The Brooklyn Rail

Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara (2024) at first seems like a film for a very specific audience—one composed of the literati and those orbiting the literati, an audience that writes, that lives the MFA life, that likes to talk about the craft of writing. If that description potentially sounds smug to you, it doesn’t necessarily come across that way in the film. Radwanski and co-writer Samantha Chater prove to be adept at critiquing their characters and showing them compassion all at once.

Matt (Matt Johnson) and Mara (Deragh Campbell) were once the best of friends back in undergrad, but, although pursuing similar career paths (Matt as a superstar emerging author and Mara as a creative writing professor), they lost touch. When Matt suddenly reappears, Mara reexamines her friendship, her romantic life, her marriage, her profession, her creative craft. When the two first reconnect, Matt eloquently articulates a response to Mara’s novel idea about a woman who does not know her own desires that seems to sum up Radwanski’s dry humor, the state of the arts in Canada, and Matt and Mara’s relationship: “This sounds great, and it also sounds very contemporary, like people are going to be like ‘Oh, wow.’”

While Mara’s book is “wow,” Mara’s friend and colleague describes Matt’s writing: “This book to me is so emblematic of a particular time in Canadian literature that gives me, like, a rash to think about.” She goes on to explain that this subgenre involved male protagonists admitting to having feelings and regret in a way that was hailed as revolutionary. Radwanski weaves humor and the absurdity of real life into an insular literary and art world, making it feel at once deeply authentic and artificially curated—in one early scene, a barista yells at Matt and Mara, “Get a real job.” The line simultaneously allows us to laugh at these two writers, living quite lovely lives, walking around feeling moody and existential while also speaking to the very real and urgent societal problem of the devaluation of the arts, writing, literature. Specificity is critical to this film, but specificity also opens it up, makes it more and bigger, and perhaps for a much wider audience after all.

This work of cinéma vérité feels reminiscent of early Greta Gerwig-esque mumblecore. Radwanski dwells on up-close and personal shots of his characters’ subtly expressive faces. This technique invites the viewer in closer, requires close reading to appreciate the depth, nuance, and attention-to-detail in the storytelling. One plot thread that exemplifies this effect begins with a shot of Mara walking down a city street toward a sign advertising passport photography. The camera stays focused on Mara’s face as she gets her picture taken again and again. Invasive and aggressive, the shot of the camera becomes a violent assault on her likeness and personal space. The film camera witnesses the barrage of picture snaps, revealing the unrecorded, in-between spaces that tell the emotional story missed by the utilitarian ID photos. The link between the passport photography and the cinematography of the film (in that both focus on a face, on identifying an individual) poses a critical question about the process of creating art: can the camera truly capture who a person is and unveil their hidden desires? This question undergirds the narrative and Mara’s character arc, especially considering Mara and Matt’s questions about craft and commitment (to art and in other areas of life). Perhaps this connection to craft heralds a new approach to Canadian cinema

In another scene, Mara sifts through the passport photos, her many expressionless faces filling the screen. The passport photo moments are cleverly paired with Matt’s author’s photo and the biography on the back of his novel. After reading the back of the book and Matt’s brief but self-assured bio, Mara looks herself up online, reading her lecturer bio on her university’s website. It’s a much longer, more detailed description of self, and Mara’s wide-ranging interests both suggest someone who has worked a lot harder for a lot less recognition and someone who has perhaps suffered from a lack of focus or a sense of not knowing what she really wants. Mara’s bio is also focused on how she helps others, making it ring truer and also more false, more like someone avoiding herself, than Matt’s bio seems. The tension that emerges from a series of ideas at odds with each other proves to be a trend in the film.

One must respect a writer who can make the process of obtaining passport photos a major narrative arc, showing the director’s gift for drawing on the meaningfulness in everyday minutia. In the second attempt at getting a passport photo, Mara brings Matt, who coaches her and fluffs her hair. Then, Matt takes a turn at getting his picture taken. This time, unlike both of Mara’s sessions, the camera does not linger on Matt’s face. Rather, our gazes shift in the other direction, lingering on the photographer’s camera and Mara watching right beside it.

The extremity of Radwanski’s obsession with portraiture reaches a crescendo when the film takes us to Niagara Falls and does not bother with a panoramic view of the natural scenery. The sublimity of nature is beside the point for Radwanski. It’s not what interests him. When Matt seizes Mara and kisses her, the water crashing in a blurry haze around them, the moment is surprisingly hot; the simmering softness of the film gives way in this moment of desire.

A series of moments emphasize Mara’s sense of isolation and her struggle to define her relationships and connect with others and with her own desires. While planning a trip to Ithaca, she calls out to her husband, asking if he heard her. No response. Coming out of a dressing room, the attendant assures her she would not want a bigger size, indicating Mara’s desire to be swallowed by her clothes, to be anonymous and unseen, reminding us of how she flinched while getting her picture taken. In yet another sequence, she snips at her husband to not run ahead of her on their jog, but, when he stops to nurse a leg cramp, she continues on without even looking back. Then, there is the obligatory “salon” scene in which Mara is made to feel inadequate personally and professionally. These types of scenes, though they run the gamut in terms of context and significance, seem to appear in any movie exploring the existential crises of a wealthy or bourgeois intellectual crowd. Think when Rayette (Karen Black) is mocked by the feminist orator at the gathering in Five Easy Pieces (1970) or the La Dolce Vita (1960) party during which Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) is more interested in the children escaped from their bedrooms than she is in Iris Tree’s poetry.

A scene in which Matt and Mara are texting, our attention absorbed by the device’s small screen, feels strangely evocative of the way the frames hug the faces of the actors tightly. Indeed, with movies in the theaters for shorter and shorter times, many viewers may watch a movie like Matt and Mara on their cell phones. Another scene, in which Mara begins to work on reconnecting with her husband, involves her putting on his headphones and closing her eyes to listen to a song he’s working on. The little passport headshots, the concentration on people’s faces, the insulated world of noise-canceling headphones, even the idea that Matt is of a literary generation that is already passé only seven years after graduating college—it all begins to feel evocative of the rapid-paced, technologically infused world of selfies and isolation and the struggle to find genuine emotional and physical connection, even with all the tools of communication and expression available.

Radwanski peels back the layers of the types of relationships that seem so significant, threatening our sense of self and stability, and yet they fall into strange, undefined areas of our lives. By tackling this subject, he tenderly, humorously, and troublingly investigates the relationship between alienation and artistry while situating his work in a decidedly modern context with an ancient history. Oh, wow, indeed.