'There There' is a moderately successful empathy test
Magnolia
Unlike the similarly titled and painfully over-praised “C’mon C’mon,” “There There” pursues complicated truth instead of pointing at a simplified version of it. There are many complaints you can make about the latest from writer-director Andrew Bujalski (“Support the Girls,” “Results”), and several would be right. But not if your only takeaway is that the filmmaker’s new movie is a bummer about people doing bad things.
Rather, “There There,” which would almost certainly work better as a play, presents a handful of two-person conversations — often borrowing one person from the previous scene and connecting them with someone new — to examine the different dynamics illuminated and the different support provided, or not.
That includes a bar owner seemingly trying to do better (Lennie James); a recovering alcoholic (Lili Taylor) processing bliss and temptation; a sponsor (Annie La Ganga) with her own battles to fight; a teacher (Molly Gordon) struggling to control her own frustration; a successful entrepreneur (Avi Nash) and even more successful narcissist; and a spiraling lawyer (Jason Schwartzman) in two scenes that unfortunately throw the movie off-course and more resemble the acidity of another, better Schwartzman film (“Listen Up Philip”) than the rest of “There There.”
Again: Put these discussions on a stage. Perhaps slow them down a little. Embrace the silence, and establish a different sense of trajectory. The varying characterizations and tones prove grating rather than informative. And musical interludes that at first could potentially sync to the feelings in play ultimately just seem like filler.
But Bujalski wants to challenge judgments and tiptoes along something perceptive about flaws recognized or ignored, goals established or forgotten. It’s not exactly edge-of-your-seat stuff; more like edge of the stool, primed to tip.
B-
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