Noah Baumbach’s directorial debut Kicking and Screaming is a classic in the 90’s tradition of witty, talky indie films and the first in a long line of films about quarter-to-midlife crises. 20 years later, Baumbach is still grappling with the emotional paralysis we confront when attempting to figure out what to do with our lives. As his collaborations with Greta Gerwig have proven, he’s still trying to make sense of it all. Even as a 45-year-old, his films focus on predominantly on 20-somethings caught in the age when everything should be taking shape. There is a conscious allowance for some meandering years, but Baumbach always hones in on the moment when lackadaisical attitudes must give way to some semblance of ambition.
Kicking and Screaming‘s protagonists are in a familiar situation. Having recently graduated from college, none of them know how to make the jump from student to productive member of society. Grover (Josh Hamilton), at least, had a plan: he was moving to Brooklyn with his girlfriend, Jane (Olivia d’Abo), to write. That is, until she accepted a fellowship to study in Prague for one year. Now, he lazes about in their college town with Max (Chris Eigeman), who philosophizes the present in minute detail, Otis (Carlos Jacott), who can’t bring himself to go to graduate school, citing time zones as the ultimate hindrance to his success, and Skippy who re-enrolls to take all the classes he missed but never does the work. In the periphery, local bartender Chet (Eric Stoltz) has been an undergraduate for 10 years. He’s come to terms with his life as a perpetual student but his presence is a constant reminder of how these characters could end up. They could be under-employed, directionless adults.
Jane criticizes Grover’s writing and the film itself when she complains, “The characters in [the] story spend time discussing the least important things.” It’s fitting, though, that she also says, “I’m having one of those times where my name sounds very weird to me…These things that we take for granted, they’re all so weird. These words, these names.” It’s funny when she points to the stunted, single-syllable “dog” or elaborately sounds out “cantaloupe,” but it also expresses the utter confusion the recent graduates are experiencing. Nothing is sure anymore, not even the words they use to hyper-intellectualize their post-graduate paralysis. All they know is fear of the future.
Trivia contests and recreational arguments are mere distractions. At the very least, they keep them from rhapsodizing about the past and the rapidly fading present. Max is the self-admitted worst offender. As he says, “I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I’ve begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I’m reminiscing this right now.” Behind the glib facade, Kicking and Screaming is coated in the romanticism of the immediate past, where all of yesterday’s decisions, whether good or bad, are made and therefore no longer threatening. The structure of Kicking and Screaming plays into this navel-gazing, with Grover and Jane’s relationship told through flashbacks after her departure.
All Baumbach films have this element of irreverent comedy with varying degrees of palpable depression boiling under the surface. Regret-fueled Greenberg infamously turned off audiences expecting a typical Ben Stiller movie. Frances Ha is a positively giddy experience, with the underlying frustrations about stalled career hopes only hitting viewers much later. Baumbach’s earliest films, Kicking and Screaming and the disowned Highball, were ensemble pieces that drew from the well-established yuppie malaise cultivated by the likes of Whit Stillman. Grover and his friend’s sophisticated wit and tendency to wear sports jackets is a little too reminiscent of Stillman’s films, as is the presence of Eigeman, a Stillman regular. There is a place for such group-concentrated frustration, which works well to illustrate generational obstacles, but Baumbach of late flourishes on the small-scale with singularly overwrought characters navigating on their own.
The uncertainty Baumbach’s characters grapple with is potent to this day, making Kicking and Screaming‘s depiction of twenty-something life timeless. Since his debut, Baumbach has carved out an individual style in which to explore self-deprecating, listless New York intelligentsia in crisis. In film after film, it seems as though Baumbach and his characters are moving away from frustration toward the contentment that Chet represents. The implication being that acceptance, or perhaps resignation, certainly comes easier with age.