The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

 

Writer/director Joanna Arnow

THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED     C                     USA  (87 mi)  2023  d: Joanna Arnow

Do you think people can change?        —Ann (Joanna Arnow)

Mumblecore has come a long way since the minimalist realism of Andrew Bujalski’s FUNNY HA HA (2003), Mark Duplass’ THE PUFFY CHAIR (2005), Joe Swanberg’s HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS (2007), Lynn Shelton’s HUMPDAY (2009), Lena Dunham’s TINY FURNITURE (2010), Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2012), and Charlie McDowell’s The One I Love (2014), movies about the tedium of modern life, featuring meandering almost nonexistent plots that are very dialogue/character focused.  This feels like a post-Mumblecore movie, the modern day answer to the contemporary confusion from dead-end jobs, having to deal with a soulless corporate culture that not only feels dehumanizing, but exhausting, having to ping-pong back and forth from a series of one awkward moment after the next, with people languishing in their own ineptitude and banal existence, using deadpan, self-deprecating humor to exaggerate the absurdity of the moment, where the operative word in all this is distanced.  While the featured Mumblecore protagonists were mostly white, middle-class, and college educated, they are also indecisive and completely apolitical, alienated from their own lives, people who can’t ever make up their minds, who exist totally in a world of ambivalence.  These small budget D.I.Y. indie projects were ultimately a small phenomenon, very personal films made by twentysomethings and their friends, exploring the malaise at the core of our lives, often made on smartphones or home computers, receiving bare-bones theatrical runs, distributed instead on the internet befitting the general lack of industry financing, and never fully entered the mainstream until the concept was embraced by television, like Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls (2012) or Joe Swanberg’s Netflix series Easy (2017).  Bored with what work entails, people could instead laugh at the absurdities they find themselves in, where the dysfunction plays out in interpersonal relationships, leading to a series of small, confessional sitcoms that have become the new cinematic cultural vanguard embraced by the nation with shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, The Office, 30 Rock, and Parks and Recreation.  Suddenly awkwardness and social discomfort was the norm, feeling disconnected with life, bored with the surrounding world and what it has to offer, even going so far as to make fun of meaningless family rituals that are the bane of one’s existence, or so it seems.  Mumblecore embraced the internet but was firmly influenced by cinema, while now the internet has fully integrated itself into real life, and social media has become its own influence.  While there’s an expressionless perception of coldness, reminiscent of similar films by Todd Solondz and Yorgos Lanthimos, spiritual depravity apparently hounds this new generation, having no role models or any confidence in the rapidly changing technological advancements, where new training sessions are continually replacing outdated work models, where pointless work is sustained at the expense of a disposable workforce, instilling a lack of trust in authority and the ill-effects of inequitable power dynamics, apparently espousing the views of David Graebner’s Bullshit Jobs - Wikipedia, who contends that more than half of available work today is meaningless, having a psychologically destructive impact on the workforce, who inevitably feel useless.  Whether it’s work, love, or family, they are all intertwined, yet this will likely appeal more to the attention deficit challenged social media generation of Millennials, making it all too easy to mock others and cast blame when things don’t go well, where it’s always someone else’s fault, as there’s little to no existential soul-searching, which was all the rage for the socially conscious Baby Boomers. 

