from exclaiming, “That’s funny!” after every joke.
Now the
unadulterated rant: I was in line behind a woman probably
just this side of retirement age who complained loudly and ceaselessly
(and I mean, as in never even stopping for a breath) in an abrasive Noo
Yawk accent to another person about all the discrimination she’s
suffered
because she’s Jewish (although, from what I overheard, the
discrimination
didn’t appear to stop her from getting a high-paying job on Wall Street
and living in luxurious homes in DC and New York). Apparently
people
spit on her a lot, although I never quite figured out how literal that
was, because she always said, “They actually spit on me!” and I
didn’t think that could really have happened so many times. Her refrain
was, “I’ve been on both sides of prejudice,” although she never
mentioned any examples of her discriminating against someone, except
probably
inadvertently, in that every incident in which someone spit on her
seemed
to involve African-Americans or Latinos. Hell, I was
ready
to spit on her after a while. As the time for us to go into the
theater
drew near, she switched to bemoaning the absence of the promotions firm
that was supposed to have her name (and mine, as it turned out) on a
guest
list – we couldn’t get in until the firm’s person showed up. She
vociferously wailed every 90 seconds or so, “Where are
they?
They’re not here! Why do they always do this to
me?”
It was all I could do to restrain myself from leaning over to her and
whispering
conspiratorially, “I bet it's because you’re Jewish.”
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