[rating=7.00]
Upon first glance, there’s an obvious mumblecore vibe to Entanglement, the second full-length feature from director Jason Jones. An aimless 30-something, Ben Layten (Thomas Middleditch), who struggles to find the meaning of his existence while coping with his failed marriage, it seems mired in the genre’s most reliably overused conventions. It even opens a montage of Ben’s failed suicide attempts, which are uncomfortably funny, before he dons his wedding suit, cuts open his wrists, and submerges himself in a bathtub full of water.
But despite what seems like an almost paint-by-numbers setup, Entanglement manages to set itself apart from its cinematic peers, somehow avoiding the mire while not straying too far from the kind of norms one would come to expect from a setup like this. Even its fundamental story — a search for one’s place in a chaotically uncaring universe — comes straight from the mumblecore playbook.
Some of this is due to Jason Filiatrault’s script, which runs the gamut while seeming almost cloying self-aware of its own quirkiness. This is most apparent during scene at a pharmacy, where Ben uses a plastic grabber to pick up a box of pills when he’s approached by Hanna (Jess Weixler), a Webster’s-worthy definition of the manic pixie dream girl archetype.
She’s confident almost to the point of being forceful, and asks Ben out by writing her number down on a $20 bill before disappearing as abruptly as she arrived. Ben, however, still sheepishly uncertain, and uses the bill to pay for his prescription.
Later, after his father has a mild medical emergency, he tells Ben that he almost had a sister. He and his mother were planning to adopt before she found out she was pregnant, and they were unable to go through with it. This revelation causes Ben to reevaluate his life through a “what if” lens, wondering how everything could have turned out if he’d had a sister alongside him.
His quest to find her leads him straight back to Hanna, who, in her charming, wild abandoned, agrees to become his sister. A few friendly pseudo-sibling romps in nature later, the two (predictably) fall in love, which only further complicates Ben’s life and his quest to understand the cosmic nature of the inter-connectedness of everything.
While it’s hard to imagine anyone besides Middleditch, best known as Richard from HBO’s Silicon Valley, as the manically unsure Ben, Weixler plays Hanna with a disarming recklessness that spills past the boundaries of her character’s stereotype. When they’re on screen together, they do have a real chemistry that helps elevate the story through its semi-predictability.
Despite this somewhat reliable story, there is something both unique and universal to Entanglement, a movie that makes subverts its stargazing bewilderment with the idea that you can convince yourself of anything. Even the futile belief in a just and reasoned cosmos if you force yourself to look hard enough.
Entanglement opens in limited release and on VOD today. You can find out more information by checking the film’s official website.Â
