Friends With Money - film review
Jan. 21st, 2007 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAfter a difficult week which ended with me basically wanting to throttle people, have decided to be nice to myself. Still want to throttle people, but it is easing a bit.
Had a nifty breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and white corn grits. Oddly comforting and managed to heat up my apartment in the process. Landlord has given up on the radiators and is going off to buy me a space heater with a surge protector. It'll throw the cost back on me of course, but, it is better than having to get one myself - which I was considering. Plus could be worse - I'm getting 64 degrees - could be 57 degrees or no heat at all. Must look at it positively. New York apartments are either freezing or boiling - radiators? Not the most efficent form of heat on the planet - just saying.
Saw an interesting flick last night via netflix - Friends With Money starring Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, Gregg Germane, Jason Issacs, and Jennifer Aniston. Not at all what I expected and very comforting. The story is about three couples and one single gal, Anniston, who are all friends, in their late thirties/early forties, and all struggling with their relationships and careers. All feel discontent. Uncertain. And think the other person has it better or worse than they do.
Anniston's character is working as a maid; she quit her last job as a teacher because she didn't like it and it wasn't working for her and is struggling to find something else. Her friends think she should just go back to it - do that. They also don't understand why she hasn't found anyone, why she has had such horrible results with men, and feel an odd combo of pity, guilt, and frustration with her. Wanting to fix her life yet at the same time not be bothered with it. They themselves aren't that happy either. One is a writer (Keener) - who writes television and film scripts with her husband, and they are on the verge of a separation. Another is a designer (McDormand)- who is 43, depressed, has two kids, overworked, frustrated, and given up on her hair to such a degree she no longer washes it - meanwhile her husband is being hit on by men. The third (Cusack) is wealthy with a wealthy husband, a cleaning lady, a nanny, and hosts benefits. What the movie discusses is how these people relate to one another, how the gaps between their experiences cause friction and how they struggle with it, but find a way of dealing with it.
The reason it comforted me, as I sat there knitting, a blanket over my legs, is it hit on a few themes echoing in my own life. Anniston's character in particular who was struggling with the fact that she had not hit any of those so called "bench markers" yet - she wasn't married, she didn't have kids, she didn't have the successful career, or for that matter much money. Yet her friends appeared to have all four - from her perspective, her friends had no problems, nothing to complain about, their lives were easy. But as we zig-zag into each character's perspective, we discover none of them are truly happy and at the end, oddly, Anniston's character seems to be the most content - having found someone she can talk to and relate to and not feeling stuck in a marriage, lifestyle, or job she's not happy with.
Anniston's character who is both single and unemployed or struggling with employement - wonders how her friends did it. As if there's some magical formula out there which she hasn't figured out and other's have - or if she's lacking something integral for her to have that life - the husband, the job, the house...and why, she seems to wonder do her friends take it for granted, as if it's something as simple as getting heat, food, or turning on the tv.
Truth of it is - marriage isn't simple - we're shown that in the film, nor is any job.
Getting it isn't easy, making it work certainly isn't.
These themes are not shown explicity, but implied through the interactions of the characters, none of whom are played by "pretty" people. The filmmaker never preaches or tells us what to think, instead they show us through the day to day lives of these people. Nothing "major" happens, no one dies, no one gets fired, no one screams at someone about having an affair, the drama is duller, realer, less melodramatic than what you might see on an episode of Grey's Anatomy or Brothers and Sisters or even Notes on A Scandel or Little Children. The fact that the film is so quiet, may be why it has been largely overlooked by the critics and the public, with the possible exception of a scene in an Old Navy store with Frances McDormand - which is the only piece of "melodrama" in the film and is handled in a manner that is not only realistic but sympathetic to everyone involved.
I remember a while back reading a Q&A with Jack Nicholson in one of the popular film/entertainment magazines. Nicholson stated that somewhere in the 1980s films had become more melodramatic. He thought at the time it was a passing trend, wouldn't last. But for some reason audiences liked melodrama, preferred it even to quieter films. He didn't, he preferred the quiet character pieces like Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge,and to a degree Easy Rider. His later roles, he termed as over-the-top but only because that was what was demanded. Friends With Money reminds me a great deal of those earlier, 1970s films - or the films of John Cassevetes - Scenes from A Marriage.
It isn't flashy. It's not something that will wow you with its atmosphere or tricky cinematopgraphy like Lost in Translation, but it does leave a lasting impression and does an excellent job of detailing the disconnection we feel with one another, the discontentment, the envy, the desire for something that forever lies outside our reach and we think if only I could find it, I'd be happy.
