Movies into Film

Igby Goes Down

Directed by Burr Steers

USA, 2002

Riot Acts

Amanda Peet and Kieran Culkin (Photo: MGM/UA)

Archly satirical, scathingly funny, yet always recognizably, generously humane, Igby Goes Down may be the kindest black comedy about misfits ever made. As a high-school dropout on the lam from his mercenary mother, Kieran Culkin makes this assessment of the loft-dwelling New York bohemians who’ve taken him in: “She’s a dancer who doesn’t dance, her friend’s a painter who doesn’t paint—it’s kind of like a BoHo version of the Island of Lost Toys.”

Writer-director Burr Steers etches portraits of East Coast life both hilarious and horrifying, deeply affectionate with dashes of violence. As anyone who’s sat through enough bad quirky films by Wes Anderson, Whit Stillman, and Spike Jonze can tell you, these are difficult combinations to pull off. Culkin matches—maybe even exceeds—his other bravura performance this year in Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. As was the case with Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart, Culkin achieves virtuoso effects sans visible effort.

This low-budget movie about the sorry mental state of the super-rich also features stunning and surprising turns from the rest of the cast, which includes Jeff Goldblum, Susan Sarandon, Ryan Phillippe, Claire Danes, Amanda Peet, Jared Harris, Rory Culkin, and Bill Pullman. Goldblum, in particular, as Igby’s godfather, who believes that “families should be run like corporations,” gives us the finest acting he’s done on film. Sarandon, sleepwalking for decades, awakes from her mannerisms to do possibly her best work since Atlantic City. As Mimi, a mother who’d fit into the Corleone clan, Sarandon’s delectably evil whether she’s excoriating her husband and sons or squashing (at times literally) contrary domestics. The beautiful Ms. Peet, I ought to add, excels as a debutante who slides quite a long way down the social register.

Peet and Culkin (Photo: MGM/United Artists)

Early on, there’s a scene of a father taking his two young offspring to a retrospective of the 1938 film Holiday. In that, Katharine Hepburn played a wealthy eccentric who fights the stifling conformity of the upper crust. While Holiday isn’t as scintillating as The Philadelphia Story (Philip Barry wrote both), the movie does capture the bleakness of black sheep in painted corners. And it offers Hepburn’s cartwheel-turning kook an out in the form of equally eccentric Cary Grant. There are moments in Igby Goes Down that have roots in the drawing room comedy of Holiday’s by-gone era, in the carefree élan that masks a precarious perch. The repartee between Sookie Sapperstein (Danes) and Igby Slocumb (Culkin), who meet at a posh gathering in the Hamptons, both revives that spirit and ascends to heaven on its own merit. She: “What kind of a name is Igby?” He: “It’s a name that no one called Sookie is in a position to question.”

If you missed this near-masterpiece during its bat-of-an-eyelash run at the Rose (Two whole screenings! What are they thinking over there?), then by whatever means necessary catch Igby Goes Down on video. This acerbic debut from a fledgling director belongs on the brief list of ‘02 movies that don’t make you feel as if the human race has disowned itself. – NPT

November 2002

Movies into Film

npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com

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