At what point does the identity you’re trying on as a costume become your skin? This is the question asked in Noah Baumbach’s 1995 debut feature, Kicking and Screaming. The film concerns itself with a witty and desperate group of friends who are emotionally paralysed by graduation, completely unsure of what to do after university.
The first sensory experience of the film is Pixies’ song “Cecilia Ann” playing, as our protagonist Grover (Josh Hamilton) weaves through crowds of fellow unbearable recent graduates having pithy and purposeless conversations, to make his way to his girlfriend Jane (Olivia d’Abo). It is instantly evident that this is a movie about conversations, the ones you do have and the ones you do not, as well as the ones that do and do not matter, setting a precedent and inventing a form of what Baumbach films will be in the future.
To Grover’s surprise, aspiring writer Jane creates movement in her life when he was planning on a life of joint paralysis. She gets into a postgraduate program in Prague, leaving him and endowing him with a reason for his upcoming lone emotional stagnation. His friends Max (Chris Eigemann), Otis, and Skippy, despite not being left by their girlfriends, are similarly emotionally misplaced. Otis, out of pure fear, defers his admission to graduate school in Milwaukee, moves back in with his mother, and pursues a job at a video store. Skippy uses his girlfriend, Miami (Parker Posey), who is in the year below them, as an excuse to stay around school and pick up new classes. Max, the most vocally and outwardly dramatic about how torturous of an ordeal it is to graduate when you have no plans, spends most of the film flailing around and mocking his friends. These four, through their pathetic nature, remain each other’s safety blankets and worse enablers in a movie. As they sit in a bar and play meaningless trivia (“Can you name eight movies in which monkeys play a major role?”), talk alike, and engage in unproductive discussions.
The simplicity of the storylines and character journeys of Kicking and Screaming, as the collegial calendar structure gets flicked through by Baumbach, is its most honest feature. A story that is more plot-heavy would make for a far less successful film, the whole point is postgraduate sluggishness. It would inherently be a betrayal to the confusion and loss one feels when they experience such a ceremonial ending. It is the most human thing to want to fight back against nature, something Jane doesn’t do; she is submissive to time and a new beginning, nonetheless she remains the most in charge of her own story. Grover’s envy and heartbreak towards this situation is splattered across the film, as we’re treated to romantic flashbacks of their sweet and charming beginnings. The conscious choice Jane makes relates back to slacker culture, something that was portrayed by young Gen-X filmmakers of the time, such as Baumbach, though his version is one of more well-off artists (usually writers) feeling lost, and therefore doing nothing. Grover, as a character, is the original lost and sensitive central figure in the filmmaker’s filmography. Josh Hamilton plays him with a layer of emotional devastation that creates a breeding ground for what Greta Gerwig, Adam Driver, and Ben Stiller get to later represent in Baumbach’s oeuvre: the lost, privileged, and pained artist, who wraps themselves in the armour of either their eloquence, passion or charm and hopes that it will save them. Even though Jane only exists to us through the beginning of the film, flashbacks, and voice messages, the brave pursuit of her dream is an illustration of the cowardice of Grover and his friends.
Skippy is the member of the friendship group who is the most obviously in denial about his situation. He uses his girlfriend Miami as an excuse to weasel his way back to university. He is completely unsure what to do with himself, taking classes for the sake of taking them and not studying. A resentment that leads to Miami cheating on him with Max, a point of the story that is used to put holes in the armour of this friendship group, that all talk the same and operate on a similar wavelength. What is most interesting about this act of infidelity is that Skippy, despite feeling let down by his girlfriend and friend, doesn’t seem to be experiencing great heartbreak at the face of this reality. It is not long after she confesses that she cheated via scrawling the truth on a notepad and remembering to draw a sad face, that they’re joking and laughing with one another again. This is a harsh contrast to the dramatics Grover is living through with his situation. To Skippy, it seems like the relief he needed, the relationship he used as an excuse to stay and remain a student, has dismantled itself, and so has the lie he has been internalising.
Otis, despite presumably having a degree in mechanical engineering, is presented as socially awkward and a coward. The most outwardly geeky in a group of men who do ridiculous trivia for fun. It is through Otis that any potential coolness that one might observe in Grover or Max dissolves, because they are so evidently from the same cloth and entertain themselves in the same ways. What he consistently refers to as an “antsy” feeling is something all the characters are experiencing during this period; he represents it in what could now be read as anxiety attacks played for humour. His issues are not mended by romance but by a true facing of his fears, an acceptance of the next chapter, as the movie ends, he is back at the airport he fled when he decided to defer his admission. His costume was the video store uniform, which brought him no joy, and the book club with Chet (Eric Stoltz), which he humorously didn’t even read the book for.
Chris Eigemann plays Max as a constellation of insecurities, neurosis, and grief at the life he has just left. He is the most outwardly critical of the bunch, whilst easily being the one with the most issues. As he does the crossword in his sports jacket, he stops to look at the mirror and call himself nothing. Emphasising an emptiness in his life beyond just showing him meandering through, his repetitive dialogue is tattooed into the audience’s consciousness. Max begins to date teenager Kate (Cara Buono), an age difference that is even more jarring when you consider how much Max behaves like he is much older, maturer, and above his group of friends. At the end, Kate is used as this fixture of Max’s problems, she is brash, loud and earnest, as a teenager would be. She’s treated like his solution subsequently because she is his opposite; this is the biggest weakness of the film. Though the relationship brings an incredibly unrealistic ease to a neurotic and unwell character, it is also evident that once poor Kate earns perspective, Max’s dependency on her for joy will become a burden.
Coming off of a huge run of ’90s films, including Pulp Fiction, Eric Stoltz takes the backseat in this film and plays Chet, an employee at the bar and an eternal student at the friendship groups’ college. Chet works at the townie bar the characters frequent and believes his purpose is to be a student, the same way some people’s purpose is to be a professional. This character exists as a caricature of everything the main four should fear. Skippy leans into Chet’s fantasy and attempts the same thing through signing up to classes. Otis befriends him because having someone around who has experienced countless graduation brings him comfort, whilst Max and Grover both seem to resent him. The character of Chet is an incredibly successful invention because he works both as comedic relief and a looming fear.
Now, 30 years on from the film’s release, Baumbach has used the DNA of the witticism and charm of erudite characters to create emotive narrative features such as Frances Ha and Marriage Story. The archetype of lost characters in naturalistic settings and circumstances has continued on in his filmmaking and has been incredibly influential to the mumblecore genre, which he has been involved in. What remains both magical and important about this film is that these are characters whose neuroses and complexities feel incredibly easy to understand and relate to, even decades later. There is a sense of loss that comes with achievement and the constant movement of life, that you can apply to any moment in time.
What a 25-year-old Noah Baumbach achieves with Kicking and Screaming is examining people in his age bracket with the foresight of an artist in his forties whilst being bonded to the honesty of the time, almost to a fault. What remains potent is that the film is as in love with itself as it is exasperated with itself. Mixing these characters’ humour with self-analysis and the grief of life moving forward without you is a wonderful balancing act. Authenticity slips through with most characters at the end, as the airport remains a motif for new beginnings. Grover has his moment of realisation after dropping Otis off and proceeds to monologue about Prague to the flight attendant at the desk, already mythologising how he is going to tell the story of how he finally chose to do something. In the end, passiveness wins in some ways, as he does not have his passport. However, he does have the clarity of attempting an action of movement instead of stagnation.
Words by Jasmin Barré
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