Had a nifty breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and white corn grits. Oddly comforting and managed to heat up my apartment in the process. Landlord has given up on the radiators and is going off to buy me a space heater with a surge protector. It'll throw the cost back on me of course, but, it is better than having to get one myself - which I was considering. Plus could be worse - I'm getting 64 degrees - could be 57 degrees or no heat at all. Must look at it positively. New York apartments are either freezing or boiling - radiators? Not the most efficent form of heat on the planet - just saying.
Saw an interesting flick last night via netflix - Friends With Money starring Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, Gregg Germane, Jason Issacs, and Jennifer Aniston. Not at all what I expected and very comforting. The story is about three couples and one single gal, Anniston, who are all friends, in their late thirties/early forties, and all struggling with their relationships and careers. All feel discontent. Uncertain. And think the other person has it better or worse than they do.
Anniston's character is working as a maid; she quit her last job as a teacher because she didn't like it and it wasn't working for her and is struggling to find something else. Her friends think she should just go back to it - do that. They also don't understand why she hasn't found anyone, why she has had such horrible results with men, and feel an odd combo of pity, guilt, and frustration with her. Wanting to fix her life yet at the same time not be bothered with it. They themselves aren't that happy either. One is a writer (Keener) - who writes television and film scripts with her husband, and they are on the verge of a separation. Another is a designer (McDormand)- who is 43, depressed, has two kids, overworked, frustrated, and given up on her hair to such a degree she no longer washes it - meanwhile her husband is being hit on by men. The third (Cusack) is wealthy with a wealthy husband, a cleaning lady, a nanny, and hosts benefits. What the movie discusses is how these people relate to one another, how the gaps between their experiences cause friction and how they struggle with it, but find a way of dealing with it.
The reason it comforted me, as I sat there knitting, a blanket over my legs, is it hit on a few themes echoing in my own life. Anniston's character in particular who was struggling with the fact that she had not hit any of those so called "bench markers" yet - she wasn't married, she didn't have kids, she didn't have the successful career, or for that matter much money. Yet her friends appeared to have all four - from her perspective, her friends had no problems, nothing to complain about, their lives were easy. But as we zig-zag into each character's perspective, we discover none of them are truly happy and at the end, oddly, Anniston's character seems to be the most content - having found someone she can talk to and relate to and not feeling stuck in a marriage, lifestyle, or job she's not happy with.
Anniston's character who is both single and unemployed or struggling with employement - wonders how her friends did it. As if there's some magical formula out there which she hasn't figured out and other's have - or if she's lacking something integral for her to have that life - the husband, the job, the house...and why, she seems to wonder do her friends take it for granted, as if it's something as simple as getting heat, food, or turning on the tv.
Truth of it is - marriage isn't simple - we're shown that in the film, nor is any job.
Getting it isn't easy, making it work certainly isn't.
These themes are not shown explicity, but implied through the interactions of the characters, none of whom are played by "pretty" people. The filmmaker never preaches or tells us what to think, instead they show us through the day to day lives of these people. Nothing "major" happens, no one dies, no one gets fired, no one screams at someone about having an affair, the drama is duller, realer, less melodramatic than what you might see on an episode of Grey's Anatomy or Brothers and Sisters or even Notes on A Scandel or Little Children. The fact that the film is so quiet, may be why it has been largely overlooked by the critics and the public, with the possible exception of a scene in an Old Navy store with Frances McDormand - which is the only piece of "melodrama" in the film and is handled in a manner that is not only realistic but sympathetic to everyone involved.
I remember a while back reading a Q&A with Jack Nicholson in one of the popular film/entertainment magazines. Nicholson stated that somewhere in the 1980s films had become more melodramatic. He thought at the time it was a passing trend, wouldn't last. But for some reason audiences liked melodrama, preferred it even to quieter films. He didn't, he preferred the quiet character pieces like Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge,and to a degree Easy Rider. His later roles, he termed as over-the-top but only because that was what was demanded. Friends With Money reminds me a great deal of those earlier, 1970s films - or the films of John Cassevetes - Scenes from A Marriage.
