By KATE BROKAW
A&F Staff Writer
Near the beginning of Burr Steers’ scathing
first film Igby Goes Down, the 17-year-old title character (Kieran
Culkin) jostles his way through a crowded party in the Hamptons,
ducking the reaches of his socialite relatives. It’s a scene
that clearly pays homage to Benjamin Braddock’s return from
college to his parents’ California home in The Graduate,
camera angles and all. But with the astonishing Culkin at the
center of the screen, nothing in this story of teenage rebellion
feels contrived or played out.
By transcending the conventionality of the mannered dysfunction
at its center, Igby (which opened in Los Angeles and New York
in an initial limited release last weekend) succeeds as a bitingly
hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking tale.
Igby Slocumb comes from a world of old-money privilege, and he
resents all the ways his family has shaped him.
He also resents each family member– his neurotic, strung-out
mother (Susan Sarandon, who in one particularly memorable scene
is shown literally sitting on her maid); his depressed, alcoholic
father (Bill Pullman), who in flashbacks is shown descending into
real mental illness; and his snobby older brother Oliver (Ryan
Phillippe, reworking the upper-crust tonalities of his Cruel Intentions
character), a successful Columbia University freshman who delights
in spreading around news of Igby’s failings.
Igby’s been kicked out of most prep schools on the East
Coast, and he doesn’t fare too well during a brief stint
in military school either. Escaping to New York City, he ends
up sleeping on the floor of a downtown loft owned by his godfather
D.H. (a shark-like Jeff Goldblum in full Donald Trump mode) and
inhabited by D.H.’s young mistress (Amanda Peet), a choreographer
with a bad drug habit and a taste for sexually ambiguous artists.
Igby freely admits he doesn’t really know what he wants
to do with his life, only that he longs for a “Razor’s
Edge experience.” But unlike Larry Darrell in W. Somerset
Maugham’s novel, who travels the world in search of meaning
and peace of mind, Igby is much more reminiscent of that beloved
rebel of literature, Holden Caulfield.
“I’m drowning in assholes,” he remarks at one
point, observing the hypocrisy of the social scene around him.
He ignores his mother’s impending death and molders in his
pseudo-bohemian East Village world, falling into a relationship
with a clove-smoking Bennington student named Sookie Sapperstein
(Claire Danes). She’s as bored and jaded as Igby, but with
her he starts to yearn for something more, a life beyond the disappointment
and dysfunction that surrounds him.
This is the directorial and screenwriting debut of Steers, an
stage director and actor who appeared in Pulp Fiction and The
Last Days of Disco.
His sharply observant, intelligent dialogue keeps Igby moving
briskly along, and the enjoyable soundtrack offers choice cuts
from bands like The Dandy Warhols and Badly Drawn Boy.
Steers shows great assurance in his creation of a vibrant, sophisticated
New York scene, and his own old-boy, old-money background probably
helped him define the complexities of privilege so accurately.
(Author Gore Vidal, Steers’ uncle, appears in a cameo role.)
Igby Goes Down is really an actor’s film. Sarandon and Goldblum
relish their nasty roles, adding depth and vivacity to characters
that just get darker and more delicious as the film progresses.
It’s nice to see Claire Danes back on screen in a decent
movie (Brokedown Palace, anyone?), even one with yet another of
her infamous lip-trembling scenes. But Kieran Culkin’s the
one, and he’ll never be saddled with the label of Macauley-
Culkin’s-younger-brother ever again. His recent work in
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, as a similarly smart and rebellious
boy, now seems by comparison a warm-up for the reality and revelation
of this role.
Moving between confidence and insolence, bravery and vulnerability,
his Igby is a performance of astonishing depth and clarity. This
is, as they say, a film in which a star in born.
Like Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, Igby paints a
vivid surface of dark wit and savage one-liners that can’t
quite conceal the deeply-ingrained sadness and family tragedies
that twist and turn underneath.
The glamour of Igby’s world can’t cover up the confusion
and depression that infect nearly all the characters.
Everyone is inwardly tormented in one way or another, and Igby
himself nearly succumbs to the same “great, great pressure
coming down” that virtually destroys his father. Nearly.
But no amount of Salinger-esque cynicism can blunt Igby’s
refusal to give up on the the indestructible possibilities of
life. In the end, the real significance and the real triumph of
Igby Goes Down is that it’s a film about refusing to go
down.
