Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)
Director: Joe Swanberg
Movie review
From Time Out New York
Hey, have you heard about the American New Wave—snarkily dubbed mumblecore—that’s all the rage on the lo-fi circuit? Though the members of the ’core’s loose collective don’t share a home base, their movies all take place in Whateversville, USA, a slacker Sioux Nation populated by underfurnished apartments and emotionally undernourished twentysomethings. Whether Gen Y(ouTube) aesthetics and angst are enough to fuel a bona fide movement is debatable, but you couldn’t ask for a better entrée to the genre than Joe Swanberg’s ode to love in the time of cultural distraction. Like kindred spirit (and the film’s costar) Andrew Bujalski, Swanberg nails the stop-start rhythms of idle hipsters in their natural habitats. His character study also has a shaggy-dog charm that could turn cynics about this newfangled “scene” into converts overnight.
Hannah (Gerwig) has a bit of a relationship problem: Her boyfriend (Duplass) has realized that all he wants to do is nothing whatsoever. After one of the most painful breakup sequences in recent memory, she hooks up with her superviser (Bujalski) at a TV production studio. Then the boss’s blog begets a book deal, and the now-lonely Hannah seeks solace in the arms of his writing partner (Osborne). Though the overall self-indulgence meter creeps perilously close to the red at times, credit Gerwig for turning her terminally anxious character into a poster girl for an entire subset of young women on the verge. Every generation gets the Darling they deserve. We now have ours.
Author: David Fear
Time Out New York Issue 621: August 23–29, 2007
Cast & crew
Director: Joe Swanberg
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Andrew Bujalski, Mark Duplass, Kent Osborne full cast
Rated: NR
Duration: 83 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now