Sum of His Parts: Review of Jay Kelly
★★★1/2
By Geoff Carter
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Filmmaking is an intensely collaborative endeavor. Actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, production designers, producers, costumers—and many more—are all the cogs and gears in the cooperative venture that produces feature films. The director must shepherd this pool of talent, experience, and expertise into one coherent vision. Unfortunately, only a few of these many artists and artisans get the credit they deserve.
Noan Baumbach’s newest film Jay Kelly is not only an examination of this process. It is also, on several meta levels, an existential study of identity, self, and responsibility. It opens with this quote from Sylvia Plath slowly emerging from a smoky screen: “It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all,”
The film moves a busy sound stage where numerous artists, agents, technicians, costume designers, and wranglers are preparing for a film’s final shot. In a style reminiscent of Robert Altman’s work, dialogue, action, and visuals overlap, creating a multi-layered semi-chaotic feel. Central to this activity is the lead of the film, Jay Kelly (George Clooney), a movie star. Assistants and technicians scurry to complete his costume, makeup, visuals before shooting, like workers tending their queen bee.
One of the central figures of Kelly’s entourage is Ron Sukenik (Adam Sandler), Jay’s agent, who also doubles as his confidante, advisor, best friend, and coach. After the shoot is complete, Ron and Jay’s publicist Liz (Laura Dern) along with his hairstylist Candy (Emily Mortimer), and assistants Krista (Nicole Lecky) and Meg (Thaddea Graham) accompany him to his trailer. It seems Jay Kelly the person, who is always accompanied by or attended to by someone, needs as much personnel as does Jay Kelly the actor. He in fact comments several times during the the film he feels lonely (while inevitably being handed a drink by a servant).
Jay’s daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) tells him she is leaving for a trip to Paris. Hoping to have spent time with her during her last summer at home, Jay is dismayed but wishes her the best. Jay then learns from Ron that Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the director who gave him his first break, has passed away. After the funeral, Kelly runs into Tim Galligan (Billy Crudup) an old acting school classmate. They go out for drinks and talk about the good old days until Tim unexpectedly accuses Jay of stealing his first role and undermining his career. A fistfight ensues.
The next day, Jay abruptly tells Ron, Liz, and the rest of his entourage he is going to Paris to spend some time with Daisy. All of them must drop family obligations, appointments, everything, in order to address the whims and desires of the great Jay Kelly.
The connection between Jay Kelly the despot and Jay Kelly the movie star is obvious, but the link between Jay Kelly the movie star and Jay Kelly the person is more opaque. Kelly lives his life in a carefully choreographed world where he is scarcely ever unattended and almost never alone. He is constricted in a prison of his own making; his fame has absconded with his identity, his very self.
Jay has no friends. Ron is the closest thing to it until Jay points out that friends don’t get fifteen percent. Fed up with catering to his every whim and covering for his every screw-up, Liz leaves, but not before pointing out to Ron that any friendship between Jay and his entourage goes one way. He is not a friend—not according to Jay Kelly.
Lest the audience begins feeling sorry for him, screenwriter and director Noah Baumbach paints Kelly as a clueless (to be generous) fraud or a heartless narcissist. Anything decent left of himself has been bartered away for his fame.
Jay is an action star. On a train to Italy in pursuit of his daughter, Jay is recognized and praised by his fans. He responds cheerfully. He is smart, funny, and generous to them—everything he has not given his own family. Or his friends. Like much of the film, this scene is invigorating, funny, and even heart-warming to a degree, but it is movie star Jay we are watching, not Jay Kelly the man.
And then, when our hero catches a purse snatcher, he is hailed on social media as a real-life hero. Another line between self, persona, and façade has been blurred for Jay Kelly—but not the audience. In the scene immediately after he apprehends the thief, Jay looks puzzled and bewildered, as if unsure whether this is reality or a take.
Kelly’s pursuit of Daisy is a quest for a reality he has spent an entire career denying, a reality he cannot seem to connect to anymore. He abuses his employees—who he refuses to acknowledge as friends—has ignored his family and has hidden behind the façade of his movie persona. He has found it easier to be someone else, a screen icon who is loved by everyone.
Baumbach has constructed a layered labyrinth in which Kelly has lost any sense of himself as a person. He is an actor whose roleplaying has extended into his real life. He supports a vast entourage that in turn supports him. He pretends to be friends to Liz and Ron and Candy and all the rest of his people but treats them like slaves, with not a smidgeon of consideration of their needs or wants.
While this is hardly a humorous look at the movie industry that has helped manufacture the Kelly persona, Baumbach has managed to inject a sense of fun into the film. For example, everywhere Kelly goes, he finds a slice of cheesecake. When he complains about it, Ron tells him its part of his rider, that he used to like cheesecake. It’s a great motif, a reminder that the Kelly persona is following him like a pesky puppy.
Baumbach also uses flashbacks to show escalating degrees of Kelly’s journey into—and out of—self. Past conversations with Peter Schneider, his daughter, and the audition which makes it clear what he took from his friend Tim mark his descent into complete and total narcissism. While the narrative seems to ping-pong between the absurdity of his star status, his unending neediness (and subsequent abusive behavior), and the damage he inflicts on the people around him, Baumbach has constructed a beautifully choreographed portrait of a man lost inside himself.
One scene that perfectly defines the balance between his public and private self is during the filming of a love scene with an actress with whom he’s having an affair. As they’re lying in bed, the director—not two feet away—is mouthing instructions to Kelly. It is the perfect conflation of intimacy and celebrity. His private life has been subsumed by his public persona, his art.
George Clooney is perfectly cast as Jay Kelly. His own stature as a Hollywood icon underlines Kelly’s celebrity. Clooney’s charm and style, especially in the train scene, define Kelly’s love for the spotlight. Beyond that, his portrayal of Kelly, even during his nastiest moments, carries a sadness, a weary middle-aged angst with it.
But it is Adam Sandler who steals the show. His portrayal of Ron is beautifully calibrated. He is as infinitely patient, reasonable, and protective of Jay Kelly as he would be for his own child—all the more so because of Kelly’s juvenile behavior. Ron is just as patient with his own very needy family. Torn between these responsibilities, Sandler’s portrayal of a man being pulled apart is nothing short of remarkable.
Jay Kelly is a wonderfully intricate film. It’s one of those movies that stay with you long after you leave the theater. Baumbach’s screenplay meticulously dissects the sensibilities of a man navigating multiple personas in search of a self that he relinquished responsibility for a long time ago.
In the words of Sylvia Plath, it is much easier for Jay Kelly to be someone else but not nobody at all.