Take This Waltz (2012)

Film: Take This Waltz (2012)
Stars: Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby, Sarah Silverman
Director: Sarah Polley
Oscar History: None
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Sarah Polley's last directorial effort, Away From Her, was one of my favorite experiences in the best year cinema's had in the past decade, 2007.  Simply put, there has been no year since that has equalled 2007 for sheer brilliance at the cinema (even the Best Picture lineup, not quite what I would have put together, doesn't include one stinker), and seeing Julie Christie slowly slip from her husband over time was just a devastating exercise, and a triumph for all involved.

So I went into this film with a lot of anticipation.  After all, Michelle Williams is one of the few modern women who sort of mirrors Julie Christie's fierce independence off-screen, and knows the importance of picking a solid batch of film roles over a bunch of easy payoffs (how many Oscar nominees head toward fare like Meek's Cutoff rather than signing up for a girlfriend role in a superhero franchise?).  What I got was a sad, very telling look that proves the grass is always greener adage to be categorically false, and hazily true.

(I'm a reviewer who goes to spoilertown, so proceed with caution) The film starts with Margot (Williams) and Daniel (Kirby) meeting on a plane, and vaguely finding each other familiar.  Margot, as we learn throughout the movie, is deeply restless and in-search-of-something, and so meeting a only-in-a-movie-could-someone-this-handsome-exist man like Kirby excites her and she enjoys the give-and-take flirting, knowing it won't lead anywhere.  Of course, we soon find out that Daniel lives across the street from Margot, setting up a temptation that the film focuses on for its entirety.  For those who find it unbelievable that you wouldn't recognize the neighbor across the street, I can sadly testify that I couldn't pick out most of my neighbors in a lineup (I'd sadly have a better shot at remembering the teller at Papa Murphy's)-tis the byproduct of a looking-at-your-iPhone world.  Though I want to believe that if my neighbor was Luke Kirby, I would have noticed.  I have got to start going to the apartment potlucks...

Whereas most films would have simply had the two of them jump in bed together, Polley's movie decides to take us on a more realistic, bigger payoff, and more morally ambiguous route.  Since this is the year of cheating on good people, Polley presents us with the difficult choice put before Margot, and the one that she wrestles with for almost the entire film.  The choice is that Margot's husband, Lou (Rogen) is a great guy. He cooks for her, he's sweet to her (always playing practical jokes, taking her out for their anniversary), and is overall a wonderful husband.  Yes, she shows that he doesn't always want to be intimate, and that occasionally married life leads you to quiet dinners without conversation and when you do have those conversations, its while brushing your teeth or sitting on the toilet, but it's a very happy, seemingly solid marriage.  Not something that one would throw away casually, even for a guy that looks like a missing Fiennes brother.

But being as this is a movie, inevitably Margot continues to, while not physically cheat, emotionally stray from her husband, first having something resembling an orgasm in a coffee shop as Daniel says absolutely filthy things to her (albeit in a subdued, Canada-appropriate way, not a 50 Shades of Grey sort of way), then going on dates to the beach and to an amusement park with Daniel, finally admitting to him that she's in love with him.  From a filmmaking standpoint, I wish that the climax scene, a party celebrating Margot's sister-in-law (Silverman) hitting a year's worth of sobriety, hadn't happened, as it makes Daniel a little less of an unknown, and gives far too much room for the third leg of the triangle to seem an appropriate choice for Margot, rather than keeping us focused in the superbly awkward position of seeing the affair from inside the marriage, rather than through Margot's lover's eyes.

After the party, Daniel leaves, and Margot, realizing that she's not going to ever know where this love would have lead, decides that she has to leave Lou to find out, and confesses that she's leaving him.  In what has to be the best piece of acting I've ever seen from Seth Rogen (perhaps someone is a teensy bit jealous of Jonah Hill's Oscar nomination and is hunting for one of his own?), he spirals not just in anger and sadness, but in a barrage of emotions-it's a deeply human reaction when you learn the person you love most in the world has betrayed you.  You can see both the way that he wants to lash out and the way that he so desperately loves Margot in his complete breakdown.  It's a gutter-punch to watch, as you have grown to appreciate and identify with this character, even if you know that this was a fight he ultimately was never going to win.

Polley's final act in the film doesn't 100% work, but is very interesting nonetheless.  We see Margot, finally joining Daniel on the beach, and getting her life with him.  During the title scene, with the classic Leonard Cohen composition in the background, we see Margot finally consummate her relationship with Daniel, and slowly see them decorate their apartment, and indulge in his-and-hers threesomes before settling back into that life of domesticity and repetitive comfort that results from spending your life with someone.  This would have been a fine ending, but we also had the grass-is-greener conversation with Rogen's character, who is clearly not going to be able to bounce back from this relationship (I love when a filmmaker doesn't take an easy out, so I'm glad Polley stuck to her "Margot-is-Lou's-soulmate" track and showed that he wasn't going to be happy, showing that not everything works out in a divorce), and then a WTF moment where we see Silverman's character fall off the wagon and accuse Margot's character of being the bigger screw-up.  While there may be some argument to that line-of-reasoning, Silverman's character is too ancillary to need a finalization to her character arch, and unlike Rogen, she is never able to shed her comic persona to give a fully-fledged performance.  You feel like Rogen has given a true break from his pot-smoking type-casting with this film, but Silverman never succeeds in playing anything other than Sarah Silverman.

This of course leads to Margot, in the film's final moments, questioning whether she had made the right decision, and as hard as she tries, she'll never be able to pin down her youth.  The film ends with her riding alone on the roller coaster again, possibly just showing that she is happy knowing there isn't anything better, or trying to recapture a feeling that can never last forever-the first taste of love.  Either way, its a melancholy, and thought-provoking final moment that shows that when we always want what we can't have, we miss out on what we do.

Williams performance is the root of the film, and she pulls it off.  Williams as an actress is a bit of a conundrum-she hasn't hit a sort of persona in the way that Glenn Close or Meryl Streep or Kate Winslet have with their work, and in doing so still tends to surprise at the movies, but also hasn't reached that level of intimate connection with moviegoers that a legend always enjoys.  However, she's only 32 and has two very deserved Oscar nominations (and one other one) and has time to forage that path.  With films like Take This Waltz, movies that are fascinating to watch even if they are not always successful, she is headed in the right direction.