When You're OP (Out of Place): A Review of While We're Young

How do you embrace old age especially when you’re slowly getting left behind among your friends? Like when most of your best friends are each getting into a romantic relationship or when the girls suddenly turn into women with their bodily curves being defined. Sometimes it’s when all of your classmates become successful and you’re left crafting a lie about this job you got and how you’re enjoying it. Really though, how are you supposed to be happy when you’re stuck? Who do you turn to when your friends clearly have a world of their own now?

In a nutshell, those are part of the central theme of While We’re Young, a film by Noah Baumbach. It’s not just that of course because it has got most of the drama which middle-aged, childless couples probably experience. While we do not want to rush our readers into the boring parts of a marriage, this story can actually give an interesting insight into such couples.

 Josh and Cornelia, played by Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts respectively, are the seemingly stable happy couple until their closest couple friends begin parenthood. What makes things more complicated is that the two aren’t being selfish snobs. In fact, they have been trying to bear a child but have been unsuccessful at doing so with miscarriages happening all the time.

Things start to get exciting when they meet a younger couple in their mid-20s, Jamie and Darby. The young lovebirds are everything that Josh and Cornelia were before they entered the “success story-telling age”- a couple of hipsters who have a particular penchant for old vinyl records, intimate relationships, free spiritedness, passion and Eastern rituals – things which awaken the youth within Josh and Cornelia. The juxtaposition of young and middle-aged is playfully explored in a comparative scene during the film. Interestingly, Josh and Cornelia are the ones more inclined into the digital age while the younger couple have a penchant for the old school or the vintage stuff.

Ben Stiller noticeably plays here the unassumingly smart yet goofy guy who’s reminiscent of Walter Mitty back in his 2013 role in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The understated character is subtly conflicted until he reaches a realization. While marriage-life and change are the primary themes, documentary filming as an art is also tackled. The story is in fact revolving around the lives of docu film directors and aspirants.

Generally, the treatment of the film is light despite the deep political jargons which Stiller’s character tries to focus on in his documentary story. You’ll laugh at some of Josh and Cornelia’s antics as well as Jamie and Darby’s. Let me end this review with a quote from Josh in the film, “You can discover more by allowing yourself to be surprised by what you encounter.” Perhaps, that also goes for when you’re ostracized by the circumstance among your friends. 

While We’re Young currently runs in major cinemas nationwide.