Between Us, 2012, spells the discomfort, the frustration and the reality of dreams unrealized that come with age, but it also underscores the maturity that comes with such an experience.
Two men, close friends since graduate school, quickly learn over two get-together meetings, spanning a period of approximately two years, that they are not the best, the smartest, and the most talented artists in the world.
As if that was not enough. They quickly become aware that they are also not exceptional, in all its American glory. A biting realization.
But they would have to come to that conclusion with their acrimonious wives. They would have to finally grow up after their babies cry out loud from their cribs – you are not that special, come wipe me down, just like your parents before you.
Carlo (Taye Diggs) and Joel (David Harbour) had high hopes after graduating. Now newlyweds, Grace (Julia Stiles) and Carlo are guests at the home of Sharyl (Melissa George) and Joel, who are nursing a new baby. Sharyl and Joel also take turn as guests at the home of Grace and Carlo, when they had also quite settled with a new baby.
But the quartet and their family friendship take dramatic turns. The story jumps back and forth between the two evening meetings, one at Joel’s and the other at Carlo’s, and nothing but the drama of growing up and shedding the untruths of adult like, of the American dream and of American exceptionalism permeate every fabric of their lives.
With their careers as artists demystified, Joel, a white man, is lucky enough to have inherited an enviable estate in the Midwest – a place he detests to live. He chooses to move from New York City anyways after his career as an artist in the city had left much to be desired, leaving his friend, Carlo, a black man, to the whims and caprices of America’s hard working terrain.
Joel’s wife is also not the one he met in his dreams. Sharyl is notorious for romancing a Brazilian (Claudio Dabed), until she became pregnant. Since then, the Brazilian contractor who was renovating a part of their estate has since left, not because the work was completed, but because Sharyl’s pregnancy had left much to be desired of her.
She is bitter, and Joel is pissed. Carlo and his wife Grace on the other hand, fall miserably apart after their first baby. Grace does not want to have babies, but she is pregnant with a second, and she has refused to inform Carlo, who proverbially, wants a huge family.
But Carlo is broke, barely making ends meet, and living in a cramped New York City apartment. He and Grace cannot afford a second child.
Faced with contrite disappointment in himself and his talent, Carlo harbors sincere envy for his friend Joel who seems to have settled in quite well with his inheritance and who seems to have made some amends with his cheating wife.
When the two couples meet, it is chaos. They take turns to demonstrate their destitution. None is happy. Even the laughter between them only fills uncomfortable pauses. Most palpable are the nervous chuckling at the sound of tasteless jokes that they are too afraid to acknowledge are patently offensive.
The half-hearted chortling and the awkward, staccato barking that these four parents devolve into throws dust into the eyes of the truths about each other that are not supposed to be revealed, and feelings that are not supposed to be kept bottled up, though laughable. One word leading to another, one statement after another, a gathering between friends soon disintegrates into a full blown return to Mike Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Between Us not only explores the dark taboos and the dead space between friends, it actually thrives there.
Adapted from the award-winning stage play of the same name written by Joe Hortua, Between Us is a powerful and brilliantly acted character piece that illustrates the psychosis that whole families are thrown into when social mobility and the promise to realize dreams become a nightmare.
Playing on the unique styles of John Cassavetes’ Faces and Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, director Mirvish, one of the founders of the Slamdance Festival, moves one step closer to understanding just how precarious the idea of exceptionalism and the lack thereof of the American dream to match it, can deprive whole families of ordinary sanity.
On one hand, in its final analysis, Joel seems to have settled in – accepting who he is, accepting Sharyl for who she is and embracing his situation as a failed artist. If he has any respite, it is well from within his inheritance.
And in the spirit of helping Carlo, his best friend, unveil the farcade of exceptionalism he presumptuously dawns, Joel scolds him for refusing to acknowledge the financial woes he’s dogged with:
[sws_blockquote_endquote align=”” cite=”” quotestyle=”style03″]You are not bright, you are not exceptional and you are not that talented. Just try to make a decent living. [/sws_blockquote_endquote]
But Carlo and Grace will not budge. They still have difficulty accepting that faith – that they are broke, and in debt, in New York City and cannot afford another baby. They cannot seem to master the courage to ask Joel frankly for money either.
Rather, Carlo seems to imply that he deserves a loan from Joel – conceivably, he feels entitled to remuneration from Joel’s bequeathal, accrued over centuries of American Slavery – and is troubled about Joel’s seeming comfort in that inheritance and why he intends to keep it and live that way.
To which Joel answers with an emphatic:
[sws_blockquote_endquote align=”” cite=”” quotestyle=”style03″] Yes… I plan on keeping it. All of it. [/sws_blockquote_endquote]
Perhaps in an economy that does not promise much social mobility, the general talk of egalitarianism without a candid perspective on America’s slave past does nothing but stoke animosity between African Americans who feel largely shortchanged and European Americans who feel that ‘deserve has nothing to do with it.’ At such a point, if you have something, better keep it, all of it!
Why?
Because no one is that bright, no one is that talented and no one is certainly that exceptional. We are not special, after all, and alas, ‘deserve’, has nothing to do with it.
