Nights and Weekends (2008)

If I could have one relationship with a woman in my life be akin to the one Joe Swanberg's character possesses with Greta Gerwig's in Nights and Weekends, I'd die with a large sense of accomplishment. This relationship, rather romantic or very personal, is the kind everyone should experience one in their life, especially with someone of the opposite sex. The relationship with someone not related to you, whom you could talk openly with, share secrets, and feel downright in-place when you talk to them. That feeling of connection may have ironically been dwindled down to a stunning rarity with the popularity of smartphones and the internet, but its significance remains imperative to ones' life and well-being.Nights and Weekends - Joe Swanberg's fourth directorial effort and Greta Gerwig's first - is, in short, a small masterpiece; a satisfying, deeply personal mumblecore movie that exercises its right to be both meaningful and significant in the world of relationships and long-distance dating because of its realistic portrayal of characters in that current situation. It centers around the lives of James and Mattie (Swanberg and Gerwig, respectively), a couple who has desperately tried to make their relationship work despite their long-distances from each other. He lives in Chicago, while she lives in New York.The first half of the picture is devoted to them hanging out in James' town of Chicago, hanging around the city, but mostly engaging conversations during cuddle-time. These scenes allow for a wonderful, full-flesh intimacy session to take place amongst the characters. These are the kind of conversations I live for, in film and in real life. The honesty, poignancy, and often realism that comes out in these sessions will likely resonate with married couples, particularly those who have had to go the extra mile to make it work, whether it be locational, racial, or ideological boundaries.The second half takes place in Mattie's town of New York City, one year later. Production of the film was also halted for a year to give the actors the feeling of jumping into the characters one year later; a wise directorial move if you ask me. This is where we, and the characters, begin to question the viability of their relationship. They're not really meeting new people, or attempting to cheat on one another. They are just exhausted at their efforts of trying to make things work and perhaps it's time to shift from being in a committed relationship to being friends; the kind of people who talk about their relationships and are not in one together.But how do you go about doing that when you've been in a relationship for so long? How do you realistically say 'enough is enough' and you want to experiment with other priorities? When James and Mattie are awkwardly taking pictures at a photography place - perhaps out of predictable relationship convention as they both seem equally unmoved about the process - you can see they just don't seem to care how they look or behave around one another. It's a soul-crushing scene that makes the warmest heart turn cold.Joe Swanberg has made and been involved with almost twenty films over the course of seven years. Because of his stunning, prolific filmmaking behavior, you wouldn't think he allows himself much time to mature, look over what he did well and what he tripped up on in his previous films. However, Swanberg is one of the youngest, most mature directors I've yet to see in film. His sense of awareness on human cultures, as far as dating, relationships, and communications go are mostly accurate and believable. The ways he depicts online conversation and sex are rooted in believability and awkwardness, kind of like they are in real life. Of course he will make missteps in his career; it comes with the territory of being prolific and not going long-periods of time putting the camera down. At this point, especially after Nights and Weekends, I don't want Swanberg to break; his touching, naturalistic look on society and relationships through the lens of independent filmmaking is something we need in cinema, and the zealous way he films and releases his movies is something of a breakneck achievement in the field.Nights and Weekends contains brutal honesty about marriage, dating, and the hardships that come with the feel. It needs to be viewed by young adolescents who are either rushing into relationships, are desperate to be in one, or simply want to see the glimpse inside the world of a practical relationship. Swanberg and Gerwig conduct the film maturely, and their acting makes the relationship only more viable for the entire picture. The film, yet again, proves that when examining a relationship, keeping it simple, concise, and honest is the best and most meaningful approach.Starring and directed by: Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig.

Nights and Weekends - I was surprised by how much I liked this one. in fact it may be one of the better mumblecore movies I've seen. That doesn't mean it's anything 'great' but as far as slice of life films go it really makes a valiant and honest attempt to just show a couple as they are. The whole long-distance relationship angle makes the story kind of doomed from the get-go, or at least once one sees Mattie (Gerwig) get bitchy at James (Swanberg) over how much effort has to be put in to going from NY to Chicago and back again just to have a relationship. But what I liked this time, unlike, say, Swanberg's previous film Hannah Takes the Stairs is that there is also effort to tell a story, if only evidenced by the whole 'cutting ahead to one-year-later', and showing some set-up and payoff with a couple of things and items like a lion. The two actors are natural, and why not? I have to think they were close enough to bare themselves to themselves (physically and mentally, mostly physically), and it works for the benefit of the naturalism. A few scenes get bogged down so much in minutae that you want things to move on, but what I liked here was that, for me at least, the stripping to the little moments made their relationship palpable, and cute, and kind of sad all at the same time. When we see Gerwig cry, we know the tears are genuine, as is Swanberg's awkwardness at keeping the relationship going, such as when he has a photo shoot and asks her to come. Why to watch it? Simply put, it's a romantic dramedy for those looking for a solid alternative to pap and crap from Hollywood. It's so decidedly un-Hollywood it does come close to the other direction of being too precious. But only close, not all the way. It's got two actors completely at ease and open to taking their characters totally where they need to go without any BS, and as directors they keep things moving so it's never *too* boring. Some may disagree, and that's well and good, since it is still firmly in the 'mumblecore' vein. At the right moment in time, Nights and Weekends connected with me, and hopefully it may with a few others.

Though Swanberg's previous film "LOL", was not the most visually stunning, it was creative, and I found it quite interesting simply because it had something to say about how we relate to one another in this day and age. This film seems to want to say something as well, but the immature, whiny, uninteresting way the characters say it, has started to become a staple of the Mumblecore movement (to see the most blatant example of this, see "The Puffy Chair"...actually, don't). The majority of these films been festival darlings and been fairly well-received by critics. This is mostly due to the fact that many of the films have been able to strip away the traditional Hollywood artifice from their characters and allow them to exhibit some honest behavior, no matter how awkward. However, you get the sense that these middle-class, white, 20-somethings need something to fill their time besides thoughts of their own neuroses and navel-gazing.The allure of these films for many viewers is that the people on screen are "just like me", and the situations are "just like what happened to me yesterday". This could be interesting if only there were actually something at stake. The NY Times review summed it up better than I can, when it stated, "The problem with the movie is that James and Mattie exhibit little but shallow, infantile neurosis, with next to no hint of a complex — or even legible — inner life."

I will try not to be overly critical here because I have been somewhat harsh on the mumblecore movement and while this movie is not something I enjoyed I did not find it as sloppy as some of the previous mumblecore work.This film was showing at south by southwest in austin, after it showed some people were really into it while others hated it. I was impartial, having seen the previous mumblecore work I knew what to anticipate. Rambling scenes, mumbling, nudity for the sake of shock and attention, whiney pathetic lead characters.I hate to tell people what to think, and I can say a few people seemed to find it interesting. I can say what I thought though, their was basically no plot, the whole story revolves around two characters, and if you find whiney pathetic characters annoying then you are in trouble.I have a theory that after seeing so much garbage that looked the same at SXSW people were merely impressed because they saw a different looking piece of garbage, and they said, well is that still garbage, it looks different. The thing is, garbage comes in all shapes and sizes.