(September 2022) - By Jada Sirkin
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Well the title is a trick, things are important when we give them importance. Sure, the value of experiences can be measured, but can we claim that the act of measuring is not in itself a creative act? Because is value in things or in the one who observes/measures them? Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. For some reason, there are experiences that move us more (more visibly) than others. We can name what we think we like, but there is also mystery; there is something mysterious about why an aesthetic experience stirs you.
Stories serve to bring us into agreement—narrative is a technology for creating shared value. There are films that take us by the hand, so that at the end of the journey we value what we are set out to value; and there are films that leave us more space. Declan Donnellan wrote that "sentimentality is the refusal to accept ambivalence". Sentimentality is asserting that something is important for one reason only. The most narrative films are the ones that most signal where to bring our attention—here's where to cry. There are films that, without so much concern for storytelling, will sustain a mumble and allow us to celebrate subtleties that plotting tends to squelch.
Mutual appreciation (2005, Andrew Bujalski) is a film that moves me every time I watch it. Much of what I write about film arises from trying to understand the movement that some works produce in me. About this film, one of the first things I would say is that it has a refreshing quality to it; in fact, it is one of the first films of that refreshing movement that was given the label mumblecore. It wasn't really a movement, nor a genre, in the sense that the filmmakers who fell into the bag didn't think of themselves as a movement nor did they identify with the nomenclature. To summarize, let's say that mumblecore was the name given to a series of films that emerged from the early 2000s onwards, mostly in the United States, produced on a low budget and with what we might think of as a new freshness—a new simplicity. Every now and then, it seems that cinema needs to refresh itself—to restore simplicity. It happened with Italian Neorealism, with the French Nouvelle Vague, with the Danish Dogma 95, with mumblecore, and so on.
The label is important in that it gives permission: when watching a film categorized as mumblecore, the viewer can dispose himself to enter into a type of experience not so defined by the codes of classic narrative cinema—namely, dramatic tension, suspense, the dynamic of build-up and release, precise and important dialogue, the protagonist-antagonist system, the paradigm of central conflict, and so on. As it happens when we say that a work has an "open ending", the enabling notion can also limit. To say that a fiction has an open ending is, in a way, to organize the experience almost as if it had a "closed ending". The definition "it has an open ending" reassures us—it soothes the uneasiness generated by what we call openness. Films that we could categorize as mumblecore tend not to give so much value to the ending, they are not structured in that controlling narrative way that makes the experience feel like a journey and makes sense only when the end is reached—because the finale is a finality, that point of relief to which it has become necessary for us to arrive.
When we are making a point, when we want to say something precise and important, reaching the end is decisive; on the other hand, when we mumble (to mumble is making sounds that don't get to create meaning), that is to say, when we make music, reaching the end is not so important. To sing is to speak without wanting to say something. I think it is precisely this looser way of structuring the narrative what gives these films their freshness—scenes do not derive their main importance from the fact that they belong to a chain of cumulative meaning: as the scenes are not so much designed to build that chain of causes and effects, the actors do not need to constrain their expressiveness because of the narrative need to deliver readable signs for the viewer. The same happens with the attention that the camera and the microphone can give to details—when the narrative does not impose itself on the camera's eye, the possibility of seeing appears—and seeing is seeing other things. Thus, the attention of the eye and the sensitivity of the actors benefit from a freedom, generally unavailable in the more strongly narrative cinema, where every detail must be part of the plot—in a Hollywood film, we know that, if a character coughs, a few scenes later he or she will die of tuberculosis; and if a gun is shown, it must be fired. When storytelling is the most important thing, the acting gesture must be precise and controlled, because it is necessary for the viewer to understand what the character thinks and feels—if the viewer does not understand, he will not be able to cry at the end. When we want to affirm something, the mumbling (the ambiguous sound, the noise) must be reduced as much as possible.
In Mutual appreciation, the story is not that important—and this allows the whole movie to be important. Alan (Justin Rice) arrives in New York to pursue his career as a musician. He meets up with his old friend Lawrence (played by the director, Andrew Bujalski) and Lawrence's girlfriend, Elie (Rachel Clift). Small situations happen that are more and less related to Alan's journey with music: a radio interview, meeting a new drummer, a concert, an evening with a man who could help the young musician make his way, etc. There are scenes that we don't know what they have to do with: the wig party, Alan's relationship with the journalist, the invitation to Lawrence to participate in a poetic-theatrical performance, etc. Even in the most narrative scenes, the film manages to avoid being buried in the narrative.
