Beastly Reviews: Begin Again
New York, New York.
After my last film, I needed a palate cleanser. I found that in Begin Again, an indie darling about two screwed-over people in the Big Apple: songwriter Gretta (Keira Knightley) and music producer Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Dan has just been fired and Gretta is freshly wounded by her asshole rockstar boyfriend (Adam Levine in his film debut).
Dan has a crumbling relationship with his ex-wife and has recently been kicked out of the record label he founded. Dan's character profile is slimy, but Ruffalo is so not slimy that the effect feels a bit mismatched. Ruffalo delivers a sincere, humane version of the urban con artist — a down-on-his-luck creative who's out of ideas and drinks too much. He just needs a friend. He finds one.
Stumbling into an East Village bar one night, Dan finds Gretta at the mic — bared, fragile, singing about heartbreak. Gretta is chic and charming but not convincingly a standout singer. Knightley's thin voice works for airy bops without ever quite convincing us she'd be an overnight hit in a city filled with good singers.
Dan wants to sign her to his label. She says no. After some convincing, she agrees to it, but only on her terms (because a first-time artist can always do that). Together, they make an album showcasing the sounds of New York (we're never told why they want to do this), recording live on the street, in Central Park, etc. It's cute, and some songs are catchy, but the end result is less of a romantic drama and more of a music documentary about an album that doesn't exist.
I have never lived in New York City, but I have a hard time believing people there are this genteel, this chipper at hearing a band playing outside their bedroom windows. I understand the film's romantic pitch: two wayfaring nobodies trying to find themselves and arriving at a deeper understanding of life. I'm just not sure that's enough to hang a film on. And are people really this nice? Everyone in the city seems to clap along wherever, whenever, Gretta and the gang set up the mic and start to play. Where are the cops?
There's a delightful bit where Gretta and Dan share earpieces and walk around listening to Frank Sinatra's "Luck Be A Lady", and at this point, I realized the film is attempting to be a love song to the city, and that the characters and their lives are secondary to this effort. The film is a snapshot, a glimpse of New York, and Gretta and Dan are just straw men — everyman puppets who primarily serve to draw our attention to the city and tell us how cool it is. Over the course of the film, Dan and Gretta's personal stories lose their impact and importance. Their narratives wrap up nicely, they come to some semblance of resolution, and become friends. And I yawn.
Many films have attempted to be love songs to New York: 2008's New York, I Love You, 1989's New York Stories, and the best, the 1998 documentary The Cruise. In comparison, Begin Again feels too precious and unsure of itself. The film makes the city look pretty and clean, as gentle as the breathy songs Gretta sings. Everyone acts very happy to see a band playing in the streets as if it's that uncommon for musicians to appear on the sidewalks of New York.
Again, I've not lived there, but where's the stink? Where's the grit? Where's the capitalism and hunger? I don't believe this picture of New York. It never packs a punch, never hurts. Good art should inspire hate or love — people should say it's the best thing ever or the worst, because the worst response to art is neither: "It's okay."
Begin Again is okay. The ending leaves us waiting for a resolution we didn't know we needed and for some drama that was never present. It never demands too much of us and vanishes as softly as it came.
Love, Beastly
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