The Kids Are All Right and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.

I went to see The Kids Are All Right because it was an industry screening and because since Julianne Moore is in it I thought maybe local filmmaker Todd Haynes would be in attendance (he wasn't). Also, I wanted to see Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work at 8:55, so I expected to stay for the beginning of The Kids and then abscond midway without a concern in the world, because I had seen the trailer to The Kids and it was pretty stale and life's short, except that thing happened in which a movie slowly takes hold of you and at one point I was totally beguiled and stayed through until the end, dashing out as soon as the credits appeared and not missing any of Piece of Work.

You see how everything worked out okay? In The Kids, everything also works out okay, kind of, to a certain extent. In Joan Rivers, mostly everything works out kind of okay. In my amateur opinion that's the emotional orientation of many people in America, 2010: everything is kind of okay. Some shit's fucked and some shit's notfucked, and here and there little bits of beyond notfucked are sprinkled across our lives, moments of beauty and instances of transcendent harmony, etc.

The Kids is the type of movie that encourages people to scrutinize and dissect its social politics, by virtue of its intricate social relationships, which span sexual, cultural, and generational boundaries. I'm not above that. For example I noticed that sexual promiscuity is clearly judged, gay is represented as a complex condition of the personality not limited to carnal desires, and liberalness is more complicated than open-mindedness. Also some comparisons and contrasts on the functions of gender role models.

It's a compliment to the film that despite its slight political progressiveness it's a relatively simple film. It means that although our social order becomes more confusing, human behavior continues on as ever. Maybe that'll mean accusations of simplification or reverse- or counter- or even anti-permissiveness, as the film is smart enough to have its characters fall on one side of the line, like many people do in real life. There's this tradition of serving thematic ambiguity with depictions of alternative lifestyles - a tradition that was less prevalent in the 70s and I think is ebbing its way out of some contemporary films too.

This is a movie about a family, and it's as plotted and mechanical as most family films. The beginning is a montage with (I think) Vampire Weekend playing: the boy skateboards, the girl talks sex over Scrabble, Ruffalo fucks on the couch, and the moms are in love. Their emotions will travel, but the character limitations won't budge. Or rather, the exposing of the character traits will remain perceptive but blunt. They're fairly superficial depictions with fairly standard progressions, and it feels more like a Thanksgiving dinner conversation than a film of real people with true dimensions. The narrative surprised me a few times - the characters never did. I'd be bullshitting if I thought Ruffalo was going to be venomously referred to as an "interloper," but I'd also be lying if I said that scene is a revelation of character. I LOVED the female actresses, including the young 18 year old daughter, whom I'd never seen in a movie before I think. Though, tell you the truth, my favorite character was the gardener, and he's the only character I felt really broken through into reality, even if it was in a skewed, sortafucked way.

In that regard, The Kids is a classic Hollywood type movie. A straight story, complicated emotions, transgressive overtones, and talented actors. Piece of Work is a fairly emotional documentary that's questionably authentic - your typical documentary of an artist. The best indication of this comes from a candid display of potential emotional manipulation: Rivers in her limo gazes out the window, implications of worry and deep contemplation across her face. That is until she makes a joke of her pose and suggests the moment would have more reality if not for her just off camera assistant.

I would have thought it was a woman trapped in a lonely moment of introspection if not for the joke. What if the joke hadn't been made? How many times were the emotions forced? Because there's a lot of crying in Piece of Work, and there are a lot of tough admissions and naked moments. Naturally, I'm hesitant to match my emotions with hers unless I know she is coming from a genuine place. It's fair to say that Joan Rivers is herself a woman of extraordinary emotional depth, and her fragility is certainly on full display. She tells you though: she's always acting. She says she's an actor playing the part of a comedian, even, and she's best known for her comedy.

That's part of the intrigue in any documentary of an artist. When people choose to become performers, their lives too take on the shape of a performance. Piece of Work works though because of other things it shows us and other things Rivers does not do. She doesn't take her play to NYC, where negative reviews would once again severely harm her sensitive self-image of her acting abilities. There are clips from her stand-up performances, in which she is definitely a 75 year old woman still making anal sex jokes. She's open about her relationship with her daughter, open about her past mistakes, and open about her professional indiscretion and greediness. It's tough to judge someone for their faults when they're brave enough to publicly display them, and even sometimes willing to discussing them. Joan Rivers is 100% human.

Why did I group these two together? Well, there's the practical reason, which is that I saw both of them last night. I also think they're thematically linked, they both express this burgeoning sincerity in our culture, a fearlessness toward confronting our problems even without fully comprehending their solutions. I like that; I always have.