As much as we like to believe in the idea of “one big happy family”, the reality is that even the most functional and well-adjusted of families have a stubborn streak of dysfunction running through them.
Perhaps it’s the inevitable outcome of flawed humanity, or of an innate predilection for self-preservation that we all possess to some extent, but we can’t ever seem to get family dynamics just so (despite Hallmark constantly cheerleading us to do so, or at least pretend we are).
Just how Herculean a task it is to balance the good and bad impulses in any family becomes starkly, and yet gently, apparent in Noam Baumbach’s latest directorial effort, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), which examines, through a series of interconnected vignettes, how we very rarely get the family or the familial relationships we want or need.
What brings the issue to a head for the thoroughly modern Meyerowitz clan, is the sudden, serious illness of the family’s four-times married head, Harold (Dustin Hoffman), a sculptor and academic who never really hit the artistic bigtime and is brooding about his lack of recognition in less-than-silent resentment as he slips into his dotage.
His three children, direct siblings house husband and frustrated musician Danny (Adam Sandler) and taciturn Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), and half brother Matthew (Ben Stiller), whose success as a personal wealth consultant is an attempt, he realises, to outrun his father’s unfulfillable expectations, are all connected and disconnected in the way all siblings are, their bonds frayed by the uncompromising, consistently narcissistic self-centredness of their father.
Beginning with Danny’s story, where we find him trying to park and not handling the experience very well, in New York City, his college-bound daughter Eliza (Grace Van Patten), with whom he has a close relationship, dispensing dietary and ecological advice, we are treated to the perspectives of all three siblings, none of whom are completely happy with their lives.
Just how unhappy emerges over the course of this exquisitely poetic narrative which succeeds in juxtaposing some very hard personal and familial truths, and more than one blinding revelation and a succession of long-delayed arguments, with the types of rapprochement that comes with traumatic moments.
It is telling that the Meyerowitzs, who must grapple with a welter of significant decisions during Harold’s sustained illness from which he may not emerge, including what to do with a lifetime of his artworks, react in much the same way any of us would.
They are at turns understanding of each other’s positions but also holding onto a number of grievances, many caused by the family dislocations that results from Harold’s selfish obsessions and multiple marriages, and none of them fully or publicly articulated up to this point.
There are a number of emotionally-exposed scenes where the siblings, fresh from practical discussions about their father’s care or whether they should sell the family’s New York house or not, end up in some intense, and yes in one memorable scene with Danny and Matt, coming to blows.
What makes The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) such a nuanced pleasure to watch is that the screenplay by Baumbach never once resorts to cliche, tropes or melodrama to make its point.
Yes, it is very much a New York film, with some fairly flamboyantly intense familial mindsets to go with it, but it’s also happy to let each of the siblings’ stories and the wider story of the family as a whole tell its story in a naturalistic and uncomplicated fashion.
No dramatic bells of whistles, just the ordinary drama of life, where the Meyerowitzs react in a whole host of contrary ways depending on what’s happening at the time, a little humour because you have to laugh at some point, and the unhurried unspooling of the hitherto hidden netherside of the clan.
Baumbach masterfully lays it all out in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), revealing a family who can calmly accept Eliza’s quasi-pornographic art films, and in the case of Jean, even star in them, but haven’t yet mastered the art of talking to each other with any kind of real honesty.
Much of that reticence can be sheeted home to Harold who acknowledges his children only in so far as they are of benefit for him or can provide a touchstone for his own stymied ambitions; as fathers go, he’s present and not even remotely present all at once, looking only ever-inward.
It’s Harold’s predilection for his own state of being that informs this rich and emotionally-resonant that, in its own quiet, unassuming way, broaches the idea that we are casualties, in one way or another of our parents’s decision but are also capable, especially as adults – something Danny realises very late in the piece – of reacting to that in a healthy and appropriate way.
The bridging of the gap between instinctual childhood reactions, that inform who we and our family are as adults, and the adult capability to revisit and change them and change the family dynamic as a result that gives The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) so much of its narrative force and power.
As the Meyerowitzs make clear, all of them brought to life by a fine cast who uniformly deliver brilliantly-pitched performances, it is possible, though not easy and not without some emotional pain to reorient yourself and your family to a healthier trajectory.
It’s the getting to that place that is the great and abiding challenge, though not impossible, and Baumbach does an engaging, eminently fine job of exploring the trials and tribulations of family life, especially one in transition, in a way that is accessible and helps us to understand how our own families might navigate the same path.