Jared Bratt has posted his review of generation Um… today over at Pretty Clever Films. In his review of the film, Mr.Bratt made several interesting points. The first being that the film, in depicting the mundane and rote lives of the characters, felt more like an experiment with something to say, likening it to Ethan Hawke’ directorial debut Chelsea Wall. The other was to simply point out that the film the film was about the actions and interactions of the characters and not centered on an unfolding story. In essence then, the film was centered around the characters just being as opposed as to them evolving.
The last and most notable point of the review was focused on Keanu Reeves’ performance with Mr. Bratt saying:
…the real reason to give this film a look (for me) is the story’s central performance on display, that of actor Keanu Reeves. If there was ever an actor born to play a seemingly ageless, pasty man-child emoting such apparent deep-seeded internal-angst while scoffing down a cupcake for a brooding two minutes, it’s Keanu Reeves, and I mean that in the best of ways. At this stage in the game, Reeves has become a master at portraying lost souls (both literally and metaphorically) on screen. I also think Reeves is one of the few/rare actors we can typically watch where it somehow always seems as if his character’s internal-dialogue is on direct full-display even when the actor is not saying “word-one” within a scene. The fact that Reeves can almost seamlessly say everything while literally saying nothing, that enigmatic energy,works to full benefit here within this lethargic-epic that is Generation Um.
On an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio, Bruce Willis once claimed his ultimate goal was to strive for that Pacino level of acting where one could say nothing on-camera and still deliver a virtuoso performance. Legendary character-actor J.T. Walsh told comedian Kevin Pollak (on the set of A Few Good Men) that the greatest skill of an actor is convincingly “doing nothing” within a scene. Now apply these thespian-philosophies to Generation Um, and quote me all you like, but this film stands as one of the most subtly nuanced, emotionally-raw and comfortably controlled performances of Reeves’ career. Anyone looking for Theodore Logan’s youthful sense of flamboyancy will indeed be bored to death here with the actor’s sense of distance, but if you’ve seen Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and genuinely felt there was something there to Reeves’ portrayal of a mind-crumbling, doomed junkie-narc — well then I’d sincerely proclaim that his performance within Generation Um is a definite must-watch.
To anyone claiming the acting to be flat, I rebut: The performance feels flat (if it does) because it’s being acted with a sense of truth behind it, and in a film trying so excruciatingly hard to present the “real” of it all, there’s no room (and there’s no-need) for any sort of ham-fisted melodramatics. A guy feeling sad is portrayed and depicted as inconsequential as it all sounds, and stripped away, are the sometimes contrived acting pitfalls of hitting comedy, drama, or action beats. I suggest Reeve’s performance here to be the main-draw of the film (I wish it could have also been the script). Reeves performance is as engaging as the film is ambitious in its humble existentialist quest
The entire review can be read here.
Note: The republishing of Mr. Bratt’s paragraphs on Mr. Reeves’ performance was done with his permission.