Indie

Margot at the wedding

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Cast: Nicole Kidman (Margot), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Pauline), Jack Black (Malcolm), Zane Pais (Claude), Flora Cross (Ingrid)
Written and Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Release date: February 2008

Margot at the wedding doesn’t have a wedding. And it’s not about Margot only. It is a slice of life of a severely dysfunctional family. It is in fact a travesty in the name of a family. The characters are intelligent individuals. But they use their discernment to tear apart each other through acid dipped words.

Margot is a successful author. She is traveling with her teenage son Claude to attend the wedding of her estranged sister, Pauline. They haven’t spoken for a long time. We don’t know why. The groom Malcolm looks and acts the part of an overweight, middle-aged jobless slob. He is working on abstractions in pastels. Of course, Margot disapproves of her sister’s choice. But she is here to provide her support. Through a slip of tongue she reveals to Claude, that Pauline is pregnant. Pauline had kept this fact from her to-be husband and her daughter, Ingrid. Claude tells Ingrid. And it leads to another round of recriminations and emotional lacerations.

Margot has secrets of her own. Unknown to her son, her marriage is coming apart. And she is not helping the cause of marital bliss by her indiscreet extra-marital excursions. Pauline and Malcolm are also far from saints in their behavior. Pauline keeps on whining about how the unfairness of being the sibling who lost out on every front in life. While Malcolm is distracted by the charms of the young babysitter.

In his previous movie, The squid and the whale, Baumbach painted a sharply observed incisive portrait of an author couple on the verge of a divorce and their two sons. This work is more cruel, the characters more ruthless and their self-absorption more repugnant. The minute details are still there. And there is even more bite in the dialogues. The characters appear to take almost sadistic pleasure in using them. This is the strength as well as the weakness of this movie. It makes the characters true in a twisted manner. At the same time, it takes away some of the credibility and sense of realism.

There is no physical violence. But this kind of misanthropic sarcasm won’t be to everyone’s tastes. At the end there seems to be some hope of redemption for these oddball characters.

I enjoyed its unrelenting cynicism and the loaded conversations. I liked the performances especially those of Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It is a testament to their acting chops that they can create such utterly odious characters and yet draw some empathy from the audience. Still I would advise anyone in search of a sunny little family movie to stay away from this.