“It’s not just one thing, it’s tiny things every day, drip drip drip”

The first Fi’s Favourites of the New Year, and we are going to start off nice and simple and ease ourselves back in. Surprisingly, I don’t often get asked to recommend films. I assume people are afraid I will recommend some kind of five-hour art-house epic. So, this week I am going to recommend a little gem I discovered some time ago on Netflix.

I am not the biggest fan of all of Noah Baumbach’s work, but I will save my rants for further posts, should I need some ideas. Despite not loving all of his work, The Meyerowitz stories (New and Selected) (TMS) has since become a classic for me. It is a very simple and understandable film with a cast made up of some of film's megastars: Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler and Dustin Hoffman, to name a few. It has a real charm to it and reminds me that dramatic action can be quiet, as it often is in real life.

Whether it be comedy, drama or thriller, films are often are prone to exaggeration, often to ensure an audience feels the desired emotion intended by directors and filmmakers. Think of a soap opera; no person's life is actually like that, but everything is heightened to provoke specific emotions. TMS is wonderfully simple and realistic.

Take the dialogue alone; this is one of the few films I have seen where people talk like actual people. The humour is sharp and cutting. Like most families, they dig at each other in an indirect way, using humour to both avoid serious topics and actually address genuine issues. Even the emotive moments are steeped in realism; the characters choose the most inopportune moments to talk about traumas and emotions they have long been burying deep inside themselves. A son, for instance, chooses to talk his father about the difficulties and complexities of the father/son dynamic while trying to wave down a cab in the middle of New York.

Something else TMS does that sets it apart from so many other films is it cuts from the dramatic. So often as a viewer, we are waiting for the dramatic climax. We listen to dialogue. Our eyes dart from character to character as we anticipate the crescendo...cut. Be it rage, sadness, humour, we just get a glimpse. Then it's gone. A heartfelt goodbye between father and daughter is cut so short. Much like in life, we don’t get much time to linger; we are often interrupted by real life. Sometimes its music, sometimes its another character, but either way we have to move on, even if it's before we would like to.

As I mentioned, the humour is fantastic. The delivery is really key to the humour, but I will mention this in more detail when I talk about the performances. If you enjoy dry, self deprecating comedy as well as slap stick and quick humour, this is the film for you. There are many quotable lines of ridiculousness, but also genius moments of humour: “Where is the gourmet humus?”, “Upstairs”, “Why?”. Genius. Or smashing a pool cue after talking about enjoying playing the game so much as father and son. For such an educated, creative and cultured family, they find themselves in National Lampoon-type situations. They are human like us.

Aesthetically, it is a pleasing and creative film. After all, this is a film about the arts and creatives, so it is only fitting that its story is told in an artistic way. We spend much of the film exploring the exciting streets of New York; its museums and stylish lofts. There is a moment when our patriarch, Harold, is feeling old and forgotten in his field and we see him looking through his college's sculpture at his once good friends in the art world as they walk away in great conversation, leaving him behind. It is a poignant moment in the film, one of the many that are mixed with wonderfully real humour.

This film is also made wonderful by the performances. With so many well known, award-winning actors, how could they be anything but. Adam Sandler gets a lot of stick for his filmography and often isn’t taken seriously, but his performance in Punch Drunk Love sealed his spot in the group of many actors that can do both slapstick and deliver an emotional performance. His character has many nuances: his quiet but quick temper, his sweetness, his limp and his catchphrase - “It’s always stiff after I’ve been sitting down”. It reminds us that no actor should be written off. Acting, after all, in its nature is diverse. The characters are so layered and the relationship between each one is so complex. Each character feels real and their complexities come through.

This film captures the emotional complexities and ironically humorous but devastating moments that take part in every family dynamic. The characters are relatable and expertly portray a wholesome and poignant story. It observations are witty and its story expertly and creatively told. It is worth the watch and I recommend it to everyone that is willing to listen. It is truly a gem in the Netflix depository. It’s the everyday. It’s real. It’s life.