The film Noah Baumbach wishes he could “unsee”
Noah Baumbach is renowned for his comedy-drama films examining dysfunctional families’ relationships. He has worked closely with his wife Greta Gerwig on several projects, including Greenberg, France Ha, Mistress America and the recently released White Noise.
In a conversation with Lynn Hirschberg, Baumbach noted a film he watched in his childhood with his father that he wished he could unsee. He said, “The movie we saw together that really wrecked me, and it was one of those things that I wished I could unsee it, was Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
The film is a 1978 science-fiction horror directed by Phil Kaufman, based on Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers. Finney’s book had already been adapted into a film the year after its release, but Kaufmann’s version showed the story to a new audience.
Baumbach felt that the film had a personal significance because he saw it during a difficult time in his life. “The thing is that it also coincided with my parents starting to precipitate the end of [my parents’] marriage, which would go on for a few years,” he said. “So I think the notion of Bodysnatchers being what you recognised, but not themselves, I think that really connected with my unconscious.
Funnily enough, Baumbach told Kaufmann about the critical role that the film played in his childhood consciousness. “When I met Phil Kaufmann, I said, ‘It single-handedly put me into therapy’,” Baumbach admitted. “That movie revisits my therapy to this day. It’s an old standard, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. It’s funny; I was scared to see it again for a long time. I have seen it since, but even still, I kind of watch it with a hand half on my face.
The fact that Baumbach saw the film at such a young age, though, meant that he was not able to pick up on its thematic nuances. He continued, “The thing that was totally lost on me was the whole kind of counterculture of San Francisco and that changing, how the Bodysnatchers kind of represent the shift in hippie culture to a more conservative culture, that was lost on me as a child. But I would just freak the fuck out.”
However, there was at least one positive memory to take from first watching the film with his dad. Baumbach remembered, “watching the movie and there was a focus problem, and people were yelling ‘Focus!’, and my father was saying, ‘bring the screen closer’, because it felt like the screen was too far away. I was proud of him for that joke.”
