Greenberg
Greenberg
Rating: 
Movie: Greenberg (2010)
Studio : Scott Rudin Productions
Info : Click Here
Runtime : 107 min
Website : here
Trailer :
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcupdf
Review:
Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is the brother of Phillip Greenberg. The difference between them is that Phillip is a successful owner of a hotel chain with a healthy family with three kids and a dog in a large home in California. Roger Greenberg is a “do nothing” who lived in New York City as a carpenter with a mental breakdown who lives like an old man wishing it was twenty years ago.
Greenberg is a film about acknowledgement. Greenberg refuses to acknowledge people but wants to be acknowledged, particularly by those who had something to do with his past in California. As he attempts to find some way to bring back the things he loved in his high school days, he finds himself in a frustrating relationship with his brother’s personal assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig), who is almost twenty years younger than him and strangely resonates with his eccentric attitude. She is one of the only people who acknowledges and admires him, and he hates her for it as he tries to get people in his past to acknowledge him instead.
The only member of his past who is willing to be a part of his life again is Ivan (Rhys Ifans), an old band member with a son and an ex-wife that Roger refuses to acknowledge. Roger insists that Ivan leave the things that has happened to him while Roger was in New York while plotting with him on how to get back the ex-girlfriend that left him during high school so long ago.
It was difficult formulating what to say about this film. It’s awkward and clumsy at times, much like Roger. We don’t really understand him, but slowly start to see the pieces of his past that made him this way. Like Florence, we are strangely drawn to his eccentricities, and only when we see him interact and care for these new figures in life do we start to really acknowledge him.
This is definitely a film for the Wes Anderson crowd. Initially, I was even tempted to call this film another Rushmore (and, no, not in a good way). But thankfully, unlike most Wes Anderson films I’ve seen, director Noah Baumbach is generous with his clues and willing to give you some slack in order to “get it”. As you go further into the film and study the pieces, you start to acknowledge that this film really is more than you originally may have believed.
-Donald Lee