GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020 - Standing Up, Falling Down
GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020
To use a crass analogy, some movies are showers while some are growers. Some immediately enthral the viewer with their craftsmanship, unique handling of themes or the innate potential of the narrative, whereas others need time to be digested, understood and embraced. Standing up, falling down is neither. It’s neither a grower nor a shower; it’s a creeper that somehow deploys superficial mediocrity to misdirect the audience and —unbeknownst to them — quietly sneaks into the cockles of their hearts as they are busy coming up with sassy hot takes to post on social media immediately after the lights go up.
It would be impossible to argue that narrative originality is this film’s forte. In fact, it is most easily summarized as an indie patchwork of inspirations drawn from Jason Reitman’s Young Adult and Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown — all packaged into a sanitized format of an accessible dramedy that could have easily had Judd Apatow’s name tattooed across its forehead. Therefore, one shouldn’t expect a story of a thirty-something failed stand-up comedian, Scott (Ben Schwartz), coming back to his hometown with his tail between his legs and developing a strange relationship with an alcoholic dermatologist, Marty (Billy Crystal), to do anything out of the ordinary. Everything about it screams predictability, from the venomous banter between Scott and his sister to the direction the narrative takes with regard to a romantic sub-plot and even to dressing up risk-averse truisms about the age gap between millennials and boomers as mildly unfunny jokes.
To be frank, Standing up, falling down could be seen as an experiment where Matt Ratner (the director in his debut) and Peter Hoare (the screenwriter) were predominantly interested in remaking the aforementioned Young Adult but completely excising the edginess Diablo Cody brought to the table. As a result, the film insists for a long time on being almost offensively inoffensive in its stubborn philosophy of chaperoning the characters through their perfectly predictable arcs towards their respectively risk-averse resolutions, as though to test the patience of more seasoned viewers.
But then, as the story comes to its seemingly inescapable conclusion, the filmmakers pull a ‘Cameron Crowe manoeuvre’: they concentrate the movie’s entire potential into a short series of scenes at the very end where everything is just perfectly bittersweet and poignant. All of a sudden, the film sheds its façade of a by-the-numbers, too-cool-for-school indie dramedy and embraces the emotional message it has tried to camouflage with ‘edgy’ humour for so long. Accordingly, Rattner and Hoare leave the viewer with a tender and heartfelt commentary on regret as a powerful driving force poisoning people’s decision-making and denying access to basic happiness. This is also where the seemingly manufactured nature of Scott’s relationship with Marty is revealed to have been built on something more solid than a purely comedic archetype of an age difference. They are connected in that Scott’s life is burdened by regret over everything he didn’t do whereas Marty’s existence is defined by living with what he did.
Serendipitously, Standing up, falling down comes together in a profoundly satisfying way despite its own blatant shortcomings. It is most definitely a work of inexperienced filmmakers — occasionally clumsy, predictable, saccharine and safe — but it has a heart in the right place. That’s more than enough to justify its existence. In culinary terms, this film is a hearty stew. It’s never going to dazzle the taste buds with its extra-ordinary flavour profile, exotic ingredients or visual presentation. Yet it is nonetheless fundamentally satisfying, perhaps even as an indirect result of its own predictability.
Furthermore, the quality of a stew cannot be determined as it is being cooked. It takes time for all the ingredients to soften up and break down and for their constituent flavours to get to know each other. Thus, Standing up, falling down is a slow-cooked comfort food made with such well-worn thematic ingredients as managing aspirations, nurturing relationships and appreciating familial bonds. Its net flavour profile is just as enjoyable as it is conventional, but it is a grave mistake to opine on its quality before the credits roll.
