The indie film scene has been juggling the theme of mundane existential crisis for a long time now but, as a movement, it hasn't really made much progress on the topic. I'd also like to differentiate "indie" from independent film as a whole. Indie has become its own aesthetic, a mix of Gen-X disappointment minus the active rebellion and a supremely removed sense of irony, like an entire art movement that buys shag carpet not because it likes the stuff but because shag reminds it of something absurd and depressing from its childhood. Movies like Noah Baumbach's Greenberg have been popping up every year for practically a decade, parading bored, disaffected people in front of the camera for two hours of non-story.

My problem with this increasingly stalled genre is that there's nothing wrong with telling a story, even if doing so is less true to life. Audiences are aware that real life doesn't move in a series of clear beginnings, middles and ends, and those definitive endings we get to experience usually aren't very neat or satisfying. That doesn't mean art is obligated to imitate the same patterns, or lack thereof. Greenberg has a lot going for it but so much of the final product seems lazy and non-committal, a movie that does a disservice to its audience by reflecting its protagonist.

Ben Stiller plays Roger Greenberg, a 40-year-old carpenter who recently got out of a mental hospital after a nervous breakdown. He spends the entire story housesitting for his more successful (and occasionally insensitive) brother. During that time he manages to have a supremely dysfunctional relationship with his brother's assistant Florence (a flighty 20-something played by Greta Gerwig), barely keep the family's dog alive and generally alienate every friend he's ever had. Roger is a deeply abrasive person, a failed musician who now bears the weight of ruining the one big break he and his friends would ever get. Whenever he tries to interact with people he says or does something to put them off. He's especially abhorrent with Florence, charming her one minute then being pointlessly mean when he starts to feel uncomfortable.

This is the biggest hitch in the plot. Florence isn't so much a character as a contrived series of problems to bounce off Greenberg at inopportune moments. Her attraction to him isn't believable for even one second and she just doesn't behave like a real person, even a dysfunctional one. This is a big problem in a movie that seems bound and determined to depict life as it really is and not some Hollywood fantasy. This is especially disappointing considering how good Greta Gerwig is at portraying Florence's more genuine ticks and habits. Noah Baumbach knows how to write the mundane in a way few filmmakers manage to capture but the guy seems downright scared to coax so much life from the big picture. Right down to its pointless cop-out of an ending, Greenberg gets the little things right without even attempting to tie it all together. It's presumably a movie about a guy who was never very good at life taking another crack at it. Since it never even comes close to suggesting whether or not he'll be successful this time around, the whole exercise feels like a waste of time.