Shane is a Movie Features Writer for Collider. He developed a strong passion for film and writing at an early age, and went on to study Writing, Communication, and Political Science at Siena College. Then, he started his still-active personal blog, Not A Real Person Yet, which focuses on movies and culture.
By the time Drinking Buddies was released in 2013, Joe Swanberg had established himself as a prominent figure in the mumblecore scene. He had already directed over a dozen films, all of which belonged to the indie subgenre due to their utilization of micro-budgets, naturalistic acting, and improvised dialogue.
While Drinking Buddies — which began production with a 45-page dialogue-free outline as a script — firmly falls under the mumblecore label, it was something of a departure for the young director at the time. The film marked Swanberg's first foray into more mainstream filmmaking. Although it was still an independent film with a small budget, Drinking Buddies had things that none of Swanberg's previous films had, including an established distributor, a professional crew, and a cast full of recognizable actors. While some of Swanberg's early collaborators — most notably Greta Gerwig — went on to become stars, in 2013, he had never worked with actors as widely known as the leads in Drinking Buddies: Jake Johnson, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, and Ron Livingston. Fortunately, this brilliant cast found a way to fit seamlessly into the mumblecore aesthetic, making Swanberg's first elevated feature a major success. 'Drinking Buddies' Is an Intertwined Tale of Romantic, Platonic, and Workplace Relationships Close On its face, Drinking Buddies is an incredibly simple film. It centers on two friends who work together at a brewery, Luke and Kate . It explores the inner-workings of their relationship with each other as well as their respective relationships with their significant others. Although the exact number of years is unspecified, it is made clear to the audience that Luke has been dating his partner, Jill , for a long period of time. Kate, on the other hand, is in the midst of a newer, soon-to-be-doomed relationship with Chris when the viewer is first introduced to her. As the film progresses, the complex dynamic that exists between Luke and Kate becomes evident through their workplace interactions, a couple's weekend getaway, jealous behavior, and heartbreak. Drinking Buddies is a pseudo-rom-com about two friends that smartly plays around with, and subverts, the classic "can men and women be friends" trope. The film presents the desires of its main characters as fluid and complex. While Drinking Buddies is driven by questions of how its characters see each other, what they mean to one another, and what they want from one another, the answers to these questions are never laid out clearly. The relationship dynamics become so tangled that the viewer, and perhaps the film itself, struggles to confidently identify the characters' true desires. The end result of this isn't a confusing film, though, but rather one that provokes thought and potentially reminds the viewer of their own similar life experiences. Related From 'Jurassic World' to 'Safety Not Guaranteed': The 7 Greatest Jake Johnson Film Performances Like Jake Johnson's performance in 'Minx'? Catch up on his movie roles too! Posts Perhaps the most successful aspect of Drinking Buddies is the way Swanberg chooses to end it. Shortly after the audience has seen the two main characters confront the unspoken complexities that surround their relationship in a heated argument, the film places them back on screen together. Although it ultimately gives the viewer an ending with a resolution, it leaves a lot of room for audience interpretation. It is a conclusion that feels true-to-life, and fits with the rest of the film's naturalistic style. Joe Swanberg's Mumblecore Aesthetic Gives 'Drinking Buddies' a Naturalistic Feel As is common in mumblecore, and many of Swanberg's prior films, all the dialogue in Drinking Buddies is improvised. Due to this, and the outstanding performances from the cast, the film really does feel like an honest, fly-on-the-wall look into its characters' lives. Not only do the words spoken seem to be pulled straight from actual conversations, Swanberg lets his scenes breathe and leaves room for lifelike imperfections and awkward pauses. It all feels like an accurate representation of reality, and much like real life, the film manages to be at times joyful, funny, and romantic, while at other times melancholy, anxiety-inducing, and heartbreaking. A criticism of Drinking Buddies could be that it does not spend a lot of time exploring the interiority of its characters in great depth. Operating as more of a slice-of-life film than anything else, Swanberg doesn't seem concerned with digging deep in his characters' pasts in order to explain to the viewer what is causing them to make the decisions they make. He is more interested in giving the viewer an intimate peak into these characters' everyday lives. In Drinking Buddies, and almost all of his early work, the director makes the case that stories about the universal tension and pain that arises from the mundanity of regular life are just as worth telling as any other. There is a moment in the film when Kate is talking to Luke about a previous relationship of hers that ended badly. She says,"this is the problem with heartbreak, is that to you it's like an atomic bomb and to the world it's just really cliché because, in the end, we all have the same experience." Luke, wanting to hear the full story, simply responds,"but it's just you and me." In this scene, we see how much he genuinely cares about his friend. Likewise, we realize that, although Swanberg's film is simple and the situations within it could unfavorably be called cliché, he has created characters that we actually care about, and ones we want to hear the full story from.Your Rating close 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Rate Now 0/10 Your comment has not been saved Drinking Buddies R ComedyDocumentaryDramaRomance Release Date August 23, 2013 Runtime 95 minutes Director Joe Swanberg Writers Joe Swanberg Cast Powered by Expand Collapse
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