Quiet City (Aaron Katz, 2007)
Oh year-end lists. You are a shitstorm of ego, elitism, and posturing. A shitstorm to which I have contributed the odd gust, make no mistake. But, year-end list, it is time to resist the urge to make you. I refuse to join in the cacophony of ill-informed and predictable checklists that serve no purpose besides taste-masturbation.
That said... if I were to make a year-end list... Quiet City would be on it... Right behind Zodiac... and just in front of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street...
No! I cannot resist! I must put numbers in front of the titles and catalog my unique opinion. It says things about me, about my unique identity. My top ten list defines me! No... no... everything is going to be alright. Be strong, strong like John McCain.
Search in every basket of sugar-puppies you can find; you won't find a sweeter, more beautiful artifact than Aaron Katz's Quiet City. In a cultural climate where Juno is allowed to sass its way towards indie cred with its mantle as this year's Little Miss Sunshine, the world is in desperate need of a reminder that the film world doesn't end with Fox Searchlight or Sony Pictures Classics.
In Quiet City, Jamie is stranded in New York after she's unable to meet up with the friend she's supposed to be visiting. The young gentleman she's asked for directions, Charlie, invites her to his apartment, and the two dance awkwardly around their obvious affection for one another for about 80 minutes. And that's about it, plot-wise.
Quiet City was made for very little money, and much of the dialogue is improvised. It's got that stuff going for it. But a film doesn't live on cred alone. And I hate to paint this one as some sort of reaction to mini-major co-opting of indie "quirk". Because that's my own personal hang-up, and could not be further from Quiet City's adorable mind.
Is this a film about disaffected rich white people? Yes. At a Brooklyn party following a friend's art opening, Charlie strikes up a conversation with a fellow Park Sloper, and they find that they're both just kind of drifting after having quit their jobs. Charlie suggests that if they could make money with this drifting, if they could pay their bills simply by being the slackers that they are, their problems would be solved. And at some point, Jamie will have to go back to Georgia, leaving Charlie in Brooklyn to deal with these things on his own. But maybe not. There is such a sense of community in all of these films (Joe Swanberg, who made LOL, appears in one of the film's major setpieces, which involves friends sitting around eating cole slaw), and at once a sense of shared upper-class ennui and communal optimism. It's like if Antonioni didn't make you want to kill yourself.
When it comes to these "mumblecore" things (that's the only time I'm using that word, soak it in), or at least the Bujalski films I've seen, I admit that I am a sucker. Their deviously unassuming performances, their complete disregard for the socio-political, their gloriously lo-fi atmosphere...
Oh Quiet City. You are lovely and amazing.
And another thing...
I am also a sucker for any piece of art that acknowledges the existence of Applebee's. Wait. Stay with me, here. In Quiet City, Jamie works at an Applebee's (and is subtly ridiculed for it by friends of friends). In Talladega Nights, the never unbranded Ricky Bobby gathers the family 'round the Applebee's table for famiy dinner. Even in NBC's Friday Night Lights (for which Applebee's is a corporate sponsor), the community often comes together to discuss the latest football game at The 'Bee's. And for me, that speaks so much more effectively to what it's like to live in America in 2008 than, say, those films that try to pretend like we're still living in a world of community diners and small town hospitality. Waitress comes to mind. I liked Waitress fine, but it's such a fantasy that I think a Centaur wouldn't have looked too out of place next to Andy Griffith. No, we live in a world of strip malls, chain restaurants, and Burlington Coat Factory, and it's another thing that Quiet City gets right.
