Susan Sink

The other night we went to see Noah Baumbach’s new film, While We’re Young. I laughed so hard– not just at what was transpiring on screen but also at myself. I identified so much with Ben Stiller’s character and this particular vision of “the struggling artist in a midlife transition” surrounded by hipster young artists. And I found in it some good advice and also a troubling reflection on modern documentary storytelling.

The main advice is no surprise: to the young, the middle aged will never be cool. The time for being cool is over. One of my favorite moments in the film transposed Josh and Cornelia (Stiller and Naomi Watts) on Facebook and the twenty-something artist couple they’ve befriended Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) saying they’re not on Facebook. Josh is telling Jamie that Facebook can be very useful. Forget it.

So we spend all this time keeping up-to-date with technology and it turns out it doesn’t matter. You can’t keep up. You can only visit the world of the young and enjoy the ride. (Flash to my musician step-son-in-law telling me about Ayahuasca use in Brooklyn just two weeks ago. For the record, he’s not going there. Nor am I.)

Another great moment in the film is about music. Jamie has a very, very large record collection. And Josh tells a friend that his taste is “democratic”: Beethoven, Thin Lizzy, Jay-Z. No high or low art. “It’s so refreshing.” Later, to psych him up for a film pitch, Jamie has him listen to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” and Josh says, “I remember when this song was just bad. But it’s working.” (Flash forward to my joy when my filmmaker step-daughter and musician son-in-law played Laurie Anderson’s “Superman” for me and, of course, I’d been there.)

Jamie and Darby are infectious. But if this was just a film about how Gen-Xers are now old, it would not be as interesting as it is. There is a dark side– it’s Noah Baumbach after all. And here is where I have to announce a spoiler alert.

Jamie and Josh are both documentarians. Cornelia’s father is a successful documentarian of the previous generation. Josh has issues with his father-in-law (Josh never takes his advice and has not followed in his footsteps or distinguished himself on his own terms). These issues are psychological and emotional, but the issues he has with Jamie are artistic and even moral. Over the course of the film it becomes clear that Jamie befriended him to get to his famous father-in-law and also that he’s manipulating Josh and dishonest in his filmmaking. He’s invented a gimmick (involving Facebook) that gives more oomph to the story he wants to tell about an Afghanistan War vet.

This plot line is a direct reference to the film Catfish. In that film, two young filmmakers, Ariel and Nev Schulman, portray themselves as caught in a false Facebook-driven relationship with someone who doesn’t exist. It is a very entertaining film, and the story of the woman in Michigan who invented all these false Facebook identities is true. However, Nev and Ariel’s relationship with her, as depicted in the film, strains credulity. Journalists and critics have said Catfish has “a truth problem.”

Jamie’s film has a truth problem, but even when it is exposed by Josh, he doesn’t really care. What he is making is a new thing– entertainment + truth. The frame doesn’t matter, because the core of the story is true.

So here is where we aging Gen-Xers are. The world is changing not just in silly ways, DIY ice cream, a love of analog, and a chicken in your living room. What disturbs Josh about Jamie is the way he’s changing the art form he’s devoted his life to, the way documentary storytelling is changing. We can cry with Oprah who tried valiantly to keep authenticity in the memoir.

In the end, the film takes a position, voiced by Charles Grodin as the father-in-law and senior documentarian. It’s a very generous response, maybe channelling Roger Ebert’s response to Catfish. It’s one that can be given by the guy who is successful and elder enough to accept this kind of artistic shift.

There’s also a positive resolution for Josh. In a way he chooses life, his family life, and relationship over recording life. He also becomes more generous and maybe even can take criticism, maybe can have an actual human relationship with his father-in-law.

He gives up on cool– but does he also give up on core principles?

I’m not happy with what’s going on with storytelling, particularly “true story” telling. At the same time, I’ve turned slightly from my autobiographical poetry to writing fiction. What I’m writing now has a basis in actual events, but I’m not pretending it happened that way. And I’m only interested in the deeper truths to be found from an exploration of character and plot in writing. Truth.

If, however, a documentary tells a truth but “fiddles with the timeline” and the documentarian plays a role in the film that is more fiction than reality, does it matter– as long as the truth is told? It’s been very interesting to see Andrew Jarecki and the other filmmakers in the wake of The Jinx be heralded as the guys who (may have) brought Robert Durst to justice and on the other hand as the guys who “played” a serial killer by making him think they were his friends and getting him to (maybe) confess, and may have held onto information longer than they should have. No one can deny, however, that The Jinx was both great entertainment and resulted in the arrest of a dangerous man. Hello HBO.

Entertainment + Reality = Truth is with us to stay. Or until the next generation embraces something else.

Notes: Jarecki and his partner were the producers of Catfish. Noah Baumbach’s girlfriend Greta Gerwig (of Frances Ha!) was roommates with one or both of the Schulmans.