Let's just say that the film is not preoccupied (anxious) with storytelling, and that allows the actors to be very much alive. The leading trio has a beautiful vitality. All three are great—especially Justin Rice, who gives, in this film, one of my favorite performances in the history of cinema. Why? Well, there's something charming, curious, bouncy about him—and what's interesting is that he doesn't turn out to be an eccentric teenager. His eccentricity stops one step short of becoming weird. We can't go so far as to say that Alan is weird, and that allows him to vibrate in a very unique zone of ambiguity. We cannot say that his behavior and attitudes are only adolescent, because at times he seems very mature and attentive to what is happening in the relationship with other people. He does have a certain ironic tone, but he doesn't settle there either—he's not at all cynical. He laughs a little at others, but he is not malicious; on the contrary, he is rather affectionate, loving, tender. Since no adjective quite fits him, his performance is suspended on a kind of floating dance floor where gestures and physicality can display much subtlety. Why does he make such and such a gesture? His body expresses the unclassifiable. What do such and such a look mean? What does that look at the end of the cookie-baking scene mean? We do not know. The performance is not codified, because the director does not force the bodies to carry the responsibility of explaining something specific to us.
By the end, almost as if unintentionally, the film drifts into what would be the most conflicting situation of the plot: Alan and Elie's growing closer. She starts working as his musical manager, she helps him, they spend time together; one night, they confess that they are attracted to each other. They understand that it is not appropriate to move forward sexually, but they hold hands and sleep together. The theme of infidelity has served as raw material for many (many!) movies and series. Not to mention secrets, which structure a large part of our narratives - in movies and in life. This film chooses neither suspense nor secrecy as a way to generate interest—there, an aesthetic and political decision. When Lawrence returns from a wedding for which he had to travel for the weekend, Elie tells him of the connection she had with Alan. And here unfolds what for me is one of the best film sequences of all time—specifically, in relation to relationship problems; more specifically, in relation to the theme of infidelity; and, above all, for the acting deployment.
A curious variation on the theme of jealousy. When Elie tells Lawrence of her closeness with Alan, Lawrence reacts in many ways. I won't try to describe the moment, because it's pointless, and because it's about acting—about acting liberated from the idea; I invite you to watch it, if you didn't already, or to return to it, with other attention. What happens to Lawrence/Bujalski in that scene is breathtaking. The directing doesn't settle on a single emotional attitude, and that allows the moment to be many moments in one. The narrative doesn't force his character to feel any one thing, and that allows the actor to vibrate in a harmony of varied sounds, which gives the screen a frisky, vibrant texture. I realize that the scene may go unnoticed, or that it may frustrate, especially if we expect the usual confession scene battle. Lawrence doesn't explode, but it's not like nothing happens to him either. He understands, but at the same time he doesn't. He seems to feel some jealousy, but he doesn't let himself get carried away. Nor is it that he holds back, or plays cool. The director's decision to leave the moment in this zone of ambiguity seems to me to be both an aesthetic and a political decision: it speaks to us of a new sensitivity, it proposes a new way of living the tense situations of the intimacy scenario, it reminds us that the relationship problem is an aesthetic problem—it is an aesthetic-political decision that invites the actor/character not to be trapped in the furrow of archetypal reactions.
What happens between Lawrence and Elie (between Bujalski and Clift!) is beautiful. They don't dramatize, but at the same time so much happens to them. By not underlining just one thing, the body can feel many things. Because the body feels many things, the mind cannot impose a guiding idea on it. The moment vibrates, and this vibration speaks to us of a politics of encounters. It is also possible for us not to be taken by the need to react and fight. It is also possible for us not to define what we feel in a situation—it is also possible for us to feel several things at the same time. Is not fighting forcing ourselves to feel only one thing? Is not fighting defending an emotional position? Why can't we feel several emotions at once?
When we behave archetypically (the Hollywood way of organizing experience), what we do is to choose one way of reacting to a given situation. Choosing? Who chooses to react? The archetypal universe is a theater of fixed positions. As seen in the vast majority of movies, humans tend toward archetypal behavior-we tend to take sides and fixate on positions/opinions about the experiences we live. Archetypes are old patterns of behavior; in challenging situations, such as the one at the end of Mutual appreciation, we tend to react (to survive) according to those patterns -shortcuts. Here the decision is different: the actors/characters are not stuck in the repetition of that old drama; thus, what we see in this sequence is that vincular exploration (the problem of human relationships) is an aesthetic question - a question of sensitivity. We need to become more sensitive so that we can function in more complex ways. To function in an archetypal way is to function in a simplified way - to such and such a situation, such and such a response corresponds. To become more sensitive is to become more complex. It is not about overcoming reactivities, it is not about not feeling anything, it is not about repressing archetypal emotional movements; it is, rather, about playing with the dynamization of polarized positions, it is about recognizing the addiction we have to fixate and create conflict, it is about discovering the perceptual patterns that lead us to behave always in the same way, it is about encouraging us to feel several things at the same time. That's what these bodies dare to do, and it's so appreciated!
When Lawrence meets Alan and tells him that Elie told him something about what happened between them, Alan's reaction is beautiful -and it's beautiful because it's ambiguous. What's up with him? What's up with them?! You don't know, not just one thing is up with them, all sorts of things are up with them. She arrives; they look at each other, the three of them, they laugh, they hug. I can't believe that cinema still finds it so hard to give moments of this level of subtlety, so simple and therefore so complex.
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