One minute a man is a hot young movie star; the next, he’s a silver fox. Who knows where the time goes? There are lots of movies about aging Hollywood actresses—Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve are prime examples—but somehow we’re supposed to assume that growing older doesn’t faze men as much. A woman generally loses some of her allure as she ages; it’s easier for a man to ease into a state of sexy gravitas. That’s true of both George Clooney and the George Clooney-like character he plays in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, premiering at the Venice Film Festival. You couldn’t find a more fitting performer for this story of a ragingly successful actor who, after an encounter with an old friend that begins with fond reminiscing and ends in a fistfight, reconsiders everything he’s done with his life. The idea by itself is refreshing, and it gives Clooney lots to work with: as Jay, he gets to razzle-dazzle one minute—anytime he’s on set, or in a crowd—and brood over his many mistakes the next. Clooney can do it all.
Yet there’s something strangely inert about Jay Kelly. Baumbach co-wrote the script with Emily Mortimer, a marvelous actor herself, who also shows up here in just a few brief scenes. There’s nothing overtly dislikable about the film, and there are a handful of scenes that are beautifully written, acted, and directed. But Jay Kelly feels more sentimental than truly thoughtful, particularly in the motif that resounds like a clanging bell in Jay’s brain: Why didn’t I spend more time with my kids? Jay has two, an older daughter (Riley Keough) who harbors bitterness toward her her father, and a younger one (Grace Edwards) who understands him better, though she’s just about to go off to college. His only true friend is the guy who, the movie reminds us several times, gets a 15% cut of everything he earns, his manager Ron (played, superbly, by Adam Sandler). And is that really a friend at all? Both he and Ron confront that question, and the answer they come up with makes neither of them happy.
Maybe the problem is that Jay Kelly tries to cover so much ground that it ends up skating over things that should be momentous. As the movie opens, Jay is filming the final scene of his most recent big movie. (It’s called Eight Men from Now, an obvious but not particularly relevant nod to Budd Boetticher’s 1956 western Seven Men from Now.) He’s already gone through more than a half-dozen takes, but he wants to do one more. This is his refrain: he’s so devoted to perfection that he’s sure he can always top himself. When he finally leaves the set, he waves to the whole crew, thanking them heartily, and they love it. He feeds off that kind of attention. When he’s alone, which is hardly ever, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Another of the movie’s refrains, repeated perhaps a few too many times, is “It’s harder than you think to be yourself.”
Alienated or semi-alienated from his daughters, Jay is delighted and intrigued when he runs into an old acting-school friend, Billy Crudup’s Timothy. On impulse, they go out for drinks. Timothy is now a child psychiatrist; he simply opted out of acting, or so Jay thinks. He heaps praise on his old friend, revealing his own insecurities—Timothy was a Method guy, denoting a level of seriousness Jay feels he could never achieve. Then Timothy, affable at first, turns on him. It turns out Timothy believes Jay is the very reason he hasn’t had a career. In interviews, Jay has often jokingly told a story about accidentally getting his first big role because he tagged along on a friend’s audition. Timothy was that friend, and in his view, Jay just used him. “You stole my life,” he says bitterly, and Jay is crestfallen. He may be oblivious—but he isn’t cruel.
There’s plenty to dig into there, but before you know it, Jay Kelly is off to the next thing. This is a restless, wriggly movie. There’s the film festival in Tuscany that wants to honor Jay with a fancy tribute. Jay at first says no, then changes his mind when he realizes his younger daughter is going to be traveling in Europe around the same time. Consequently, Baumbach weaves in a long sequence, set on a train from Paris to the Italian countryside, that might have been nipped and tucked, or nearly altogether excised. Because there are people around Jay nearly every moment, the movie is packed with supporting actors who show up for just a scene or two, including Jim Broadbent as the benevolent director who gave Jay his big break, Alba Rohrwacher as a charming festival gofer, Greta Gerwig as Ron’s harried wife, and Stacy Keach as Jay’s garrulous but difficult father. Laura Dern shows up for a hot minute as Jay’s frustrated publicist; she and Sandler have the best scene in the movie, reflecting on the time they almost got together forever, though they’re now settled with other partners.
Clooney’s Jay Kelly is the beaming, brooding star at the center of this constellation. As much light as he gives off, he actually soaks up more from those around him: he needs them in a way they don’t need him. There’s something quietly touching about this performance—Clooney manages to make you care about a man who really may be pretty much empty. When he finally gets to that tribute in Tuscany—with much angst and strife along the way—he sits with the audience as they watch the predictably laudatory assemblage of film clips drawn from every era of Jay Kelly’s career. Only it’s snapshots from Clooney’s career we’re seeing: clips from Michael Clayton, The Thin Red Line, even 2020’s The Midnight Sky, in which Clooney plays a loner-scientist with a big gray beard. We watch him watching himself—this is not just Jay Kelly watching Jay Kelly, but George Clooney watching George Clooney, in roles where he looks pleasantly dignified in that middle-aged way, but also at times impossibly young, a baby movie star just taking his first steps. The look on his face—on Jay’s face, on Clooney’s face—is one of pure wonder. Who is that person? he seems to be asking himself, enchanted and seduced by his own image. It’s the best visual question mark in a movie filled with unanswerable questions.
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