It’s somewhat indicative of the genre’s DIY leanings that there isn’t a great consensus on exactly what to call it. “Mumblecore” is the tag most frequently thrown around, and it’s useful, suggesting the muted, mundane aesthetic that most of the filmmakers employ; The DIY Generation is what the curators of  the collection of films coming to Metro this weekend have christened it, and it also has some use, though it’s far too vague on the actual content of the films, most of which are miles away from the work of preceding indie-film auteurs who got by on their own. “Slackavetes” (clever, but missing the point) and “Bedhead cinema” (just stupid) also get tossed around occasionally.
 

In the DIY spirit, though, I’d like to suggest my own for one of America’s most vital and interesting current film movements: indie neo-realism. I like that particular term for two reasons, the first of which is that it situates the genre very firmly in the dominant American youth subculture of the day, indie. As with any movement that grows beyond its roots, using the word “indie” to describe anything is slowly becoming meaningless—the 21st century “punk” or “alternative”—but these films nevertheless embody the roots of the movement, existing outside more established art-distribution power structures, showing a fascination with somewhat arrested development, celebrating creation for its own sake and being closely tied to a few hyper-cool urban metropolises (New York, Chicago, Portland, Austin, that latter of which’s SXSW festival—the indie Mecca—being where the movement solidified).
 

The second reason is the allusion to the Italian neo-realism movement, which is arguably the grandfather of this current crop of realists (Cassavetes being the father, Jarmusch and Linklater the older brothers). With a few exceptions—like the atrocious Four Eyed Monsters, as hyper-stylized a piece of shit as you’re ever likely to see—the films in this movement are firmly realist in both aesthetic and philosophy, using an offhanded, occasionally voyeuristic style to capture a frequently painfully honest slice of young life in desperate search of some kind of direction. Like the originals, the indie neo-realists eschew eloquence, grand philosophical statements, excessive plot and stylized presentation, often seeming to do little more than drift in and out of their characters’ lives.

 

Though the films going up at Metro serve as a decent introduction, there are a few directors omitted that bear discussion, and are well worth looking into if you like what you see over the weekend. First and foremost is Andrew Bujalski, whose brilliant Funny Ha Ha (2002) and Mutual Appreciation (’05) precede the official codification of the genre, but also stand up as its finest works (he’s also the one who coined the term mumblecore, though he’s since expressed some regret for that). Bujalski has an Altman-like ear for natural, free-flowing dialogue, and his films are populated with characters on the verge of saying something profound, but not quite sure enough in their feeling

s or thoughts to fully commit. Combined with shots that are always unobtrusively in the right place and a comedian’s sense of timing, Bujalski’s films feel more like hanging out with intelligent though somewhat aimless friends than passively watching someone else’s life go by.
 

The other big omission is that of the Duplass Brothers, arguably the most commercially successful DIY filmmakers—not that that’s a hard category to take home. Their first feature, The Puffy Chair (‘05), was a story of a frustrating relationship subjected 

to a road trip, and showed them to be deft character sketchers, in this case getting a perfect bead on characters slowly beginning to come to grips with the fact that life contains disappointment. Their next feature, the horror flick Baghead (‘08), that will get a premiere at Sundance and was recently picked up by Sony, seems like a necessary step for the movement, expanding beyond just exploring creative young malaise into wider subjects. Odds are they’ll be the ones to come out of the movement with the most mainstream attention.
 

Of the films that are showing as part of the weekend, Joe Swanberg’s LOL (’06)—which is sharp but isn’t his best film, that being the hilariously self-involved Hannah Takes the Stairs (’07)—and Todd Rohal’s buzzed about Guatemalan Handshake (‘06; see Josef Braun’s review on the previous page) are probably the most interesting, the former a story of three misfit men slowly alienating the women in their life and the latter more of a magical realist film that nevertheless shares some of the movements obsessions and tricks. Also not to be missed, though, is director Aaron Katz’s Quiet City (’07), a kind of Brooklyn-based update of Linklater’s Before Sunrise. Like Linklater, Katz has a talent both for not forcing his actors into anything and finding the often misguided truth in young philosophizing, and is one well worth watching in a crop of filmmakers offering a radically different style of film. V