Weekend Watch – “Funny Ha Ha”

My first introduction to the ‘mumblecore’ movement, popularized by filmmakers like the Duplass brothers and Joe Swanberg, was Swanberg’s “Drinking Buddies.” Wikipedia calls mumblecore “a subgenre of independent film characterized by low budget production values and amateur actors, heavily focused on naturalistic dialogue.” I’ve always been intrigued by the genre, so I was excited to kick off the weekend by sitting back and watching “Funny Ha Ha,” the debut of writer-director Andrew Bujalski, the so-called “Godfather of Mumblecore.”

I’m very susceptible to the charms of mumblecore; based on the two Swanberg movies I’ve seen, the other one being “Happy Christmas,” I’m always instantly enchanted by the improvised dialogue and striking realness of the style, so much so that I’m able to easily overlook the movies’ flaws. Comments I read online about “Happy Christmas” criticized Anna Kendrick’s overly improvised dialogue, the way she constantly stammered “um” as if the actress genuinely didn’t know what to say, and others criticized the thinness of the plot. For me, these things worked fine. What can I say? The style just doesn’t work for some people, and I can totally understand why. But these movies seem to be tailor-made for my tastes.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for quite how low-budget, how awkward, how mumble-y “Funny Ha Ha” was. The film has been called the first mumblecore movie, and after only a couple minutes, I could see that that was true. The movie takes the ‘rough around the edges’ style of the genre and really abides by it. The sound design is, frankly, terrible; when characters off-camera speak to characters on-camera, their voices are very visibly coming from different directions, and dialogue during crowded scenes is difficult to make out. The camerawork, too, is so shoddy. The movie is shot on 16mm, and it benefits from the lush texture of film, but the whole thing looks like a student film. I was expecting low-budget indie movie, but I wasn’t used to this low-budget.

The first few minutes, I thought, Oh god, this might actually be a terrible movie. The technical shoddiness was hard to get past, and the acting was pretty bad in some spots. I mean, a lot of the awkwardness of the movie is intentional, but especially at the beginning, some of the line readings and expressions just looked too unnatural to even be real. One character in particular, a friend named Rachel, is just so uncomfortable to watch, especially because the camera hovers on her for a strangely long time. All her jokes are lame, and she kind of laughs as she tells them as if they should be funny, but I had no idea if I was supposed to laugh at her or if the actress was just really bad at delivering the jokes.

After I sank in and got used to the style of the movie, though, I was able to go along with it. After half an hour or so, I thought, Okay, I like this movie. It’s clearly very early in the evolution of the movement, so it makes sense that it’d be like this. But it has something to offer. And then, by the time I reached the end, I adored it.

To begin with, the lead actress, Kate Dollenmayer, is really great as Marnie. Aside from a very minor role in one other Bujalski movie, this is her only credit as an actress, and she knocks it out of the park. There’s nothing showy about it, nothing extremely dramatic. Everything is subtle, like the way her face changes when she’s annoyed that her friend Mitchell (played by Bujalski himself) wants her to be so perky all the time. Even her physical look, though, is perfect for the part. Though she is thin and white, she doesn’t have the conventional Hollywood beauty that people expect from a character like her. Still, you’re inclined to believe Mitchell anyway when he assumes that 90% of the men she knows are in love with Marnie, because there’s something so endearing about her. She’s not babbly and ‘adorkable’ in the Anna Kendrick/Jennifer Lawrence sense, or even in the Greta Gerwig sense (Frances Ha is one of the many movies that, technically speaking, has basically the same plot as this one). She’s just kind of quiet, and when she gets angry she almost immediately feels bad for being angry and takes it back. She’s so averse to confrontation because she just doesn’t want to cause any trouble, and you can see her frustration when Alex confronts her on the phone about her feelings for him.

There are so many minor characters that are great. Mitchell is one of the most awkward characters I’ve ever seen in a movie, and you both feel bad for him and want him to just leave Marnie alone sometimes. Marnie’s friend Dave has a funny bit about how people love sitting on his lap. And awkward, aloof Alex can be a pretty big asshole, but it’s easy to get a sense for his chemistry with Marnie. The movie ends on a perfect note, with them as friends, but with Marnie refusing to play his games and fall for his charm anymore.

When it comes down to it, though, what made this movie so special to me, what made me sit there in silence for a few seconds afterward, is the sheer realness of it all. Anger is rendered as passive-aggression and quiet irritation rather than explosive rage. Sadness is silent observation and quiet utterances of “fuck.” Happiness is small smiles and wistful gazes and short little laughs. What interests me about these movies—and what will keep me coming back to them, both in these Weekend Watches and long into the future—is how it feels like I’m sitting in on an intimate gathering of characters who are real people I could easily meet tomorrow. Sometimes, being able to recognize the humanity in a film is enough.