There There (2022, Andrew Bujalski) (Patreon)

53/100

In theory, this is Bujalski's Coffee and Cigarettes: six mostly self-contained conversations (albeit with recurring characters; I initially assumed the structure to be a baton pass—A & B, then B & C, then C & D—but it ends up being more like a round robin, though not really that either), vaguely linked thematically but mostly just constituting a collection of offbeat vignettes. In practice, however, the film plays more like a bizarre demonstration of editing in general and sound editing in particular. I knew nothing going in, per usual, and was embarrassingly slow on the uptake, assuming throughout scene one that Bujalski was keeping Lili Taylor and Lennie James visually separated in order to underline their emotional disconnection. Uncharitable of me, really, since only a student or a hack would execute that concept so awkwardly and bluntly. In any case, scene two made what was going on ludicrously obvious—not only are the two women, who are supposed to be seated at the same table, clearly in different locations…

...but Bujalski actually has Taylor exit her frame at one point, for no very good reason (she needs a napkin, lol), and then pointedly cuts to an angle from behind the other actor, showing the entire space where Taylor ostensibly is, which now matches that of her scene partner. (See main image above.) He's not trying to disguise the artificiality at all; he's deliberately calling our attention to it. Et voilà! the magic of cinema: Despite our hyper-awareness that these people can't actually have been talking to each other as depicted, each conversation "works," in the most basic sense of creating an illusion of continuity. Eventually (and this, too, took me longer than it should have), I realized that enormous care went into making the soundtrack uniform—a discipline that I ordinarily notice only when it's done poorly (or, in student films, not at all). Close your eyes and there's not a hint of incongruity: room tones match, overlapping dialogue sounds 100% natural even as we know there can't have been any. As a person who frequently gets irritated at filmmakers for wanting to get it all in one ostentatious roving shot, I chose to appreciate There There as forceful evidence of cutting's efficacy, rather than just think "Ugh, pandemic movie."

That's Ed, would Bujalski have made this specific film more conventionally in the absence of social distancing protocols? Probably not. And while it's fascinating as an experiment, most of the scenes as written don't do a lot for me. Jason Schwartzman's pair, in particular, are more enervating than energizing; this lawyer's combative relationship with his buddy/client yields little beyond the observation that wheedling vs. passive aggression isn't a fair fight (plus why include a Facetime exchange in this formal oddity? defeats the purpose), and the followup seems perversely determined to render the supernatural banal. Taylor's two scenes are well acted (especially given the circumstances), and the first is full of potential, but neither lands anywhere very compelling, except insofar as each sets up one of the two scenes that did grab me. These both feature Molly Gordon, who apparently played a minor character in Booksmart but was effectively a new face to me, and who is phenomenal as an English teacher who first gets viciously attacked by the strangest helicopter mom of all time (requiring Annie La Ganga, whose only prior film appearance was in Computer Chess, to radically shift personalities from scene two to scene three) and then shows up again, understandably plastered, in the quasi-unifying finale, which brings together three characters we'd previously encountered and fashions an extended dialogue between two of them that, in isolation (heh), might be my favorite stretch of filmed* entertainment in 2022 thus far. James is equally terrific—in both of his scenes—and what I mostly wish is for Bujalski to scrap this curio and turn bits of scene one, much of scene three and all of scene six into the first act and change of a proper movie starring James and Gordon (with Taylor and La Ganga in key supporting roles). That would consign There There's interstitial musical performances to oblivion, but no great loss.

* Actually shot on iPhones, and boy can you tell. Waxiest skin texture I've seen in a while.