Millennial Mumblecore

Tiny Furniture

Hannah Takes the Stairs

What’s up my bros, baes, and basics! As we wrap up award season and gear up for the upcoming Oscars, I’ve begun to feel nostalgic for a time before I had a movie blog, before everyone (including myself) became a commenter on culture and inadvertently caused various culture/Stan wars, a time when Gen Z was not the biggest annoyance of media outlets and tv personalities and any given older person—but when Generation Y, aka Millennials, were deemed the sole cause of these annoyances, and became the creators of interesting, thought-provoking art. Millennials come in all shapes, sizes, tastes, and a very wide range of ages (born in the 1980s and 1990s), and yet for a time not too long ago, they were the go-to cultural punching bag for popularizing shocking trends such as skinny jeans, aviator glasses, and avocado toast. Millennials represent so much more than meme culture and food fads, they embody so much more than band t-shirts and not being able to afford a home, we can credit this generation with creating some of the most iconic and memorable art of the last three(ish) decades. As a Millennial/Gen Z cusp, I’ve always felt defensive of both generations because I’m intimately aware of the specific financial and social struggles we deal with, and the cultural and political movements we are blamed for. You can laugh all you want at our hesitancy to get married and have kids, you can scoff all you want at the turns of phrase we brought into vogue like “TBH” “I can’t even” and the extremely cursed “doggo”, but Millennials are some of the most self-aware, good-humored, and open-minded people I’ve ever met. The generations before us had it all, and many of us were born into the social unrest, fiscal irresponsibility, and political demoralization that they left in their wake. Even still, the art, music, and media that came from the Millennials of the early 2000s and beyond represents such vigor and uniqueness that gives me hope for the next generations—even if we’ll never be as financially stable as our grandparents. One subgenre of indie filmmaking I’ve discussed before is the mopey magic of Mumblecore—a subgenre that emphasizes characters and dialogue over plot, and many of the Millennial filmmakers of the early-to-mid 2000s were pioneers of this art form. I would argue that Mumblecore was born much earlier than this period, with auteurs like Jim Jarmusch and Richard Linklater and even Sofia Coppola (to me, Lost in Translation is certainly mumblecore) contributing to this magically mundane movie cinematic universe, but tonight I’d like to focus on the filmmakers of two decades ago who got their start within this wacky subgenre. Mumblecore is a supremely male-dominated realm of filmmaking, but both of tonights films marked the debut of two respectively successful female writers/directors/actors. Both films were screened at SXSW, both films skyrocketed their female creators to stardom, and both films feature complex female characters portrayed by complex female actresses who would eventually become embroiled in various controversies, respectively. Up first is a film from a daring indie darling of Millennial mumblecore, a titan of twee, an often misunderstood but never subtle storyteller: Lena Dunham’s first film Tiny Furniture. The film was shot on a Canon EOS 7D and cost roughly $65,000 to make. Lena Dunham, then 23 years old, wrote, directed, and starred in this film, she cast all of her friends and family, and filmed the majority of it at her parent’s Tribeca apartment. Dunham stars as Aura, an aimless an uninspired recent college graduate who returns home to her mom’s apartment for what she hopes will be a temporary stay. Not only is Aura stewing in post-grad malaise, she’s just been dumped by her college boyfriend and has no money. Aura's mother, Siri, is a successful photographer who takes pictures of tiny furniture, and her younger sister, Nadine, is still in high school. We get a sense of this family’s idiosyncratic dynamics from the way they interact with each other and how they all move about this chic but blindingly-white apartment. Aura is basically stuck at this palace until her friend Frankie (Merritt Weaver) finishes her last class and the two can get their own place in New York together, and in the meantime Aura doesn’t know what to do. She bickers with her sibling, feeds her hamster, finds her mom’s old diary (and secretly reads it), and eventually makes it to a party where some of her pre-college