Patron Pick – The Daytrippers

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

The Daytrippers (1996)
Written & Directed by Greg Mottola

The American independent film had its heyday in the 1990s. There are dozens of names & faces I will always associate with this period. There’s a certain tone & style that feels like it only existed in that decade and vanished after bleeding over just a bit into the 2000s and hasn’t returned since. The advent of digital cameras did a lot to change how low-budget films feel for better & worse. I can understand the convenience and affordability that digital brought filmmakers; however, there is a texture to shooting on film that you lose. I have yet to see any sort of filter that can restore it. The Daytrippers is one of those movies where you can feel the low budget, but that in no way diminishes the picture; it enhances it and gives the whole thing a sense of personality. 

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and Eliza (Hope Davis) discovers a letter between her husband, Louis (Stanley Tucci) & “Sandy,” that implies an affair. She asks her mom, Rita (Ann Meara), and dad, Jim (Pat McNamara), for advice. Rita thinks Eliza needs to go into the city and confront her husband. The three of them, along with Eliza’s little sister Jo (Parker Posey) and Jo’s boyfriend Carl (Liev Schrieber), pile into the family station wagon and drive into New York City to uncover the truth. Along the way, they get sidetracked by personal problems or have encounters with strangers that branch off into all sorts of directions. Eliza eventually learns the truth, which doesn’t make things easier. 

The era of this kind of comedy feels long gone. You could argue it became something present in television, but even then, I don’t come across shows with this level of charm & cleverness to them. The dialogue feels very naturalistic, and there’s never any contrived drama. The things that happen feel like real problems people have every day, but how the script is written never leaves you feeling disinterested. There’s an aimlessness that works in the same way that Cassavettes would make pictures that had strong themes but loose narratives. Beyond the choices of director Greg Mottola, the strength of The Daytrippers is the casting of these incredible actors.

Hope Davis is perfect in this role, never playing things up and on the side of trying to come up with reasonable excuses that her husband isn’t cheating on her. Even when the truth is becoming crystal clear, she pulls back into a quiet sadness. She won’t fight him; there won’t be an explosion of emotions. Eliza is just disappointed that she has to uproot her life like this, that the person she loved wasn’t who she thought he was. The film doesn’t provide us with her solutions, and that’s the right choice. It lets us sit with her momentarily in the darkness of a New York City evening before she walks off with Jo. It feels like Italian neorealism because it wants to avoid wrapping up the film in a neat bow. Life is messy, and it’s good to have films that reflect that honestly.

Parker Posey is also excellent, young & bright, and feeling her relationship with Schrieber’s Carl crumbling before her eyes in a single day. Posey is another actor who highlights my belief that the best actors are the best reactors. There are scenes where Carl shares the details of his novel about a man with a dog’s head where Posey sits to his side, subtly rolling her eyes or trying to dissociate while staring out the car window. It’s an excellent display of silent comedy, just being present in a scene with another actor and helping to elevate their performance. Her annoyance with Carl makes Schrieber’s dialogue that much better. 

Schrieber is also very good at playing a neo-fascist that Twitter is full of today. There’s his heavy-handed unpublished novel with a cloying metaphor. There’s his recognition of a “mentor” he had while attending a writing program. When Carl rushes after the man as he’s going for a cab, the professor regards Carl silently and gets in the cab. Schrieber can showcase Carl’s wounded heart while fully displaying his arrogance, unwilling to admit he’s exaggerated their camaraderie with others. Best of all is Carl’s ignorant idea that humanity is best suited by aristocracy to rule over them, making inane & incorrect points about democracy and becoming deservedly embarrassed when a published author confronts him about this at a party. Carl would have a podcast and be a huge fan of Jordan Peterson was he in his youth today.

But best of all is Ana Meara. Her performance as Rita is pitch-perfect. She embodies all the sorts of things you associate with a suburban Long Island resident. Rita doesn’t quite get Carl’s lofty academic brain, but she’s impressed. Her main concern is getting Jo married, and Carl seems like a guy who knows what he’s doing. Her primary interest is ensuring her girls have happy marriages and content lives. Jim is the quintessential silent grump. He drives the car and sits annoyed but mostly quiet as things happen around him. Mottola pokes fun but never in a mean way; his actors and script accurately capture suburban Long Island people’s unique quirks. There’s a lot of generational conflict and comparisons of how things are done now versus when they were a young couple. It’s the kind of inane discourse you see now regarding the Boomer vs. Millennial vs. Zoomer stupidity. 

The Daytrippers isn’t pushing the limits of structure in film. It’s a movie that captures the feel of a specific place at a particular time. Much like Italian neorealism, it’s trying to be both an art film and a mirror of what life is like for everyday working people. Things are complicated, and resolutions are rare, if not impossible. You meet strangers and start a conversation but likely never see them again. Starts and stops. Sudden jolts forward met with quiet pauses to sit and think. The film is a reminder of what we loved about the indie movies of the period.