Screened at Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, there is an ambitious desire to make this matter to audiences, using a long shot, long take style of Tsai Ming-liang, also his quietness, but there’s nothing to lure them in, no character to identify with, and no actual humor to speak of, though some find the bone-dry delivery ridiculously funny, accentuating the pathetic awkwardness of uncomfortable situations.  However, this is not Roy Andersson, who offers a surreal and deeply philosophical Nordic take on the absurdities of modern existence, while also lacking the focus and originality of Radha Blank’s autobiographical insights that humorously explore the black experience in 2020 Top Ten List #9 The 40-Year Old Version.  This is instead largely an empty exercise in futility, a piece of autofiction with an exaggerated sense of detachment (like texting someone who is literally standing ten feet away), as if technology has completely shut down our ability to socialize or be human, where it’s too late to turn back now.  The title says it all, though it can also infer that the time for finding something meaningful in this film has also passed.  Mileage will vary depending on the individual viewer, but it’s hard to comprehend just who the audience is for this film, as it seems to target those who appreciate quirky comic sitcoms that resort to caricature, so watching this on television makes more sense than viewing it in theaters.   Made up of short, concise vignettes, capturing the frustrated feeling of early adulthood where you’re mechanically going through the motions, this is a collection of small moments in the life of an educated young woman in her 30’s, Ann, played by the writer/director herself, where there are stark moments of nudity splintered throughout the film, told in chapter headings that focus on the men in her life, as she plays a submissive in a comically absurd long-term BDSM relationship with an older man, Allen (Scott Cohen), which itself feels like a parody in its ordinariness, as he’s always fully clothed while she is completely naked for nearly half the film, which is not something you see today, yet this is so unglamorously unsexy, where the brunt of their relationship seems designed around sadomasochistic humiliation.  There’s nothing remotely fulfilling about the sex, as he doesn’t give a damn about her needs, or the details of her life, where she reminds herself “It’s like I don’t even exist,” so she apparently takes some comfort in not having to take responsibility for her thoughts or feelings, as if giving up control is a safe space, but it also prevents her from developing any longterm friendships or relationships, a bone of contention with her quarrelsome and suffocating Jewish family, particularly her real-life mother (Barbara Weiserbs), while her standoffish real-life father (David Arnow) is too busy ignoring her, having already given up on her.  The dysfunctional root of her existence appears to be in finding value in her life, as her parents don’t value her choices, while her employer feels the same way, viewing her as a small, low-level cog in a larger organization, where an irritated boss reminds her, “You didn’t become obsolete like you promised when I hired you,” leaving her all alone to fend for herself, finding little satisfaction to speak of.  Unfortunately, that same dissatisfaction is transferred to viewers, who are more than a little uncomfortable with what we’re seeing onscreen, while it’s also hard to understand the documentary advantage of using her own family.

While Arnow also writes fiction and draws comics (which this resembles), she is also the editor of her first feature film, which feels very choppy, some scenes lasting for just a few seconds, trying to do the most with the least, subverting conventional story structure in favor of a character progression, with her life changing with the passing seasons, yet there’s no unifying sense of cohesion other than things are continually happening to the same lead protagonist, who feels anesthetized throughout the film, as the absurdity and discomfort of that opening sequence pretty much defines the rest of the film.  Even around the office, subject to long meetings that go nowhere, Ann does not easily make friends or socialize with anyone, where it’s hard not to feel she’s created her own self-inflicted purgatory, never branching out, imprisoned by her own choices, none of which give her the power to explore the wide array of humanity, with the film exploring the monotony of lives trapped in routines.  Feeling a bit like Sartre’s No Exit, always stuck in the same rut, with a vast feeling of emptiness, which only feeds into a lack of self-worth and a sense of stagnation, where “I hate myself” seems to be the recurring mantra, which, coincidentally, is the title of an earlier short film, I HATE MYSELF :) (2013).  Perhaps, as a result, she decides to go on a dating app to meet someone, discovering an affable yet more conventionally acceptable Chris (Babak Tafti), and while their disjointed connection does feel authentic, fueled by a similar middle class intelligence, it’s more about the trials and travails of trying to make it work, though Chris seems more eager in that regard, as he’s openly optimistic, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed ... YouTube (59 seconds), yet she’s continually pulled back down into the mud of her own anxieties and lack of ambition, where she just doesn’t believe in anything.  As a result, nothing ever happens for her, with no aspirations for anything better, so she continually falls back on what she knows, at one point breaking out into a Les Misérables-style show tune that appears to have been personally written by Arnow to avoid paying copyright fees, while she has just about memorized the entire repertoire of Andrew Lloyd Webber, a throwback to Debra Winger in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983).  Similarly, her introverted father at one point breaks out into a guitar-accompanied rendition of Solidarity Forever, with his wife joining in, yet what it ridiculously exposes is the giant rift in the family’s lack of solidarity, leaving her left adrift on an island with no chance of rescue.  While the essence of the film is a pervasive sense of hopeless depression, which is never really taken seriously, by the way, preferring to mock or make fun, there are infused moments of humor peppered throughout, yet they don’t lift the spirits of either this character or the audience wondering where all this is leading, where the title comes from a conversation near the end of the film.  Shot with a handheld camera and muted color palette by Barton Cortright, the film hopes to convey the subjective experience of the way time passes, playing out like a cringeworthy TV show, but it’s hard to find joy in such abject despondency, or the plight of other people’s emotional and psychological doldrums, leaving viewers just as stranded as she is, where it’s hard to find reasons to care about someone who has all the advantages handed to them through education and opportunities, but then squanders those opportunities, doing as little with them as is humanly possible.    

