Six Definitive Films: The ultimate beginner’s guide to Noah Baumbach
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Credit: Far Out Press
The Best Movies You’ve Never Seen: Post-millennium apathy in ‘Dance Party USA’
Accessing the inane spirit of contemporary America, the mumblecore su-genre, pioneered by such filmmakers as Noah Baumbach, Aaron Katz, Greta Gerwig and the Duplass brothers, is far more than the sum of its parts. Defined by a brand of naturalism that binds the acting, aesthetics and story, mumblecore is folk storytelling at its most basic, focusing on observational tales that strip back the artifice of cinema.
Influenced by filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky and films like Richard Linklater’s Slacker, works belonging to the mumblecore genre often explore the lives of individuals who float around aimlessly in the urban jungles of modernity. Often centring in on young people struggling in everyday relationships, early mumblecore reflected the real lives of the directors behind the camera.
A product of the new millennium, mumblecore germinated into life in the early 2000s thanks to the emergence of good quality, inexpensive camera equipment that allowed filmmakers to create freely without the need for a large crew of people. Flourishing throughout the decade, such movies now provide an endearing passage into the past, where the birth of internet culture was yet to taint the innocence of American youth.
Andrew Bujalski, the ‘godfather’ of mumblecore cinema, recognised how the sub-genre could bottle this power, too, discussing the concept with Vox in 2019. Asked if he thought about how his films captured time and place, Bujalski responded, “That’s one of the things I find exciting about cinema, in general — all art, really, but movies in particular are just extraordinary time machines. And when you’re building a time machine, you can’t be too conscious of what you’re doing. I mean, I wasn’t thinking, ‘This’ll be a great portal for future citizens’”.
Among the niche collection of these films, it is not the more popular releases of Funny Ha Ha or Frances Ha that stick out as the very best, but instead, it is Aaron Katz’s remarkably nostalgic Dance Party USA. Innocent, pure and ceaselessly curious, this 2006 movie was among the first of its kind, helping to establish the key themes of the sub-genre whilst establishing its own voice that vibrates with the echo of post-millennium promise.
With a non-professional cast, Katz creates something that feels more like a strangers home movie than a comprehensive feature film, hiring the likes of Cole Pensinger, Anna Kavan and Ryan White to head up his transportative drama. Whilst meandering, the filmmaker still takes on some pertinent themes, telling the story of an apathetic 17-year-old who meets a girl at a party, and then confesses that he’s raped a separate minor.
The following film attempts to reason with its protagonist as he heads out on a mission of penance, moving aimlessly around the city, speaking to friends and musing about the future. For obvious reasons, he’s a complicated protagonist, and one that is not hugely likeable, with no additional thanks to his monotone voice, but Katz deserves kudos for crafting a film that is endlessly watchable in spite of this.
Telling a fractured tale of regretful youth, Katz manages to allocate a particular, almost ethereal mood that speaks to the bashful aurora of early 21st-century adolescence. Much like the bumbling piano soundtrack of the film’s trailer, Dance Party USA is a spontaneous oddity that is fueled by a charming, raw energy that could have only been mustered by a young filmmaker on the very cusp of cinematic blossom.
