NYFF: Margot At The Wedding

By Josh Tyler: 2007-10-08 01:08:18

Surprise! Nicole Kidman attended the New York Film Festival press conference for Margot at the Wedding, along with her co-stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and John Turturro and the film’s writer and director (and Leigh’s husband) Noah Baumbach. Not that I didn’t expect Kidman to promote her own film, but the festival press conferences have developed a bad habit of missing key cast members or featuring entirely minor ones (see: The Last Mistress, Go Go Tales). I figured that notoriously shy Kidman would avoid the whole mess entirely, but when I ducked out of the theater to use the bathroom before the conference, there she was! Naturally, I intentionally walked out of the theater behind her so I could see for myself just how skinny and tall she really is. Do you really even need me to tell you what I found? Really skinny, really tall.

Kidman is the titular star of Margot at the Wedding, Baumbach’s follow-up to his hugely praised Squid and the Whale, which premiered at the festival two years ago. Kidman’s Margot is not so different from Jeff Daniels’ monstrously self-absorbed father in the previous film; both are writers, and both expect the rest of the world to fall within their narrow of ideas of what’s worthwhile and what, simply, is annoying. Margot brings her adolescent son Claude (Zane Pais) out to Long Island to attend her sister Pauline’s (Leigh) wedding to a guy Margot completely dismisses as a loser (Jack Black). Estranged for years, Pauline and Margot struggle to pick back up where their childhood friendship ended, but Margot’s looming personal troubles with her husband (John Turturro) and deep personality flaws constantly get in the way.

Baumbach has a keen ear for dialogue and family relationships, and many of the things that made Squid and the Whale so touching and heartbreaking (parents not allowing their children to love them, the pains of adolescence) reappear here. What makes Margot so special, despite its structural flaws and somewhat unsatisfying ending, is the universal story it tells. Squid and the Whale was so esconced within the world of Brooklyn intellectuals that it was occasionally impenetrable; the family in Margot, however, is so chillingly familiar, from the feeling that everyone is picking on you to the way that a shared memory can melt years of tension through a giggle fit. All the actors mesh so well together that the family dynamic never feels forced, and blessed with Baumbach’s lovely script, they hit a great balance of truth and humor that never feels twee.

During the press conference Baumbach and company discussed how they got to achieve that natural family dynamic, and why, when you’re working on a film, lounging around a house in the Hamptons is really work. Nice job they’ve got there, right?

The film is very scripted, but it also feels dynamic. How did you achieve that?
Noah Baumbach: It's pretty much exactly as scripted. That said, we rehearsed a lot, and clearly [the actors] put so much of themselves in the movie. I want the actors to say the lines as they're written, but at the same time I want this thing that only they can bring. A lot of the time I feel that it's more about finding a way for them to find a way into these lines, and sort of making it their own. The only thing that 's actually improvised in the movie is when Claude is telling his dream that starts over Nicole in the bathroom after the bookstore scene, and comes into Jennifer, in the church with him. I did that a lot with the kids, where I would have them say things more in their own words to find their way into the scene. [Zane Pais] had told her that dream. The dream in some ways seemed to be part of the movie, [and] I ended up keeping it.

To what extent were these roles written for the specific actors, and how did you adjust once they were cast?
NB: When I'm writing I pretend these people really exist. I don't really think about actors--in my head they're all existing in some alternate world. That said, each one of these actors was my first choice. I didn't really tailor the script very much, because the actors so attacked these roles and so took them on. It was a good fit.

Ms. Kidman, this was such a bold performance for you, playing a compromising character. How was it to play that kind of mother?
Nicole Kidman: Frightening! At the same time, I think the wondrous thing about being an actor is, when something's really well written, all you have to do is put yourself in the director’s hands. [It was] the same thing with To Die For, which I suppose was a similar type of character for me to play. I enjoyed being able to get lost in the complicated nature of this person. As much as people described her as a monster, I wanted her to be someone who you could feel, you could feel the pain within her, and you could feel all of, I think, the sort of fears and defensiveness and the way in which she can sting people and hurt people and ultimately hurts herself. I found it fascinating and beautifully written.

In every scene, there’s some kind of surprise or secret revealed. Was there a sense of excitement or challenge, that in every scene you were going to reveal something?
Jennifer Jason Leigh: The scenes were really alive, and well-written. They were a lot of fun to play. I thought it was always exciting going to work. NK: The great thing was having the chance, which Noah fought for and you don't always get on films, for a couple of weeks of really intense rehearsal. We were able to go and live up in the Hamptons; we had access to the house. With that comes the ability to feel things out, lie around on the furniture, talk, get to know each other. You see the film start to grow just because you start to embody the characters gently, without feeling like you have to show up and quickly find the scene. It helped all the relationships in the film. I know that's what Noah fights for and will continue to fight for. It bleeds into the work in a way that you can't fake. John Turturro: I think Noah’s writing is very precise and quite human…[it’s] a very relaxed environment to work [in]. I had a small role, and Noah kept telling me it was very important. When we worked on it I could see what it meant to him. It was very interesting coming into this world.

