‘Jay Kelly’ and a movie star’s final take

L-R George Clooney and Adam Sandler in Jay Kelly Photo by Peter Mountain Netflix When I look at you I see my whole life This is what a stranger says to Jay Kelly George Clooney on a train in Italy The man has never met Jay but he still feels he knows him Jay is a movie star and movie stars are or at least they used to be useful as a metric for the passage of time This man associates different moments of his life with different Jay Kelly movies Seeing the man in person is surreal a flash of those moments all at once But if that s what we see when we look at movie stars it begs the question what do they see when they look in the mirror Jay Kelly sees the stars that came before him He stares at himself fitting his own name into the lineage of Clark Gable Cary Grant and Robert De Niro He knows nothing about the inner lives of these men nothing about their character their relationships their integrity But that notoriety that persona that s what he wants There s a certain kind of movie about the movies You know the type movies that don t equivocate on the harshness of the business itself but come down on the side of it all being worth it But Jay Kelly directed by Noah Baumbach and co-written by Baumbach and Emily Mortimer is not really one of those films It s a movie about regret more of a desperate death bed confession than a tribute to movie stardom It s not subtle by any means but the pure anguish that runs under the surface of Baumbach s latest work rings harsh and true by the film s end We ve all considered the question of whether our lives have meaning or not But bulk of us don t have to live with the prospect of having the perceived sum total of our lives shoved in our faces day in and day out Jay Kelly is an aging movie star settling into his tribute era that time of an actor s life where every film festival or awards body suddenly starts to honor their life s work as if all the best is already behind them When an opportunity for a tribute in Tuscany comes about Jay refuses opting instead to shoot a new movie and spend the summer with his youngest daughter Daisy Grace Edwards But Daisy already has plans to go to Europe with her friends and doesn t really feel like hanging out with her charmingly narcissistic father Up until reaching his tribute era it seems Jay was fine if a little uneasy with this dynamic But after the death of the director who gave him his big break and the reappearance of Tim Billy Crudup an old acting class acquaintance harboring a grudge Jay accepts the tribute as an excuse to chase his youngest daughter across Europe a last ditch effort to find particular aspect of himself not tied to his fame In an early scene in Jay Kelly a younger Jay Charlie Rowe reads a scene in an acting class and his professor remarks that Jay himself is more fascinating than whatever character he s attempting to step into the mark of a movie star Movie stars have to lie twice the instructor says Once when they re playing a role and again when they re presenting their inhabitants facing self As the big lie of Jay s general life starts to come to an end he doesn t have a clue who this other version of himself is Who is Jay the friend Who is Jay the father When you ve given yourself away to the world who are you left with when it all disappears In Jay Kelly s matter he s not left with much Jay isn t what you d call a present father Daisy seems content for him to hover in her periphery and his eldest daughter Jessica Riley Keough has already given up on any sort of relationship with him The realest relationship Jay has is with his manager Ron a wonderful Adam Sandler someone he pays to stick around The preponderance bittersweet warmest moments in Jay Kelly unfold between Jay and Ron particularly in one moment where Ron yells out in frustration I m Jay Kelly too Ron has dedicated his life to the Jay Kelly experience as much as Jay has knows him better and maybe even cares more about him than anyone else despite the transactional nature of their relationship Even when they re arguing Clooney plays Jay at his most of relaxed around Ron a sense of familiarity permeating their interactions with one another In contrast when he agrees to attend therapy with Jessica he refuses to take it seriously Jessica s version of therapy comes across as silly yes Josh Hamilton plays a ridiculous guru But it s telling that Jay is willing to show more of whatever semblance of a man might be behind the mask to his manager than he is to his own daughter Clooney is an stimulating comparison point for the type of celebrity that Jay Kelly seems to be Clooney is someone who became famous in his mid- s off the back of a hit television show before transitioning to movie stardom and married and had children later in life Jay Kelly seems more akin to someone like Paul Newman In Jay s acting classes Tim played by Louis Partridge in flashback is often compared to Marlon Brando someone who Newman notably felt inadequate to in comparison although who didn t Clooney also in recent weeks voiced Paul Newman in Ethan Hawke s miniseries The Last Movie Stars and it s easy to imagine that specific of that experience particularly when it comes to Newman s considerations of his own stardom and private life might have bled over into Jay But it s not just Newman Jay is an amalgamation of an older generation of male movie stars Men with extraordinary charisma and talent but with a tough relationship to themselves and their families It s why actors like family man Ben Alcock Patrick Wilson Ron s other client piss Jay off Ben seems to have figured out that coveted work-life balance that continues to elude Jay and men like him At the end of the day Jay is nothing more than an empty vessel for the charisma and ambition that have defined his life Clooney deftly taps into that hollowness Except for a limited key moments Jay treats life like a movie When he first meets up with Tim he s all warm chuckles and bittersweet nostalgia as he acts the benevolent star talking up Tim s talent as far better than his own But when Tim voices his resentments Jay becomes confused this isn t how the movie is supposed to go At one point Jay chases down a pick pocket heroically stopping a robbery and getting a woman s purse back But when the thief s friend shows up begging forgiveness for a man who forgot to take his medication things become more murky Once again Jay seems befuddled This isn t how this was supposed to play out Jay lives his life like the cameras are on unwilling or unable to confront who he might be when they turn off When strangers look at Jay Kelly they see their whole lives When he looks at himself all he wants do is ask for another take The post Jay Kelly and a movie star s final take appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta