Brief impression: “Daddy Longlegs” aka “Go Get Some Rosemary”
July 26, 2015 § 1 Comment
Looking somehow – vaguely – like a less cartoonish, more handsome version of Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld, divorced Manhattan film projectionist Lenny Sokol is an overgrown older brother to his two young sons Sage and Frey of whom he has custody for a feverish fortnight. Lenny, as embodied by writer-director and here actor Ronald Bronstein, doesn’t simply recall Kramer in the looks department; his heart and mind are as tightly sewn to his sleeve as is the case with television’s crown weirdo, and they are both – the two of them – mascots of irresponsibility, to an extent. In fact, Lenny could very well be an alternate-reality projection of Kramer had he (Kramer, that is) impregnated someone and landed the role of having to partially raise two children. So there is the unabashed expressiveness, which always makes for a sympathetic character however one feels about the expressive acts themselves, and there is the careless charm and general carelessness. But what really makes Lenny a protagonist for the ages is that he must walk a mean tightrope, if only for the span of the film’s two week duration, with adolescent abandon on one side of the fall and the rock-hard sidewalks of stodgy adulthood looming on the other. Perhaps walking is too generous a descriptor even; more like hanging from the rope one-handed, being blown by the pressures of life from one side to the next. This probably makes Daddy Longlegs sound a little melodramatic and it very well is: a melodrama of Lenny’s own concocting, and a great one at that.
Interestingly, in reviewing Bronstein’s directorial debut Frownland for Ozu’s World Movie Review, critic Dennis Schwartz claims that the 2007 no-budget feature trumps David Lynch’s Eraserhead in sheer “weirdness.” Whether or not this is a fair or even accurate assessment, there’s a curious semi-connection in there. Apart from the fact that Jack Nance’s character in Eraserhead, Henry Spencer, is an even earlier precursor of Kramer’s spastic, electrocuted look, Bronstein’s Lenny is – like Henry – a noticeably naked depiction of fatherhood not often seen in the cinema. Sure, Lenny loves being a dad to his boys and sure, there are [many] fathers in [many] movies, but few of them seem to grapple with their parental duties in a manner that has potent dramatic edge and hints of torture/disabling self-doubt. Either they drag their feet, coast along, lash out…or they have it down to an art with their compassionate newspaper-reading paternalism. Yes, in Daddy Longlegs, Lenny is the typical irresponsible, fun foil to his stauncher more ‘adult’ ex-wife Paige (played by gonzo artist Leah Singer, the two young boys’ actual mother), but he is not above yelling Sage and Frey back into bed or benignly drugging them in their sleep, for their own protection. His natural penchant for frivolity is offset by these pressured attempts at discipline and responsibility and, as the film reaches its uneasy conclusion, the fact that Lenny can’t quite find a pleasant middle ground between friend and father becomes clear even to his pre-adolescent boys. Of course, one could argue that the film is a gentle paean to single parenthood and its struggles; to those whose late-night shifts are tainted by the guilt and worry from having left young lieges alone at home. Or it could be a sobering reminder that children of divorce often walk their own tightrope not just between two modes of parenting but two vastly different – perhaps harmfully contradictory – approaches to existence. When Sage and Frey return to their mother’s home the overall image is one of well-mannered domesticity, plus they have a more gentrified father figure to boot in the form of their mother’s new husband. It’s difficult to predict whether they would benefit from their father’s chaos on a more regular basis. It’s probably less difficult to postulate that the presence of both in a more complimentary dynamic would be ideal.
For those out there – probably most, one would imagine – whose impression of the current standoff between digital video and film is that it is nothing more than an esoteric scuffle between tunnel-visioned obsessives, viewing a dirt cheap picture that was shot with 16mm stock should prove enlightening, even if only a pinch. Whereas it may be close to impossible for a casual non-geek to identify whether or not a decently budgeted film like Fincher’s Zodiac was shot on film or digitally, let alone outline the key differences in image quality between the two formats, the textural and tonal disparity between Daddy Longlegs and something shot on DSLR – or even a film like Once – is staggering and easy to notice. Apart from the buoyant colour palette and the smoothness of the transitions between light and shadow (dynamic range), there is a grainy, bleary-eyed nostalgia that 16mm lends this picture. From frame one, writer-directors Josh and Benny Safdie make no secret of this movie’s roots in their own memories of and experiences with their father (and mother), but theirs nonetheless remains a film set in the now, in contemporary (as of 2008-9) New York City as opposed to a more obviously longing restaging of their childhood in the 1980s. But there is an unmistakable, unwashed timelessness to the parts of NYC in which the movie was shot, as though the very air let alone the buildings and sidewalks have barely aged over the decades. Without trying, Daddy Longlegs manages to evoke the kind of old-school off-the-cuff cinema to which it will undoubtedly be (and is currently being) compared. One can imagine that recreating a distinct period would be costly at any scale but, luckily, the Safdies seem to have been aiming for something more than mere throwback grassroots realism in the vein of Cassavettes (whose namesake prize the brothers happened to win at the 2011 Independent Spirit Awards). For all its physical intimacy, its long-lens aesthetic with a generous supply of fearless close-ups, fumbling focus and overt naturalism, Daddy Longlegs separates itself from its indie contemporaries in its willingness to dance with the surreal and morbidly expressionistic, namely the mystifying but somehow right sitcom-like applause and battlefield noises that bookend the film’s soundtrack, and of course the giant mosquito that sucks the peace of mind right out of Lenny’s neck as he sleeps and presumably dreams. Whatever the more literal meaning of these may be, they make emotional sense in addition to ever-so-slightly distancing the film from the current fetishisation of “documentary” realism. But they also suggest that these filmmaking brothers are intent on doing more than just depicting their past and materialising their memories. Theirs is an act of interpretation and reckoning, and it is this which allows their picture to sway precariously above its peers, reaching for a little more than 16mm verisimilitude.
the odd employment 
[…] and fact long before Heaven Know What. Their previous ‘fiction’ feature Daddy Longlegs aka Go Get Some Rosemary similarly draws on the experiences of individuals who in fact existed (and still do exist), while […]
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