friends are in attendance. She discusses the banal but beautiful possibilities of making art on the internet with the party host Ashlynn (Amy Seimetz), who is a fan of Aura’s accidentally viral video where she brushes her teeth in her college’s fountain while wearing a bikini (an actual video that actually went viral in the early days of YouTube.) Ashlynn introduces Aura to Jed (Alex Karpovsky) who is a somewhat successful YouTube filmmaker in his own right and yet a cynical critic of others. Aura also runs into an old childhood friend of hers named Charlotte (Jemima Kirke) who slaps Aura then climbs through a window to hug her—a familiar dynamic that Lena and Jemima would once again utilize in the show Girls. Jemima is also a messy nepo baby, but what she lacks in boundaries she makes up for in confidence and well-meaning guidance, which Aura desperately needs. Charlotte hypes Aura up and encourages her to get a job, and when Aura says “I have no idea what i’m qualified for” Charlotte insists, “Don’t worry about it, on my resumé under skills I put ‘owns a landline’.” Charlotte and Aura smoke a little weed, talk a little shit, and this zany old friend of hers hooks Aura up with her old job, a day hostessing gig at a restaurant. Aura grins and bears this horribly-paying, socially-lonesome job and tries not to get distracted by the chef she’s attracted to, and for awhile seems to get her shit relatively together. But when her mom and sibling go out of town for the week and Aura lets the couch-surfing wannabe filmmaker Jed crash with her, she falls back into old habits, and gains some new, questionable ones as well. Tiny Furniture came out in 2010 and is potentially the most 2010 piece of media I’ve ever seen. Between the hoop earrings, indie sleaze fashion, stick-and-poke tattoos, and the prevalence of early YouTube comedy and virality, Tiny Furniture is a fascinating and sometimes funny time capsule of the mid-to-early-2000s. The familiarly-frantic energy of the hopeful Obama era and the typically-offbeat audacity of Lena Dunham’s writing mixed well together, and serves as a shining example of this creator’s profound and impactful voice. The instant-success of Tiny Furniture landed Lena a deal with HBO to create her surprising hit of a show, Girls—a show that, now more than ever, is appreciated for its wit and wildly fearless spirit. I am not going to go out of my way to defend Lena Dunham, she’s fumbled her career and her potential in many ways, but I do stand by the fact that Girls was the blueprint for much of the younger-feminine-coded content that we’ve enjoyed since. It was fun to see so much of the cast of Girls make appearances in Tiny Furniture, and this film works perfectly as a sort of spiritual prequel to this spunky show. And, love her or hate her, Lena Dunham’s willingness to show her body without shame or any justification required has always been inspiring to this curvy critic—though a bit over-discussed. Bolder steps have certainly been taken than a chubby woman choosing not to wear pants on national television, but I have to give her credit for normalizing chubbier bodies at a time when the culture was still (and may always be) very much critical of fat women. Tiny Furniture is Dunham’s Citizen Kane—a triumphant embodiment of her quirky point of view, a goofy critique of her privileged self and her privileged peers, and an oddly absorbing display of her ability to write flawed but funny characters. To quote Lena herself, she may be the voice of her generation, or, at least, “a voice, of a generation” and I applaud her for that. Up next is a film from another bold auteur who can find beauty in the banal, Greta Gerwig’s debut film Hannah Takes the Stairs. This film was directed by Joe Swanberg and was written by Joe Swanberg, Kent Osborne, and a name we all know and love, Greta Gerwig. As I mentioned in my Gerwig & Baumbach double feature, her 2007 film Hannah Takes the Stairs is the project where Noah Baumbach (and the world) first saw Greta Gerwig and decided that he/we had to have her. Greta Gerwig broke box office records and ruffled many feathers with her hit film Barbie, but long before her extremely-successful projects she was a master of femme-centric mumblecore (femblecore?) I could argue that Lady Bird, her solo directorial debut, is full of mumblecore motifs and tones, but her films Frances Ha, 20th Century Women, and tonight’s second film are the embodiment of this creator’s tenacious likability, even in the face of tedium. Hannah