Nights and Weekends
Sunday, March 7th, 2010Nights and Weekends
Though Swanberg’s previous film “LOL”, was not the most visually stunning, it was creative, and I found it quite interesting simply because it had something to say about how we relate to one another in this day and age. This film seems to want to say something as well, but the immature, whiny, uninteresting way the characters say it, has started to become a staple of the Mumblecore movement (to see the most blatant example of this, see “The Puffy Chair”…actually, don’t).The majority of these films been festival darlings and been fairly well-received by critics. This is mostly due to the fact that many of the films have been able to strip away the traditional Hollywood artifice from their characters and allow them to exhibit some honest behavior, no matter how awkward. However, you get the sense that these middle-class, white, 20-somethings need something to fill their time besides thoughts of their own neuroses and navel-gazing.The allure of these films for many viewers is that the people on screen are “just like me”, and the situations are “just like what happened to me yesterday”. This could be interesting if only there were actually something at stake.The NY Times review summed it up better than I can, when it stated, “The problem with the movie is that James and Mattie exhibit little but shallow, infantile neurosis, with next to no hint of a complex or even legible inner life.”