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii)

 

Writer/director Radu Jude

Director on the set with Ilinca Manolache

DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii)   C+                                                                                                                      Romania  Luxembourg  France  Croatia  Switzerland  Great Britain  (163 mi)  2023  d: Radu Jude  

While Jude had great success with his earlier films, I Don't Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari) (2018) and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc) (2021), this is something else altogether, and while they play out like a contemporary Bucharest trilogy, you wonder just who the audience is for this film, as ugly doesn’t even begin to describe it, though it was listed among the top ten films by Cahiers du Cinéma: Top Ten Films of 2023 - Year-End Lists and John Waters, whose comments are worth mentioning, “A maddeningly radical, tedious, shockingly repetitious, brilliant two-hour-and-43-minute Godard–meets–Harmony Korine Romanian masterpiece in which we spend way too much time locked in the car of a confident, trashy, gum-chewing workaholic PA for a movie company as she does her chores.  When I finished watching the movie, I was pretty sure I didn’t like it, but when I woke up the next morning, I realized I loved it.  Suffer for cinema!  Sometimes it’s worth it!”  While it has the same sardonic tone, taking provocative cinema to the extreme, using satire as a cutting edge as Jude becomes a Hunter S. Thompson gonzo provocateur, where the crudeness of the vulgarity on display is hard to watch, making this a different experience altogether, targeting the attention-challenged TikTok generation, where it’s simply exhausting to sit through for nearly three hours and may challenge anyone to maintain a sense of optimism.  Not sure you’ll ever find a film with as much profanity, most of it aggressively in-your-face with torrid sexual obscenities, with an almost machine gun-like repetition that may sour after a while, as you wonder just what’s the point.  And that’s where this differs from his other films, which typically dealt with the darker aspects of Romanian history, where the message was a core aspect of their existence.  In this film, not so much, as it’s instead all about the brash attitude, like rappers spouting their shit, or social media (or politicians) taking lies and bad taste to the extreme in order to attract viewers, using corrosive black humor in the style of Charlie Hebdo which is baffling and strange, though the onslaught can grow tiresome, as there’s a serious lack of empathy in this film, which is no accident, as it’s a reflection of the changing modern world and the over-controlling corporate challenges that await us.  Using absurd exaggerations as a weapon in offensively toxic ways, Jude apparently couldn’t care less whether you like or comprehend what he’s doing, creating instead this jumbled mess of late Godard dialectical incoherency that defies viewers to stick around till the end, leaving a putrid stench in your mouth afterwards in what the director has described as a “humorless comedy,” which is actually the term he used for his previous film, but it makes more sense here, as the director is literally defying viewers to care about what they see onscreen.  The pessimism felt throughout this exhausting ordeal is unmistakable, an exposé of relentless dehumanization and the rapid decline of civilization, where you don’t kill the messenger for sending this abhorrent message, yet a lingering post-Soviet malaise hovers all over this film, like a shroud of low-lying gaseous fumes contaminating everyone who breathes.  While it’s a uniquely innovative cinematic manifesto, it also drags us through the mud of the worst aspects of social media, which are like endless commercials, forcing viewers to sit through the spewing toxic wreckage of moral rot that we would otherwise routinely avoid, as few films show such casual examples of ingrained prejudice, worn like a badge of honor, where one small takeaway is that none of this would be possible without our obsessional over-reliance on the smartphone.  Many find this scathingly funny, but it lacks the humanity and subversive hilarity of German filmmaker Maren Ade’s 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann, which is really funny, where an outsider’s view takes us into an extravagantly upscale Bucharest mall, complete with the first IMAX theater in Romania, an indoor ice-skating rink, roller-coaster, and multiple children’s playgrounds, yet it exists in a country where hardly anyone has any money.  While the title suggests a sci-fi apocalyptical experience, or something along the lines of Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), but the title is actually from Polish poet Stanisław Jerzy Lec’s 1957 collection of Unkempt Thoughts, while the film itself is more of a satiric exposé of modern angst, a stream-of-consciousness, long-rambling, nihilist dissertation on the challenges of capitalism tinged with fascist leanings, shot on a mix of iPhone recordings with grainy black and white Super 16mm by Marius Panduru, who has shot most all of Jude’s films.  It’s interesting how Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (La Bête) (2023) has apocalyptic, end of the world implications, while this film exposes the tedium and banality of modern life that may actually drive us to it.