It seemed to me that many people saw The Squid and the Whale as, in some ways, autobiographical. I was struck by the fact that the central character here was an artist who draws on the life of her family with extremely complicated results.
NB: I'm interested in writers. When I decided Margot was a writer, I was really interested in ‘What is her work, what is she drawing upon? Also, what happened between these sisters?’ The process of the writing of this movie was a real discovery for me. What triggered the whole writing process was the image of this mother and son on a train. The autobiographical question is a tricky one. Squid and the Whale is much less autobiographical than a lot of people would like to think, or will insist on thinking. I think it was one interview too many that triggered me to write the scene with Margot in the bookstore.

Could you address some of the technical aspects of how you shot the film? NB: I wanted the movie to look a very specific way. Harry Savides, who shot the movie, and I spent a lot of time designing and testing and figuring out exactly the look we wanted. I really wanted to capture that feeling of what it feels like to be in a house without the lights on, but where light comes in through the window. In a lot of ways it’s how I actually see the world, it’s something I don't see a lot in movies. From a technical respect, we used the very old lenses, these lenses from the 70s. They were imperfect in a lot of ways. I think it emphasizes the grain in a way a more modern lens wouldn't. We also flashed the film, which also causes a slightly diffuse, desaturated look. We used mostly natural light or practical light. I wanted something that had this mixture of how I see the world, but also had a little feeling of memory in it, sort of an old photograph feel to it.

How did decide to cast Jack Black, when he’s not known for dramatic work at all?
NB: I didn't even think that it was not in his territory. Jack had approached me after Squid and the Whale-- he'd liked the movie and wanted to meet. Jennifer had known Jack a bit too. When casting Malcolm, Jack was my first choice. I wanted somebody who was funny. It just seemed like a good fit. I was aware that Jack hadn't quite done something exactly like this before, but I didn't have any doubt in my mind that he could be funny but keep it in the world of what we were doing.

Do you consider this film a meditation on women and men in their 30s?
NB: It certainly crossed my mind. The early drafts of the movie were really a process of discovery for me. The earlier drafts were much more intuitive than anything I had written up until this point. I kind of try not to look at the movies from the outside-in, though. Even Squid and the Whale, I never thought of it as a divorce movie, a Brooklyn movie, anything. [But] I always like reading those things, when people write about it. All this stuff would cross my mind, but I wouldn't look at it in a bigger picture way.

What was it that you found in each of your characters that made you feel most out of control?
JJL: For Pauline, it's this hope that Margot is going to come to the wedding, and they're going to go back to this kind of idealized childhood place, where they were each others best and closest friend. She has eternal hope for something that doesn't exist in the same [way]… It’s very hard for them to get back to [it]. The fact that she can't control that, and instantly it becomes very complicated and all these other things come up, from their history and their past and the nature of being that close as siblings. All of her denial makes her feel very out of control I think. NK: For Margot, she's in the midst of a breakdown underneath it all, so she's trying to control everything around her. [She’s] realizing the same thing [as Pauline], hoping that by coming to see Pauline that everything that she hopes for in terms of a sister and a family can somehow be realized. I think through the course of the film, [she] realizes that ‘Even though she's my sister and we have the same blood running through us, we actually have nothing really in common. Putting us in the same house together doesn't work. We may have a history together, but our present and our future doesn't mean we're going to be on the same page.’ A lot of the time you feel like you should get along with your family, and for whatever reason, whatever happens in your lives, a lot of the time you can't. I think once that realization starts to happen it's a devastating thing, and for Margot it's obviously life-changing. JT: From my point of view, it's a man who doesn't want to lose his family. He's trying very hard to hold on to that, knowing that he can't solve all the problems that exist within their relationships, but he doesn't want that to go down the tubes.

Noah, you mentioned an initial moment, and building out from that. What is the initial moment, and where does it come from?
NB: I don't know. I had this idea, [and] I thought something seemed exciting to me about it. I felt like I could feel the movie even though I didn't know what the movie was. When I started to write the first scene in the movie, I became very quickly interested in the idea of two people from a family of four, a mom and son, as an offshoot of the family. [They’re] two people who also happen to be going through changes. The boy's going into puberty, and Margot is going through many of the things Nicole just described very movingly. I became very quickly interested in family members who are in some ways orphaned from the other family. Then it becomes Pauline and Margot, two people who have all this shared history. You use the people who aren't there to bond with each other and fight with each other. Also how the dynamic changes, how the mother-son dynamic changes once they're out in the world. I like the movie beginning when we're moving and changing and leaving home. I just came from this movie about being at home and home not being what you think it is or hope it is, and this about trying to find home out in the world.

RELATED: festival, margot at the wedding, jack black, noah baumbach, john turturro, nicole kidman

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Sally Says:
November 9th, 2007 at 17:54
I recently saw this movie at the Telluride film festival. If you liked Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, then you’ll definitely enjoy this dark comedy-drama. This movie in a way reminds me of my family (only SOME parts) and to see Nicole as a dysfunctional lunatic, made me really really enjoy this movie! For trailers and pics, just go to www.margotatthewedding.com

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NYFF: Margot At The Wedding

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