Images courtesy of Netflix
JAY KELLY— 5 STARS
LESSON #1: MULTIPLY MOMENTS— Thanks to tried-and-true formulas of simplified storytelling, too many scripts nowadays—from prestige pieces on down to comfort food blockbuster fare—only have the capacity to build towards one decent zenith. After that straightforward work, the single climax might have been well-scaffolded to create an enjoyable enough payoff, sending folks home moderately happy. Good for them, but truly superior scripts expand their efforts to conceive several standout moments that only get better as they multiply. With Netflix’s Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer put forth a screenplay that overflows with more satisfaction and rewards than an audience could ever ask for.
Take this moment from the final reel of Jay Kelly. Our fictional title character and matinee idol—embodied by a genuine one in George Clooney—sits down before a tribute event, needing, of all things, his makeup done at the last minute. After a road movie’s worth of travel misadventures and frustrating stumbles before this evening, the only person left from the handsome divo’s team of people is his beleaguered longtime manager, Ron Sukenick, played by Adam Sandler. Even his continued attendance, at this point, took heart-to-heart cajoling in the scene just before this one. Nevertheless, with no cameras around, outward vanity gives way to unseen vulnerability. Regardless of who is the superior or subordinate, a professional need blends to become a personal labor between two men who know each other better than they realize or admit.
This isn’t even the so-called “big finale” sendoff of Jay Kelly, finalizing its truer path of a veteran movie star reminiscing on the cavities of his personal mistakes underneath his prodigious pearly-white successes. Yet, here we are, taken backstage before that finale and touched watching each face-to-face, wordless dab of foundation and silver-reducing brushstroke of color Adam is applying to George as Ron and Jay, all in the effort of making someone who would look good wearing a trashbag and a five-o’clock shadow feel at ease and at their best. This episode of completing an on-the-fly makeup routine arrives to typify their symbiotic partnership and the trust and commitment it takes to maintain it.
LESSON #2: ACCUMULATING EMOTIONS— This seemingly benign moment in Jay Kelly of two stars sharing space at the end of a long journey does not have its swelling effect without two more moments after it and a dozen more before it. That’s the level of emotional accumulation and sophisticated emphasis assembled by Baumbach in the director’s chair, fleshing out actress Emily Mortimer’s first feature script. The two cultivate a depth of detail where every line and encounter adds merit towards affirming the bigger themes at hand.
Before the big star and his humble manager tie these concluding bow ties, Jay Kelly creates a man facing personal and career crises that are colliding unexpectedly. After wrapping his latest picture (shot in a massive and dazzling one-r by Oscar-winning La La Land cinematographer Linus Sandgren to open the movie), Jay learns that his longtime friend and mentor director, Peter Schneider (Academy Award winner Jim Broadbent), has died. Attending the funeral, Jay runs into his old acting classmate, Timothy (Billy Crudup), and they agree to catch up over drinks.
What begins as two former buddies swapping stories and comparing craft turns into a heated confrontation. We learn Jay got the big break Timothy didn’t, and that perceived slight still lingers. The encounter with Timothy swerves and threatens to become a possible PR debacle, which activates Jay’s people, including Ron and his publicist, Liz (the excellent and frazzled Marriage Story Oscar winner Laura Dern). More piercingly, though, the verbal salt rubbed into egotistical wounds by Crudup’s dynamite single scene is a colossal trigger for Jay beginning to consider the costs of his stardom.
LESSON #3: DO YOU REMEMBER THIS THE WAY I DO?— This is where Jay Kelly stacks Lesson #2 in a nearly Dickensian fashion as Jay’s memories of prior events arrest his thoughts, often backed by If Beale Street Could Talk composer Nicholas Brittel’s stirring and award-worthy underscore. Starting with that fateful first audition where a younger Jay (Charlie Rowe of Rocketman) beat Timothy for a breakout role with Peter Schneider, Baumbach and Sandgren, working together again with his No Time to Die production designer Mark Tildesley, create layered practical sets emulating leaps in time and locale that allow Clooney’s older Jay to “walk into” his old memories as a voyeuristic observer. While these ingenious scene transitions play very showy and coy, they ramp up the underlying duel between pride and regret inside Jay Kelly. He adamantly chose to chase stardom and likely would again.
Still, beneath his gilded reputation and material riches are two failed marriages, a woulda-coulda-shoulda onset co-star romance (Flora and Son star Ewe Hewson), and two daughters, Jessica and Daisy (Mad Max: Fury Road’s Riley Keough and Grace Edwards of Asteroid City), who are recipients—make that, victims—of his absentee parenting. Running away from the Timothy situation, Jay gets it in his mind to surprise Daisy on her post-graduation vacation in Paris in a last-gasp effort to spend quality time together on his way to a career tribute being awarded to him in Tuscany. Ron, Liz, and the rest of Jay’s entourage are caught up in this whim and leave their families (including Baumbach’s wife and fellow filmmaker Greta Gerwig playing Ron’s understanding wife Lois) behind to chase their work responsibilities and their employer’s tailspin.
LESSON #4: COMMITMENT VERSUS OBLIGATION— The hijinks that ensue in Jay Kelly during this extenuating excursion shine a spotlight on Adam Sandler’s Ron and Laura Dern’s Liz, and the mix of successful and unfortunate lengths their characters go to for their “puppy” boss. Knowing Jay’s every tick and tendency with conversational shorthand, Ron is often the only capable voice of reason to talk the Jay Kelly down. Adorably and tragically at the same time, Ron thinks Jay considers him a true friend above just his manager. It’s a classic case of commitment versus obligation where the who and what make a big difference, something Liz is beginning to question for Ron and herself after decades of work that have not been fully appreciated by Jay. She contends that the love and loyalty only go one way and rattles Ron with the great line of “We’re not to him what he is for us.”
Beginning his own parallel existential crisis, Adam Sandler, playing his knocking-on-door-of-60 age and subduing his over-the-top schtick for bright beams of earnest optimism, damn near steals the movie from the headliner. He’s a well-suited, complementary figure to George Clooney, for whom the script was written in mind. Echoing a classic Sylvia Plath quote displayed before the big one-shot opener, Clooney proves—when done interestingly and deeply—there is “a hell of responsibility to be yourself.” He rises to the challenge unabashedly, musing on legacy and age with growing grace while having the clout and chin to take these knocks and come out shining.
Jay Kelly muses on the celebrity lifestyle without preening as a glorified vanity project solely existing to shower bouquets on George Clooney and give him a fun co-star he can shoot hoops with in between trailers on a lavish European shoot. Because of its striking amplification of the titular legend’s insecurities and the people affected by them, Baumbach’s film finds refreshing drama amid all the comedic frolic of watching a famous person navigate a little bit of the public wild to better define a work-life balance, something so many Jay Kelly cast members directly experience through their own upbringings (Clooney, Dern, Keough, Hewson, and Stacy Keach as celebrity offspring) or current familial relationships (Mortimer, Baumbach, Gerwig, Crudup, and Patrick Wilson are all married to fellow artists). There’s an uncanny and inebriating magic here that is heartfelt, reverent, and surprisingly approachable amid the A-list souls involved and revealed.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1351)