A note:  I don’t usually respond to threads here, but my good friends unshared and katieleekoch are debating my endorsement of Away We Go and, in the past, Juno. Since they are both unusually smart and thoughtful individuals, and since a film major like me can’t resist, I’m responding at length here. I think unshared correctly claims that a movie is often best appreciated without context, that, “how a work was created and the role personality and ego played in it” don’t matter. But I don’t think this is always the case (and frankly, Megan, I contest your supposed lack of context for Juno.) But I should point out: neither had actually seen Away We Go yet, so its more a debate about film than the film.  Now, away we go:

I didn’t really want to defend Away We Go to its detractors. I did this for Juno for two reasons. First, because I think it’s a great movie. (I cited Juno extensively in my undergraduate thesis, so I’ve spent a fair bit of time with it.)  Aesthetically and thematically, I think it’s completely unique and idiosyncratic, and that its idiosyncrasies aren’t annoying if you don’t take them at face value. Hating on Juno because “people don’t talk like that,” is like hating on Brick because high school isn’t a crime noir, or on Dumbo because elephants can’t fly. It’s a fancy fantasy, and maybe you have to be from the Midwest to really be in on the joke, because no one in the Midwest, the film’s setting, is as “cool” as Juno.  And for those who had problems with the movie’s sexual politics, I propose that the movie was doing its best to avoid any such discussion, and rather focused on other elements of a teen pregnancy that a movie with an agenda could not. And also, you know, other things. There’s more to Juno than a pregnancy.

Now, I don’t have much interest in the life of Diablo Cody. The same is not true of Away We Go author Dave Eggers, with whom I’m enamored. But I must respond to katieleekoch’s point that Michael Bay is more admirable than Dave Eggers/Diablo Cody because, “Dude’s just trying to make some money,” while Eggers has “no intention to rise above mere self-expression to artistic expression.”  Could you be any more wrong?

First of all, I remind you that Cody and Eggers are the writers, not the directors, and this has the direct consequence of creating a mise en scène that is an exaggeration of their script, based on the director’s attempt to capture a subtle mood. Scoffing at the quirkiness of a movie like this is like scoffing at the Death Star in Star Wars. Yes, it’s larger than it needs to be. It’s called a heightened reality.  I suggest that people like Roger Ebert have a less of a problem accepting this universe than people like katieleekoch, because he’s not living with his long-term significant other in a crappy apartment in the city, eating tofu and riding a single-speed bike to work in a new media office. People living too close to hipster society are bound to hate a movie that glorifies it. They have trouble seeing the fantasy.

Second, it’s absurd to say you can’t judge a movie in context to its writer. What would Manhattan be without Woody Allen? Or 8 1/2 without Fellini? If a movie is going to espouse a way of life, it damn well better be a reflection of the author. And while Away We Go stands completely on its own, I have no qualms with Ebert pointing at the writer and saying, “Plus, it’s true. In fact, in this case, real life is even better.” It was called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. If any author is entitled to model his writing after his own life, it’s Dave Eggers.

But when you talk about what “storytelling should be” and Michael Bay in the same breath, you lose all credibility.  How is Away We Go anything but the ideal method of storytelling? Two authors with use conflicts from their own lives and people they’ve encountered to flavor and shape a unique story with heart and humor in a setting that “challenge[s] … you to believe in the authenticity and immediacy of the characters and worlds they create.”

No one is saying it’s a perfect movie, but compared to Transformers its Citizen Kane.

An BTW, find me a single review of Citizen Kane that doesn’t mention Orson Welles.

unshared:

I liked Juno because of how mad and petty Juno got when Michael Cera (Serra? [Sarah? {Yes I am straight up too lazy to google this shit}]) brought that other girl to prom.  That is why I liked it.  Because it was that cliche bend in the trite romantic comedy plot, but it seemed better than everything else.  It wasn’t a misunderstanding.  Michael Serah was going on and living his high school life and trying to be normal with some other girl who he didn’t like as much but wished he could have.

I also liked the part where C.J. Craig totes bitched out the sonar lady.  That was sweet.  I also also liked that it was an ambitious attempt to create something iconic, which may be why Katie hates it so much.  I have never heard of Away We Go.  I had never really heard of Juno.  I still blast Dean Martin in my car when no one is there.  I was still wearing pants with elastic waists in that blessed time period between the 80s and American Apparel.  I am not hip.  I do not know what is up.  I believe that No Taste is the the best taste.  I don’t know about “lifestyles.”  I don’t really know that much about Eggers or Diablo Cody and I don’t watch movies like this and walk away thinking, man, I wish I were as purposefully and eloquently divorced from reality as Juno is.

But I liked her anyway.  And I rooted for her in the end.  And I didn’t give a fuck about the implausibility of her Thundercats references (even though I was a huge Thundercats nerd in junior high [it was an anime revival thing]) or any of the other cultural allusions in there.  Those things will pass.  What stays is the sense of utter fantasy.  Things are never that clean and neat in real life, and for someone like me who doesn’t need people on a big ass screen telling me how to look at the Real Life that’s right in front of my eyes, I appreciate being given an hour or so to pretend that they could turn out alright.  The problem with artists and critics is their intense self-awareness, their belief that how a work was created and the role personality and ego played in it matters.  It doesn’t.

