Final Critique: Funny Ha Ha, Pg. 2

Content
The writing and acting in Funny Ha Ha is simply marvelous. It is real and authentic. No one speaks eloquently in this movie…period. They all speak like real people do, with lots of "umms", "uuhhhs", and "y'knows". This might seem like it would be very annoying but it's done so authentically that you feel like you're overhearing a conversation that a few of your friends are actually having. Even voice mail messages in the movie ramble on in the way that real people ramble in their messages.

Now, with the real world pacing, there are times that it threatens to drag, but, for the most part, Bujalski deftly edits away when silences become too ponderous or not enough is occurring in a scene. While everyone in the film did a great job of acting, there are two standout performances from Kate Dollenmayer as the strangely unruffled Marnie and Andrew Bujalski as the gently sweet and bumbling Mitchell.

With all these great elements in content, it was saddening that the ending for Funny Ha Ha turned out to be so minimal. In one final conversation between Alex & Marnie, the film simply stops. At first I thought that Mr. Bujalski had chosen to completely omit an ending for some fiendish private enjoyment. (It literally felt like you had put coins into a special viewing machine that let you peer into Marnie's life for 85 minutes and, at the end of the time, the viewer just switched itself off.)

However, after watching through the film another time and replaying the final scene a few more times, I realized that there was one comment that Alex makes that is almost completely lost if you're not paying microscopic attention, due to the fact that it is slurred together and much softer than the rest of the audio. When you figure out what he's actually said, then Marnie's response actually does give a note of finality to the end.

While it could be stated that this sort of lack-luster ending fits Marnie's somewhat lack-luster life, I felt that it downplayed--and actually cheapened--the simple elegance Mr. Bujalski had accomplished in the film prior to this-the simple elegance of reality. And while some may feel that reality is chaos with no end and no beginning, there are, in reality, always endings that can be highlighted. (Just ask an older person to talk about their past, and you'll find them mention half a dozen endings in their own lives in a half hour conversation!) Moreover, in the film medium, these endings need to be highlighted in order to give a sense of conclusion in any form of narrative or documentary.

	Love connections remain confusing, from the unpredictable Alex... ...to the sweetly shy Mitchell, who seems to always doubt himself.

Visual Look
Most of the camerawork was handheld, which really enhanced the documentary-feel that flowed through this film. There were some nice depth of field shots that had one character out of focus in the foreground while staying focused on a background character. Additionally, the lighting was very even and consistent throughout the film. All the night shots looked appropriately color balanced to blend well with one another and all the day shots looked appropriately balanced to look good together.

One thing that I really liked in the visual look department was the fact that the clothes the main characters wore were largely beat up. Holes in jeans were common, but also holes in seams and shoulders made their appearance. These little touches, which may well have been unintentional, just drilled home the realism of the scene all the more.

Use of Audio
The dialogue was the other area-which of course, ties into the ending-that really needed work in this film. There are a number of places where the levels change drastically, where you go from easily being able to hear one person to barely being able to hear another person. While this happens part of the time off-camera (which is easy to redub), it happens a fair number of times in front of the camera. Even though many of the lines that are too soft to hear aren't really crucial to the film, they are bothersome because you keep wondering what the people just said. And of course, as I mentioned in the content section, one of the most crucial lines for any understanding of an ending is lost because of a combination of inarticulate speech and having the dialogue recorded too softly.

Even though the documentary feel of this film would seem to allow more leniency on difficult to hear dialogue, most documentaries actually use voiceovers to cover up audio problems, or, in sections where the original audio must be understood, use subtitles if they are ever in a situation that is too soft to hear normally. As subtitles would seem too odd for this film, the film really needs to have the dialogue equalized as much as possible to allow it to be easier for people to understand all of what is being said, especially the aforementioned ending. I would normally suggest ADR for some of these problems, but, due to the amount of 'uhhhs' and 'ahhhhs' in the film, it would be an ADR nightmare. (I should know. My first film was riddled with them and I had to redub the entire thing! I still wake up with cold sweats!!)

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