In keeping with the Eastern European traditions of Dušan Makavejev, Jan Němec, and Věra Chytilová, life behind the Iron Curtain under the authoritative dictates of Communism created a repressive need for the outlandish, with filmmakers often resorting to surrealism or exaggerated existential absurdity to reflect the state of mind of ordinary people caught up in suffocating circumstances, literally crying out to be heard, where there was an insatiable desire to be free.  While Cristian Mungiu and his Palme d’Or winning film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007) may be the best known Romanian filmmaker, over the past twenty years Jude has become one of Romania’s most provocative and prolific auteurs, directing 10 solo feature films, numerous short films, more than 100 commercials, plus a television series, though he was a three-time reject of Romania’s national film school, as he is brazenly dismissive of any formal conventions, currently a resident in Berlin under The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.  His breakthrough film, an understated family study Lampa cu caciula/ The tube with a hat | Radu Jude (2006) YouTube (22:37), is one of the most acclaimed Romanian short films ever made.  In December 2023, alongside 50 other filmmakers, Jude signed an open letter published in the French daily newspaper Libération demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, the establishment of a humanitarian corridor into Gaza for humanitarian aid, and the release of all hostages (Claire Denis, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, ...).  A prolific reader, making obscure references to books and history in films that are ultra-contemporary and entirely unique, fusing highbrow with lowbrow, capturing the dialectical relationship between modern art and popular culture, enthralled by the random, amateur nature of unfiltered TIkTok clips, Jude’s ferociously bleak, helter-skelter film is a mixed-media collage targeting modern-day Romania, with its corrupt politics, rampant capitalism gone awry, previous old-style Communism, racism, sexism, traffic jams and terrible highway driving, though perhaps most vociferously skewering internet culture, becoming an absurdist epic about all those little things that are taking us to the end of the world, while our own capitulation to these same exploitive forces leaves us slowly accepting and embracing our inevitable end.  Featuring the exhausted, sleep-deprived, and underpaid film production assistant Angela (Ilinca Manolache, with a small role in both his prior films), she couldn’t be more bitter or cynical about her employer never giving her a break, always pushing her to do more, suggesting she drink another Red Bull (taken in excess it is linked to abnormal heart rhythm, heart attack, and even death), as she resentfully drives around the congested, billboard-laced streets of Bucharest filming work accident victims who go on camera encouraging the use of safety equipment, hoping they will be the one selected to air on television, as that ensures them winning 500 Euros.  Reminiscent of the old TV show Queen for a Day (1956-64), where contestants competed in tales of misfortune, with the audience determining whose hardship was most worthy of the grand prize, where the show itself was basically a diversion for the network’s brazen attempts to sell commercials.  It’s worth mentioning that working yourself to death, driving until you are exhausted, is how many, including this director, got their start in cinema as shamelessly exploited young production assistants, doing the thankless and often dangerous work behind the scenes, with Jude indicating that part of the film’s inspiration was a fellow production assistant’s death in a car crash from falling asleep at the wheel after working ridiculously long hours.  Manolache has been heavily praised for her scathing performance, which includes an outrageous alter-ego character she concocted on her own years earlier during Covid lockdown, the wildly profane Bobiță, a modern day Borat, a repugnant, bald-headed misogynist with a penchant for obscenity-laced tirades and a distinctive male appearance from using a Snapchat face filter, superimposing an AI face over hers on TikTok parodies spewing right-wing, Andrew Tate-style venom that she posts on her phone several times a day, describing Romania as a “nation of sluts and pimps,” as hugely aggressive satire merges into the grotesque, which is viewed as a reflection of the overall society.  In a karmic twist of fate, Tate just happened to be indicted a year ago in Romania on charges of rape and human trafficking.  Ironically, Angela, the driver, is on the receiving end of this same kind of toxic masculinity vulgarity, as she is continually harassed by sexist, hostility-spewing male drivers on the road, becoming a regular target of profanity-laced insults, as misogyny is normalized, reproduced, and legitimized, while human suffering is caricatured and commercialized. 