All that insider bullshit is just that.  Bullshit.  At the end, there’s just me, in my motherfucking China clothes and summer jellies, crying into my popcorn with sincere sentimentality.  I am not stupid.  I know even five-year-olds won’t deign to wear jellies anymore.  I know that no daughter of mine who gets pregnant in high school is going to emerge that unscathed.  I know the world sucks.  But even in such a sucky vessel, I still think there is room for whimsy, and I could care less about the self-obsessed asshats who bring it to me so long as they keep putting pen to paper and putting those salty-popcorn tears in my eyes.

katieleekoch:

I’m going to see this movie in an hour, and I plan to dislike it. I pretty much see it as this year’s Juno, only without the terrible sexual politics that make everyone incapable of discussing it like rational human beings. They’re both “little” movies that, as far as I can tell, are controversial mainly for their ability to inspire disgust, empathy, outrage, smug recognition, and/or self-loathing recognition via their quirky, true-to-themselves main characters—who just so happen to talk, act, dress, and/or select semi-mainstream-to-obscure music like their creators. Why do I always hate these movies? And why do some of my very good friends, whose opinions I respect, usually like them?

The problem doesn’t seem to be one of simple aesthetic judgments, since many friends and writers who are much more knowledgeable of cinema than I am are divided on this movie—apparently, not everyone finds the Junos and Burts and Veronas of the world endlessly obnoxious. It can’t just be Eggersmania, since it’s not like Diablo Cody’s stripper-blog following was quite on par with the 826 cult. And it can’t be purely philosophical (even if AO Scott, like your mom, does have a point about how if you’re smug and self-righteous the other kids won’t want to be your friend anyway, blah, blah). Right? I mean, I almost always end up hating movies that fall into this specific love/hate category, but can I really, truly see something that wrong with movies that like their characters and ultimately allow them happiness?

Yes. Yes I can. Especially when the characters are so transparently a conduit for the writers who created them. It’s like a propaganda piece: validate this lifestyle, not because the characters on the screen have gone through a hard-fought battle to earn this lifestyle and these choices—a battle that you have vicariously experienced as a viewer—but because it is our lifestyle in real life and it can be yours, too. Don’t worry, we’ll make it easy for you by making everyone else the villain, or wrong, or otherwise undesirable. You can talk all snappy like Juno, or raise a not-fucked-up, crunchy baby like Burt and Verona! We can all be cool together.

I have complained about this before. It’s not that I dislike any trace of author/persona overlap in movies or other art. It’s not even that I think only negative experiences or personality defects make for good autobiographical details, although they certainly make for better and more interesting ones. (I mean, there’s Eggers-style parenting or there’s this; we all know which I prefer.) It’s simply infuriating to be asked to equate the goodness of a movie with how I feel about its creator, such a vapid, hollow excuse for a film to exist. And I think it says a lot about why movies like Juno and Away We Go get people so heated whether they love it or hate it: it’s hard to be really passionate about a film as a piece of art or entertainment (unless it’s really, really good) but it’s very easy to have strong feelings about people and characters, especially when they are forced to carry a movie otherwise devoid of anything that interesting. We’re all people, even Roger Ebert and AO Scott, and we’ve all got that fragile-ego thing.

“[Burt and Verona] have been described as implausibly ideal, but you know what? So are their authors, Eggers and Vida,” Ebert writes. Why Roger Ebert is so blindly in favor of this fetishization of the filmmaker/screenwriter I don’t know (other than, perhaps, because the fetishization of the critic worked out pretty well for him). Maybe even the authors themselves find this whole critic-baiting scuffle a little embarrassing, because don’t you know they are famous writers, and also genuinely creative and prolific people who probably don’t need an ego-boost from Roger Ebert. But if I wanted to idolize Dave Eggers or Vendela Vida the people, I would do so by buying one of their whimsical magazines, which are, ultimately, consumer products that are designed to appeal specifically to their consumers’ tastes, interests, and values, often through the careful and very personal value-judgments made by their editors. (And yes, the best editors can do this by introducing you to things or ideas you didn’t know you liked.)

This was not something that I thought good movies were supposed to do. I thought good movies, like good books or good plays or the few really, really good TV shows, were supposed to challenge you, even if that challenge was merely getting you to believe in the authenticity and immediacy of the characters and worlds they create. When I read these reviews’ paeans to “Dave and Vendela Jr.” I am immediately skeptical that this movie will be anything but lazy, convinced that it has no intention to rise above mere self-expression to artistic expression.

So even if the direction is fine and the acting is good and yeah, it still beats the fuck out of Transformers 2, I’m going to be repulsed by movies like this one on a very visceral level, on the most fundamental level of what I think movies and art and storytelling should be. Say what you will about Michael Bay, but he’s not trying to get you to like Transformers because Bumblebee’s lovable foibles were modeled after his own. Dude’s just trying to make some money.

But whatever. Maybe I will, against all odds, like this movie. And if I don’t, I have no problem just blaming it on Jon Krasinski’s beard.

justinhook:

Away We Go is a great little movie that stands up to repeat watchings.

jeffgreco:

In his review of Away We Go, Roger Ebert rebuts Tony Scott’s NYTimes review of the same.

“Away We Go” opened last week in New York and Los Angeles, and now rolls out after lukewarm reviews accusing Verona and Burt of being smug, superior and condescending. These are not sins if you have something to be smug about and much reason to condescend.

And as Ebert points out, these types of people do exist - the film’s writer, Dave Eggers, is a brilliant example of walking-the-talk.

I liked Ebert’s last line:

“This movie does not like you,” sniffs Tony Scott of the New York Times. Perhaps with good reason.