Movies, like any artistic medium, will always have a darling of the moment. The best contestant for that category right now is mumblecore.
At this point I am a minor expert in mumblecore. I have watched The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Mutual Appreciation, and Funny Ha Ha, and I did not particularly like any of these movies. I kept watching them one after the other, waiting for the good one, but the good one never came.
And that’s when I realized that mumblecore is a film movement without any good movies. It’s a critical favorite, it gets long articles in local alternative weeklies, but nobody I’ve talked to particularly likes it. Mumblecore has all the trappings of something that critics ought to like, so they feel they ought to. And that’s what I’d like to explore.
You’re probably wondering what mumblecore is. First, it’s probably made by one of a small community of young (actually young-ish) filmmakers including Andrew Bujalski and the Duplass brothers. It’s going to be filled with young (or young-ish) hipsters, it will be shot on shaky hand-held DV under guerilla on-site conditions, there will be loose or non-existent narrative structure which leads to anti-climax at best, and most of the dialogue will be ad-libbed, hence the "mumble" in mumblecore. There’s a brilliant moment early in Baghead where a snide young filmmaker tells a festival audience "Do you worry about what your lines will be every day when you get up in the morning? No you don’t." It’s a vicious and beguiling moment of self-clarity, and it’s almost enough to justify the entire movie.
In short, the genre looks like someone took Lars von Trier’s Dogma 95, Slacker, a box of home movies, and the obnoxious hipsters from that bar on the East Side and made an entire genre.
Critics feel that they should like it because A.) It’s anti-Hollywood so that gives it the outsider-art/underground mystique, B.) It’s not terribly ambitious so you can’t criticize it for not achieving its goals, C.) It wears its pedigree on its sleeve, aping previous underground film styles to the point of plagiarism, D.) It is the necessary outcome of all that talk about how the proliferation and affordability of portable DV technology is going to democratize film, and E.) We’re all supposed to think that everything those hipsters do is cool.
What people fail to realize is that the democratization of art is the worst thing that has happened to America in the past twenty years. The idea that anyone can pick up an artistic medium and make something valid that they can then subject on another human being is a baby-boomer misconception that sprung from rolling around in the mud and doing acid.
In reality, subjecting your art on someone is a crime and it makes you a terrible person. It takes ten years of diligent practice and a lot of talent to make worthwhile art. America is suffering from guy with a guitar syndrome. We’re all sitting out on the patio while inside the proverbial coffeeshop self-styled singer-songwriters are plunking away about their feelings or something else totally worthless.
That’s what mumblecore is. People have been talking so long about how DV tech is going to revolutionize film that they’re willing to embrace anything that isn’t youtube videos of children high on painkillers. Mumblecore is only incrementally less amateurish and about as entertaining.
If there is one area where mumblecore excels, it’s at its portrayal of a listless generation. Every mumblecore movie is filled with hipsters who have no vitality and no articulation, which is accurate if nothing else. If only mumblecore movies themselves didn’t emulate that inarticulate vacuity.
So, mumblecore, I’m talking to you. Try being more interesting. An invaluable part of the creative process is asking yourself "why would anyone want to be subjected to this art?" Being entertaining is a good first step, but if you can’t manage that, at least try saying something of importance.
Mumblecore does show some promise. Baghead could have been a great movie if it had been edited a little tighter and built to an emotional climax. Anti-climax should be a rare event, not the rule.
In summary, try a little harder, mumblecore. We’re still waiting for the emergent voice from that great sea of cheap DV.