Takes the Stairs has even less of a fleshed-out plot than Tiny Furniture, but what it lacks in story it makes up in weird vibes. Gerwig plays Hannah, a recent college graduate living in Chicago who works as an intern at a production office during the summer—something I had to research to confirm because god forbid a mumblecore movie provide any exposition. We first meet Hannah and her manic pixie haircut in the shower, where her perky attitude and tits are on full display. (Noah Baumbach clearly wanted a hot muse but instead he got a hot creative who is more successful than him.) She’s showering with her boyfriend Mike (Mark Duplass)—because 99% of mumblecore films feature scenes in bathtubs—and is getting ready for work. Mike is unemployed and wants Hannah to take the day off and go to the beach with him but she politely declines and heads to the office where she works side by side with two funny nerds named Paul (Andrew Bujalski) and Matt (Kent Osborne). Lots of nothing-conversations take place at the office, including conversations about forgetting what they were conversing about, and nothing really happens until Mike surprises Hannah at work and he gets invited to their office party. We’re then transported to some shabby apartment where the lamest, sweatiest party takes place, because apparently no one can afford an air conditioner or a decent living space (something Millennials and Gen Z have in common.) Awkward conversations are had, drinks are drunk, and Hannah makes the uncomfortable discovery that when her boyfriend Mike is around, she can’t be the funny one. Even though Mike is fairly understanding (and only somewhat funny, tbh), Hannah breaks up with him by way of acting so awkwardly that he has to be the one to say “Here I’ll make this up to you, I’m breaking up with you—it’s not a big deal, it’s fine, we have sex and I don’t know your sister’s names.” Much like the unseen break up in Tiny Furniture, Hannah’s breakup results in lots of bad decisions and discourse that takes place in bathtubs (I’m telling you it’s not an indie movie if there isn’t a bathtub), which results in Hannah quickly jumping into a relationship with one of the nerds whom she works with. The vibes continue to be the bored, odd, and tonally-insecure vibes that this era and subgenre are known for, and I, unfortunately, continued to be disinterested. My adoration for Greta Gerwig is what kept me watching, of course, and eventually there was some form of a conflict and climax, but what was ultimately most charming about this film was its low budget, well-meaning, messiness. Hannah Takes the Stairs is so full of improv, so imbued with cynical humor, and yet its stream-of-conscious style of creating a narrative was somewhat inspiring. To think that someone as successful and smart as Greta Gerwig got her start in this moody, fairly nonsensical film was motivating to a less-than-confident writer like myself, and hearing her character Hannah say things like “I get really frustrated because I love things so much and what I try to do is so small” felt painfully relatable. And as much as this film bored me it also showcased Greta’s ability, like Lena’s, to make fun of herself and her potential pretentiousness—saying things like, “I don’t really like things that are explicitly about what they are.” Hannah Takes the Stairs is so intimately shot, not just with its scenes in apartments and beds and office spaces, but the camera was at times so close to Greta Gerwig that you could see the fibers of the hair on her face—leading me to believe that Noah Baumbach wasn’t the first director to be obsessed with her. While Tiny Furniture and Hannah Takes the Stairs both position their leads as complicated and at times unlikable, Hannah felt a bit easier to sympathize with because she was apologetic and holding herself accountable for the hearts she broke, which I appreciated. I can shit on these characters all day long but they did clear the way for the more fully-realized versions of themselves that these filmmakers would later create, and the heartbreaking, trumpet-playing Hannah was a fine place for Greta to start—even though we never actually saw Hannah take the stairs... Say what you want about Millennials but they gave us culture and art and mistakes that we still talk about to this day, and will continue to talk about for generations to come. Kudos to this generation for boldly being themselves and kudos to these filmmakers—for showing us that women can make movies about nothing too. Bye Felicia!