The unexpected twist with this film is intercutting Angela’s monotonous travels in her car with clips from Lucian Bratu’s obscure 1982 film ANGELA MOVES ON, made during the communist dictatorship of Ceaușescu, one of the few with a female protagonist, while the screenwriter was also a woman, film critic Eva Sârbu, now embraced as a feminist film, subtitled “a conversation with a 1982 film,” which follows a female cab driver named Angela (Dorina Lazăr) visiting many of the same locations.  Conjuring up images of the past with the present, including food lines, which were forbidden to be shown in that era, and a long line of assembled people waiting to board a bus, it’s worth mentioning that at the time very few could afford to take cabs, where the world has changed significantly since the liberation from Ceaușescu in 1989, yet there’s a blasé attitude about newly won freedoms, where in both films there’s a crushing indifference to the world around them.  Both Angelas they spend an inordinate amount of time in their car, with the camera always finding the exact same angle in Jude’s film, quite a leap from the front seat car scenes of Kiarostami’s static camera in TASTE OF CHERRY (1997) or TEN (2002), where the present is shot in black and white, as she listens to raucously provocative music on the radio, anything to keep her from falling asleep at the wheel while working an 18-hour day, often interrupted with more instructions from her boss, a victim of an endless circle of exploitation, while the earlier footage is in color, often slowed down or Zoomed-in, as the director is fond of changing speed, yet both female characters are continually objectified, exhibiting their own private thoughts about the people they meet, often sarcastic jibes about what jerks the men are, exuding their own fierce independence.  The earlier film shows a completely different Bucharest, as there are less cars, which look exactly the same, no capitalist ads, while curiously showing the old neighborhood intact that Ceaușescu leveled to build his Palace of the Parliament, a massive urban planning project that displaced 40,000 citizens, and while there is expressed anger, it’s nothing like what we see in the modern era.  There’s no background information about the injured workers, who are viewed only superficially, not as real people, manipulated by an Austrian television production company operating in Romania, so they come off in a purely pathetic light, often surrounded by family, all hoping for a chance at the money they so desperately need.  On the other hand, the television executives have an aristocratic air of superiority, characterized by marketing executive Nina Hoss as Doris Goethe, supposedly the great-great-great-granddaughter of the famous German poet (his last heir died in the 19th century), where her casual indifference to the problems in Romania suggest she couldn’t care less, as all that matters is how her company looks, providing a façade of caring about safety regulations, which is all a hoax, as it’s really all about making money, where it’s surprising how easily Romanians willingly submit to foreign interests, like some sort of Faustian bargain.  In a Zoom call, we see her face floating over the Chicago River with a Trump property to the right.  German director Uwe Boll appears in a cameo as himself directing a cheesy sci-fi horror movie, where he gets into a conversation with Angela while she’s making the rounds, as she’s fascinated that he actually threatened to beat up film critics who despise his films, bragging about his boxing ability, Clip: Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (MUBI) YouTube (1:30), which plays into Bobiță’s misogynist leanings.  There is a silent memorial montage of more than 100 crosses constructed along the side of the road paying tribute to those who perished on a dangerous highway, where despite 600 deaths, nothing has been done to alleviate the road hazards.  A lengthy final sequence is the coup de grâce, featuring a fixed camera film shoot of a man injured outside the factory where he worked when a car ran into an unlit and unmarked crossing gate at night which hit the man in the head, leaving him in a coma for a year and paralyzed from the waist down afterwards, now spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair.  Surrounded by his wife, daughter, and mother, the safety video is staged right in front of the factory where the accident occurred, where we see the rusty gate, but his testimony is gradually altered in repeated scenes, as after each he’s instructed not to mention certain words that might reduce viewership, subject them to lawsuits, or even worse, public scrutiny, peeling away everything that’s human about his story, with the victim showing a mounting frustration, which culminates when it starts to rain and the family is soaked waiting to finish the shoot.  Behind the scenes we hear voices speaking, where the subject is actually belittled and denigrated by the film crew, clearly expressing a pro-factory slant, as they blame him for the accident, where viewers are able to see how easily corporate sponsors can manipulate content to suit their own interests.  While the incidents are actually due to blatant security breaches of the company, with all the accidents occurring after long overtime hours, they use these videos to clean their hands of negligence.  Jude asks viewers to weigh the harm done by the corporations or Bobiță, as both feed us a load of crap.  But which is more toxic?  Which causes more irreversible trauma?  The biggest surprise, only learned afterwards, is that his mother is actually a much older Dorina Lazăr, the star of the 1982 film intercut throughout, suggesting not much at all has changed in Romania, particularly when it comes to women, while it also remains the poorest country in the EU, though they’re quick to point out that Albania (not in the EU) is worse.