Margot at the Wedding
Writer-director Noah Baumbach had a well-deserved arthouse hit with “The Squid and the Whale,” his splendid chronicle of divorce in 1980s Brooklyn. Baumbach’s downbeat and caustic follow-up, “Margot at the Wedding,” hasn’t been as roundly embraced, but to my eyes it’s just as worthy. Again he achieves a potent, painful authenticity. He understands our weakest moments, when we can’t conceal our petty jealousies, toxic vanities and unhealthy obsessions. And he writes the wittiest, most biting dialogue in movies today. Unlike the too-clever repartee in this season’s earnest crowd-pleaser, “Juno,” the punch lines in “Margot at the Wedding” carry insight behind their hilarity. As in “The Squid and the Whale,” Baumbach writes about the world he knows: New York literary types who can’t function in life despite, or perhaps because of, their artistic prowess. Thanks to Baumbach and his brave cast, their outrageous behavior is sadly plausible. Nicole Kidman projects a blithe, imperious madness as Margot, an acclaimed author whose withering judgments tend to obliterate everyone in her path. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black, as Margot’s sister and future brother-in-law, cower in her wake – sometimes cravenly, sometimes with hard-won pathos. And as the family’s younger generation, Zach Haim and Flora Cross bring forth the frightening realization that the adults in their lives can’t be trusted. You wouldn’t want to be related to the characters in “Margot at the Wedding,” but the scary thing is, you probably are.
LISTEN: Margot at the Wedding