Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha was not only the directorial debut of the man himself, who seems destined for more sufficient projects, but was also the pioneering film for the proclaimed "mumblecore movement." Mumblecore is defined by a film that has an ultra-low budget, very cheap production values, is shot on an inexpensive camera, utilizes usually first-time talents, and has a script that is or either mirrors improvisation. Faithful readers will note that I'm a big fan of the genre and recently strolled through the colorfully articulate filmography of the Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark. I thought I knew mumblecore, but it turns out, I hadn't paid a visit to the godfather of the genre, Bujalski.
The film follows a directionless girl named Marnie (Katie Dollenmayer), a recent college-grad in her twenties lumbering around the bitter streets of Boston, looking for a stable job and steady companionship. She is looking for stability in a world where everything is wobbly and unbalanced. While she is desperately trying to keep her life on the mature track, she winds up frequenting parties, hanging out with loser friends, and drinking an unbelievable amount. This is the sole reason why she doesn't carry a particularly close relationship with any of her friends in the film and this becomes the film's primary focus throughout this ninety minute journey.
A film only ninety minutes in length only feels like a journey when it is equipped with methodical pacing and conservative energy. I was instantly reminded of Richard Linklater's lovably different film Slacker, which was his directorial debut in 1991. Slacker was an experimental film that lacked form, much like this picture, and was a simple day-in-the-life examination of not characters but a college town in Texas. The camera would focus on a specific person, have them ramble to a friend or a regular pedestrian for a few minutes, before completely panning over to someone different in the same location. It was a soothing and effective picture that worked not only because of its ingenious idea, but because of its approach, which was careful never to ostracize these characters as empty caricatures but showing people that a "slacker" is someone who knows what they want to do and how they want to do it and that they refuse to conform to things that will not better them in the slightest. The more I think about it, the more I'm truly wowed and captivated by that film.
Funny Ha Ha, unfortunately, takes a more vacuous and shallow approach to the subject of impressionable collegians. While we are not burdened with these characters or even find them intolerable in the slightest, we don't particularly find them as interesting nor good people to focus on for ninety minutes. Characters disappear and reappear in a form of complete randomness, dialog is exchanged sometimes meaningfully, unpredictably, and haphazardly, and more often than not, these people have really no insights worth exploring or thoughts worth hearing. Linklater's Slacker was a carefully constructed film; one that made sure its characters weren't empty or vacant of personalities, even though we only saw them for such a brief amount of time. I'll never know how, but Linklater managed to almost develop one person in a time frame of less than five minutes and some films don't seem to develop the main character in the frame of ninety minutes or more.
If the characters, particularly Marnie, had observant little things to say about the world, pleasant insights, or even witty parables with whimsy and craft, we'd have something going here. But she doesn't. And neither do the other characters. The one I would've liked to see more of was Bujalski's Mitchell, who appears rather late in the picture. He seems to have both acting and directing under his belt, and I can see him making a film I'll label "brilliant" in "x" number of years.
The film is shot on 16mm, fully equipped with scratchy and somewhat distorted audio and actors that perfectly define the word "amateur." This works in the film's favor, because it doesn't seem to fall prey to conventions in any way. What doesn't is the film's script, which seems stuck in a trance where nothing happens almost because someone is eerily afraid of progression.
Starring: Kate Dollenmayer, Mark Herlehy, Christian Rudder, Jennifer L. Schaper, Myles Paige, Marshall Lewy, and Andrew Bujalski. Directed by: Andrew Bujalski.
The film follows a directionless girl named Marnie (Katie Dollenmayer), a recent college-grad in her twenties lumbering around the bitter streets of Boston, looking for a stable job and steady companionship. She is looking for stability in a world where everything is wobbly and unbalanced. While she is desperately trying to keep her life on the mature track, she winds up frequenting parties, hanging out with loser friends, and drinking an unbelievable amount. This is the sole reason why she doesn't carry a particularly close relationship with any of her friends in the film and this becomes the film's primary focus throughout this ninety minute journey.
A film only ninety minutes in length only feels like a journey when it is equipped with methodical pacing and conservative energy. I was instantly reminded of Richard Linklater's lovably different film Slacker, which was his directorial debut in 1991. Slacker was an experimental film that lacked form, much like this picture, and was a simple day-in-the-life examination of not characters but a college town in Texas. The camera would focus on a specific person, have them ramble to a friend or a regular pedestrian for a few minutes, before completely panning over to someone different in the same location. It was a soothing and effective picture that worked not only because of its ingenious idea, but because of its approach, which was careful never to ostracize these characters as empty caricatures but showing people that a "slacker" is someone who knows what they want to do and how they want to do it and that they refuse to conform to things that will not better them in the slightest. The more I think about it, the more I'm truly wowed and captivated by that film.
Funny Ha Ha, unfortunately, takes a more vacuous and shallow approach to the subject of impressionable collegians. While we are not burdened with these characters or even find them intolerable in the slightest, we don't particularly find them as interesting nor good people to focus on for ninety minutes. Characters disappear and reappear in a form of complete randomness, dialog is exchanged sometimes meaningfully, unpredictably, and haphazardly, and more often than not, these people have really no insights worth exploring or thoughts worth hearing. Linklater's Slacker was a carefully constructed film; one that made sure its characters weren't empty or vacant of personalities, even though we only saw them for such a brief amount of time. I'll never know how, but Linklater managed to almost develop one person in a time frame of less than five minutes and some films don't seem to develop the main character in the frame of ninety minutes or more.
If the characters, particularly Marnie, had observant little things to say about the world, pleasant insights, or even witty parables with whimsy and craft, we'd have something going here. But she doesn't. And neither do the other characters. The one I would've liked to see more of was Bujalski's Mitchell, who appears rather late in the picture. He seems to have both acting and directing under his belt, and I can see him making a film I'll label "brilliant" in "x" number of years.
The film is shot on 16mm, fully equipped with scratchy and somewhat distorted audio and actors that perfectly define the word "amateur." This works in the film's favor, because it doesn't seem to fall prey to conventions in any way. What doesn't is the film's script, which seems stuck in a trance where nothing happens almost because someone is eerily afraid of progression.
Starring: Kate Dollenmayer, Mark Herlehy, Christian Rudder, Jennifer L. Schaper, Myles Paige, Marshall Lewy, and Andrew Bujalski. Directed by: Andrew Bujalski.