“Do you know how hard it is to be yourself?”
It’s been a good long while since both George Clooney and Adam Sandler have been given true characters to play. In between shepherding projects behind the scenes, neither star has been given the kind of role that showcases what we know them to be capable of. In director Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, the two play a pair of men, each of whom finds themselves at a professional and emotional impasse. The film, set against the backdrop of the moviemaking industry, does right by both actors and gives each of them scenes of true disenchantment and disillusionment to play. After turns in uninspired fare like Ticket to Paradise and Happy Gilmore 2, I’m glad to finally see both of them not only excel at their characters here, but also proceed to give two of the best performances of the year.
In Jay Kelly, Clooney plays the titular man, a megawatt movie star who is on top of his game professionally. However, when he learns of the death of his filmmaking mentor (Jim Broadbent), he begins to question the person he’s actually become after years of non-stop success. This sends Jay on an international journey to France and Italy, where he continues to reevaluate the relationships with those closest to him, including his daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards), his father (Stacy Keach), and his longtime manager Ron (Sandler).
I’m not sure at what point in the movie it happens, but at some juncture, Jay Kelly as a film, becomes a bit of a mess. This isn’t to do with any of the performances or really even the dialogue. But there’s something of a haphazard nature that is conjured up, which tries to drown out the movie’s genuine intentions and its desire to talk about who these people are, including and especially our main character. Many of the plot points send our characters on what feels like a half-baked wild goose chase that includes Jay thwarting a robbery, wandering around in the Italian countryside in a daze, and still finding time to accept a career achievement award. With plenty of industry jargon in its back pocket, Jay Kelly tries aggressively hard to make a comment on the industry, letting us know how real the situations it’s portraying are. The problem with that is that it forgets to say much of anything about the world Jay comes from, other than it’s not what you imagine it to be.
Baumbach is no slouch, this much is certain. It’s because he is no slouch that Jay Kelly does manage moments of actual introspection. The instances where we see Jay question how he got to where he is, what crucial incidents led him to the point he found himself at, contain small, but undeniable levels of meaning. The flashback to his first audition scene, where he seized the opportunity he might not even have known that he wanted, is a pivotal moment in the film and allows Jay to tap into a lost vulnerability that at one point he probably traded in for stardom. In scenes like these, the film becomes more than just a tale about a movie star questioning his success. It becomes almost a chronicle about the stuff that got lost along the way, the relationships, beliefs, and inner truths a person had at the beginning of their quest that somehow got squeezed out when there was no more room for them in that proverbial climb to the top.
As I said before, Clooney and Sandler both excel at their roles. For the former, his most compulsively watchable turn since Michael Clayton, while the latter’s performance builds on the promise put forth by Uncut Gems in terms of the sheer belief and commitment to the material. Baumbach is lucky that the rest of his cast is just as strong. Laura Dern gives the perfect mix of harried and pragmatic in her role as Jay’s longtime assistant, Billy Crudup is compelling as a former acting friend of Jay’s, Broadbent is soulful, Edwards is great, and Keach remains the underrated acting force he’s always been.
After watching the documentary on Faye Dunaway’s life and career last year, I decided to pick up her 1995 memoir, “Looking for Gatsby.” In the book, Dunaway equated the attainment of fame and success with the act of essentially having to sacrifice one’s life. The actress theorized that a famous person’s life no longer belongs to them once they become a star. It belongs to the people who run the practical elements that make it function and to the fans who made the person in question a success. Dunaway’s thoughts relate to Baumbach’s film, to Clooney himself, and to every actor who chased fame and caught it. Despite its various narrative faults, Jay Kelly makes a real effort to show the deeper price for fame, namely the life that is sacrificed in the process and the reconstructed version of it that emerges as a result.