It isn't flashy. It's not something that will wow you with its atmosphere or tricky cinematopgraphy like Lost in Translation, but it does leave a lasting impression and does an excellent job of detailing the disconnection we feel with one another, the discontentment, the envy, the desire for something that forever lies outside our reach and we think if only I could find it, I'd be happy.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 06:29 pm (UTC)Good luck with the heating situation!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 01:40 am (UTC)So I ended up having to get a new tv today..
no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 01:38 am (UTC)Bad news, I need four remotes. Also was an expense did not need right now...but oh well. Landlord helped a bit.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 08:02 pm (UTC)I have also added 'Friends with Money' to my netflix, I did hear about it when it came out (probably saw people promoting it on talk shows) but I never saw and I forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me! It is funny, I have a friend who wanted to get married in the worst way, she talked about little else when she was single. When she met and married a really nice guy she was acting kind of pityingly to me (as though the fact that I wasn't looking for love must all be an act). But now that they've been married for a while she has a tendency to envy me my freedom and complain about her husband's imperfections.... Fact is (IMO) no one is ever satisfied, everyone always wishes for more of something.
Space heaters...
Date: 2007-01-22 01:34 am (UTC)Good news? I have a working VCR for the first time since Feburary 2006. The bad news - I appear to need three remotes - one to control DVD player, one to change volume/picture and turn off tv, one to control the cable and change the channels on it. And one to control and program the VCR. But the TV does appear better than the old one - flat, LCD, HDTV, wide screen, 27 inch Polaroid (yeah I know, but it was the only one I could afford) with a hook-up for computers to see stuff I download on computer to the big screen (didn't want to deal with that today and rarely download...so not an issue.) More money than I wanted to spend, but I got some money for Xmas and with any luck I'll get a job before Feb.
Re: Space heaters...
Date: 2007-01-22 01:36 am (UTC)Re: Space heaters...
Date: 2007-01-22 01:40 am (UTC)your landlord seriously need to do something about the wiring!
but a better TV, with DVD player (and recorder?) is a good thing...
I know it is an expense, but you've been limping along with inadequate equipment for quite a while.
Afraid I have three remotes too, it is annoying, but I found it just as hard when I got one of those 'universal remotes' since you had to constantly switch them back and forth depending up what you want it to recognize. At least with the three you know what machine it can work with.
Good night for it! This is our big night for Harry Dresden (I hope it is good).
Re: Space heaters...
Date: 2007-01-22 01:48 am (UTC)Don't have a new DVD player or VCR (these are still separate from the TV which is better actually - because one goes you have to take the whole deal in) - but now the old ones can hook directly into the tv and work. The old tv had the coaxial tube blow out (this is the tube that the cable outlet or antenna normally plugs in while the VCR feeds into the Video feed.) When the coaxial blew - we feed everything into the video feed, except the VCR which apparently has to plut into it while the cable is in the coaliaxial to work.
Anyhow now it does work, fingers crossed.
I need to just hunt a new apt - sort of outgrown this one, but right now is not the right time. First things first.
The heat has come on tonight and it has made it to 68 degrees, so I think the landlord has more or less realized allowances have to be made. It helps that I rarely complain, I think -- only when I get fed up.
Re: Space heaters...
Date: 2007-01-22 02:27 am (UTC)More like we've been waiting for both these shows for months!
I was just thinking a little while ago that I would absolutely freak out if the power went out or something happened to prevent me from my watching my shows tonight (I really need to be more detached... just not tonight!).
Re: Space heaters...
Date: 2007-01-22 04:32 am (UTC)It's not hard for me to find stuff.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-25 09:02 pm (UTC)It's funny, I never liked the TV show 'Friends' and I only saw a few episodes all the way through, but the one I really saw & loved was when the six friends went out to eat someplace expensive to celebrate Monica getting a job, and here were Pheobie and the actor guy making sure to order something very cheap, so they wouldn't waste money they didn't have, and of course at the end of the meal one of the ones w/a good job suggests splitting the bill evenly! LOL
And then of course when they get up their courage to protest the situation is made worse by the ones w/the good jobs offering to pay for their meal (hey, if you were going to treat then I would have eaten a decent meal!). That was definitely an 'I've been there' moment.
Anyway, thank you for the DVD recommendation... and I hope the job search is starting to produce some results. I know how hard it is, it feels hopeless until finally there is a break through. Good luck.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-25 10:03 pm (UTC)Agreed on Friends. There portions of the show I liked, the moment you describe being amongst them - totally been there, done that. Now it's even more fun, because more often than not the gluten-free items are the most pricey - ah for the days I could order pizza, pasta, or a sandwitch.
The job-hunt is, well the job-hunt. Two more possible leads. But won't know where if anywhere they take me until next week or week thereafter most likely. Thanks for the best wishes.