Beyond the Multiplex

The DIY Generation gets its big moment with Joe Swanberg's bittersweet "Hannah Takes the Stairs." Plus: "The Films of Michael Haneke" DVD box set is a must-have for cinephiles.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex, Salon Conversations

Aug. 23, 2007 |

Over the past two or three years, something new and exciting has been bubbling up on the outer fringes of American independent film, and the world is finally noticing. Well, noticing a little. This new wave of ultra-low-budget filmmaking, sometimes dubbed the "DIY Generation" or "mumblecore" (a word I hope never to speak or write again), is still a long way from anything the film industry understands as commercial viability. Andrew Bujalski, the 30-year-old writer-director who is the principal critics' darling of this movement, has been forced to self-distribute his two films, "Funny Ha Ha" and "Mutual Appreciation" (and even doing that took him three years).

On one hand, it's a scandalous state of affairs; Bujalski's pictures have their flaws, but with their restless energy, fragmented naturalism and cinematic ambition, they expose most Amerindie efforts to capture the anomie zone of early adulthood as tired "Reality Bites" knockoffs. On the other hand, what ties Bujalski and other young DIY filmmakers like Aaron Katz, Mark and Jay Duplass, Joe Swanberg and Frank V. Ross together is not so much a shared aesthetic -- their movies are pretty different, at least in mood -- as a thoroughgoing rejection of the indie establishment's dominant modes and mores. So what do they expect?

Most of these directors' movies share a Dogme-like commitment to naturalism, a patience with long takes and rambling conversations, a sometimes agonizing focus on middle-class post-collegiate romantic relationships in various states of decay, and an indie-rock ethic of self-help and community building. Their roots lie most obviously in Jim Jarmusch, John Cassavetes and early Steven Soderbergh -- one friend of mine opines that these guys need to send their copies of "Stranger Than Paradise" and "Sex, Lies and Videotape" back to Netflix -- but maybe also in Godard, Rivette, Bresson and other Euro-arty models. For most of these filmmakers, the process of making the picture seems to be as important as the end result. Whatever you make of this, it's pretty much the opposite of the "Napoleon Sunshine" indie formula, in which quirky characters and story lines are painstakingly packaged in familiar narrative structures aimed at a semi-elite, not-quite-mass audience.

Swanberg's new film, "Hannah Takes the Stairs," which looks to be the DIY movement's breakout work, epitomizes all these tendencies. Bujalski, Mark Duplass and fellow filmmakers Kent Osborne, Ry Russo-Young and Todd Rohal all act in the film; during the shoot, they crashed for several weeks in a Chicago apartment that doubled as the set for an improvisational movie about a group of young people crashing in a Chicago apartment. In his director's statement on the film's Web site, Swanberg describes the shoot as a community bonding ritual: "Many people whom I love and admire were willing to put their busy lives on hold for days and weeks to ... sleep on the floor with me in a rented apartment and make a movie. We shared ideas, fears, loves, successes and failures. We stayed up late and danced. It was magical. I grew as a person just as much as I did as a filmmaker."

Under capitalism, of course, there is no such thing as a revolution too strident (or too warm and fuzzy) to be turned into a commodity. Anyway, it's not as if these young directors don't want viewers, or don't want to get paid for their work. Bujalski is reportedly adapting Benjamin Kunkel's novel "Indecision" for Paramount Pictures, which sounds like a prescription for disaster idea to me. Meanwhile, "Hannah Takes the Stairs," along with Aaron Katz's lovely romantic comedy "Quiet City" (more on that one next week), serves as centerpiece to "The New Talkies: Generation DIY," a retrospective at New York's IFC Center that also includes movies by Bujalski, the Duplass brothers, Ross and Kentucker Audley, along with earlier Katz and Swanberg efforts.

For whatever it's worth, I'd rate "Mutual Appreciation" as clearly the best film produced by this nascent movement (which surely won't contain Bujalski for long). Swanberg's "LOL," Katz's "Dance Party USA" and the Duplass brothers' "Puffy Chair" are other good starting points. "Hannah Takes the Stairs" is a denser, talkier and more challenging film; it's the second-semester course, if you like.

We'll stay on the margins of the marketplace for a quick DVD overview (something I promise to do more often in the months ahead). Admittedly, jumping from a grab bag of earnest young experimenters to European cinema's slipperiest and most accomplished provocateur is unfair to both. Austrian director Michael Haneke is best known to American viewers for the art-house hits "The Piano Teacher" and "Caché," but as a new box set of his first seven features demonstrates, his curiously addictive brand of cinematic confrontation has been a long time brewing.

Our final below-the-radar surprise is the year's most delightful and deluded release, a faux-1920s silent adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's horror classic "The Call of Cthulhu," long deemed unfilmable for some pretty good reasons. Admittedly, your hair may turn white and blood may come spurting out your eyeballs while you watch this disc, with its journey to unmentionable, Cyclopean, non-Euclidean cities and encounter with the squid-faced eldritch Old One who lives there, dead but eternal. But at least along the way you'll have a great time. Or, to put it another way: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Next page: The rise of the improv indie