* *
Greenberg – rm – Screenwriter and Director Noah Baumbach (who gave us The Squid and the Whale) presents us with Roger Greenberg who is comfortably inhabited by Ben Stiller. This single guy in his forties, now a New Yorker, working as a carpenter, recently in a mental hospital, returns to Los Angeles to housesit for his brother who is taking his family on vacation in Viet Nam. He looks up some old friends who were members of his band back then and are at various places now in their lives. His reminiscence with them and his encounters with some younger generation guys and gals seem to be trying to tell a story of the difficulties that one goes through in trying to negotiate to a successful stable life and relationship. The problem is that there is very little back-story with Roger and it is near impossible to understand or get much of a feel why he is having so much trouble. We are left with a self centered, obsessive guy whom you imagine is suffering on some level. The story doesn’t really go any place and we are really not very enlightened about the characters. Greta Gerwig plays the personal assistant of his brother who also ran the household where Roger is staying and with whom he makes some tentative attempts to have a relationship. Her performance stands out as she creates a very sensitive, likable but sad young woman who desperately wants to be loved and have a relationship but doesn’t quite know how to do it. It is unclear if the title of the movie implies something Jewish, perhaps some stereotype of Jewish angst? The Stiller character mentions that that his father was Jewish but not his mother but we are not sure what that was supposed to mean. Perhaps in the future when Baumbach gives us characters who have figured out their lives, we will look back and realize this was an earlier phase of his work when things were more confused. (2010)