“Jay Kelly” surprised me. Noah Baumbach’s latest film, the Netflix-produced Tuscany travelogue that follows a “George Clooney” type of mega-movie star as he begins to reconsider the value of life spent making pretend in exchange for untold riches, could have been solipsistic and trite; navel-gazing in the way that Hollywood enjoys to mythmake. Whereas many films of this sort lay on thick their devotion to the grand religion of cinema, papering over the broken relationships and battered childhoods left in the wake of a life spent chasing the siren song of artistic acceptance or, in even worse cases, the fawning praise of the nameless masses sitting alone together in movie theaters, “Jay Kelly” does something different. It does not belabor, it does not grovel or condone; if anything, it questions the value of a man’s life, a man who will one day die, mourned by few, but whose life will live forever on a screen to be adored by millions who never really knew him.
Jay Kelly is a star, but that star is waning. In the afterglow of a career of rampant success and money, LOTS of money, Jay has become insulated from the concerns of others, billeted and warm, while the people around him race to put out the fires he instigates. You see, Jay Kelly isn’t so much a man as he is a business concern; with a half dozen devoted underlings, including his manager (Adam Sandler) and publicist (Laura Dern), who have sacrificed whole swaths of their lives to keep the Jay Kelly train rolling. Jay is in the retrospective portion of his career, but is antiseptic to the idea of looking back, as he is quick to refuse the request of a Film Society in Tuscany that wishes to present a retrospective of his career. But that career isn’t the only aspect of his life soon to slip away. After several broken marriages, Jay has one daughter in San Diego who has estranged herself in response to his failings as a father, and another daughter who is soon to go to medical school, but not before taking a freewheeling trip through France and Tuscany to mark the occasion without him. Jay feels as if disparate pieces of himself are evaporating through his fingers, and is desperate to hold on to what he can. While attending the funeral for an old collaborator (Jim Broadbent), the director who first discovered him thirty-five years before, Jay meets his old roommate from acting school, Timothy (Billy Crudup). Eager for some consolation and companionship, the pair undertake an ill-advised night of drinking and reminiscing, ending in a violent expulsion of fury and festering resentment when Timothy accuses Jay of stealing the career he should have had. Jay is finally forced to acknowledge the bloody shrapnel that his ascension inflicted upon those that he loved. Spurred to reclaim what might already be lost, Jay packs a bag and his entourage for a whirlwind trip to Tuscany, where he hopes to invite everyone he loves to join him under the glittering glow of his tribute and somehow take back what time is pulling away from him.
The opening sequence of “Jay Kelly”, as succinct a thesis statement as I’ve seen this year, shows a film set in full swing, preparing for the final shot of the film. Baumbach presents the controlled chaos in a long, sweeping take, traversing the rigging and the grip teams muttering in their dark corners, the sound team taking care to fix their microphone levels, the art department adding bits and pieces to a seemingly abstract set in a water tank, the make-up team doing last second touch ups, and the other hundreds of technicians and assistants swirling in a mad ballet that fuels the engine of an entire industry. The long shot finally settles on Jay, slumped and “dying” against a brick wall, as a city glitters behind him. From this one angle, everything looks immaculate; that water tank could be an ocean, those flickering bulbs in the backdrop of buildings could be the whole lives of a million normal people. But all eyes are on Jay Kelly as he performs the movie’s closing monologue, the same melodramatic speech that a thousand leading men have given as they die in the most photogenic way possible. Yet somehow, Jay knows how to sell it; to reach through the artifice and fake something that feels as close to real as could be. He is in his element. Here, he is whole. And then, the director calls “CUT”. Jay wants another take; he thinks he can nail it if given just one more chance. But he isn’t granted one. That’s a picture wrap on Jay Kelly. Though its meaning won’t become clear until the film’s final moments, the pang of disappointment on Jay’s face is the whole movie in a look; the panic of a man realizing he just lost his one chance at getting it right. That was it, and now it’s gone forever. So, even as Jay flails in his attempt to patch the ragged gashes in his life, in his daughters, his father, his friends, and himself, there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. Jay, the young man who wanted to be a star, got everything he ever wanted and, in the process, destroyed everything he ever needed in its blind pursuit. If only that only happened in the movies.
I am as much a sucker for movies that paint within the seams of Hollywood’s contradictions as anyone, ones that soliloquize the majesty and the horror, the self-sacrifice and disillusionment. I’ll take to it like catnip, but my tolerance has admittedly waned in recent years as the movie industry, through self-interest and vile greed, turned itself from a land of opportunity into a shuttered soundstage, hollow and cavernous and haunted. When I watched “Jay Kelly”, as Clooney traversed a beatific, yet somber, self-immolation and wrestled to understand the fruits born of his selfish ambition, I certainly grieved, only not for him. I couldn’t help thinking about the people who no movie will ever be made about, my friends, the countless and faceless acolytes to moviemaking who break their bodies and souls day in and day out with no fame, few riches, and little glory. I thought of the laborers and assistants and props masters and costumers and coordinators; the lifeblood of an industry gone to rot, who believed in the power of movies to change the world, who found community and love and purpose in the belief that there was a place for them, only for the industry to kick them to the curb in favor of souless automation and artificial disillusionment without a care for the lifetimes left to fester upon the crumbling altar of cinema. “Jay Kelly”, at its best, is not a movie about stardom, but is instead about the things people unknowingly sacrifice to believe that if the movies matter, maybe so can a life making them. I’d like to think that, as I’m sure Jay Kelly would as well. I certainly used to. But as the final frame of the film spools out, I believe Jay comes to realize the same thing that I did while watching it. Though we love the movies, they will never love us back. It’s not what’s on the screen but the people watching who matter the most. It’s a shame that we forget that.
“Jay Kelly” is so much more complicated and intricate than the marketing made me believe. I’m not sure I should be surprised, as Noah Baumbach has a knack for wrestling the heart out of a seemingly simple story, of showing us a movie star we will never meet and making us believe that we are somehow alike in our joys and regrets. Maybe there is some magic in the movies after all. Or perhaps that’s just life. Just remember, there is no take two.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Jay Kelly” is playing at the Prytania Theater Uptown on 35mm Film.
