I decided to watch Nasty Baby for two reasons. First, I’m on a quest to see Kristen Wiig’s movies. Side note: I suppose that means I may watch The Martian at some point, one of the best comedies of 2015 according to the Golden Globes (another reason that I don’t watch self-congratulatory award shows). Second, it takes place in NYC. Don’t read the IMDb summary-it gives away the whole plot.
The majority of Nasty Baby feels like a slice of life film reminiscent of Chantal Ackerman. Nasty Baby focuses on an artist, his significant other and his friend/potential surrogate mother. The artist is working on a short film and is obsessed with having a baby. His brother always randomly appears in his place. His partner is less enthusiastic about the baby. His friend is enthusiastic and will clearly be more than a surrogate. They have close friends and colleagues who hang out with them all the time at their place. They have an older gentleman, Richard, who probably remembers when NYC was less neighborly and is like the kindly mayor of the block-he walks his dog, makes sure they’re OK and tries to monitor/minimize bad behavior by the local crazy guy known as the Bishop.
The Bishop is the only fly in the ointment: he makes noise in an otherwise peaceful neighborhood early in the morning, is openly physically and verbally hostile and homophobic and is the NYC real life trope of the mentally ill guy who self medicates either with drugs and/or alcohol that the cops never do anything about, but everyone knows is going to do something to hurt someone. So Nasty Baby does not exactly surprise the viewers when crap goes down. The surprise is
SPOILERS
who gets the upper hand. I simultaneously thought the denouement felt painfully contrived and was inadvertently sweet. The artist has an absurdly bad day at the office, gets bad personal news and finally gets pushed too far. He responds too physically to the Bishop throwing stones at him and hurts The Bishop more than he intended. He tries to rectify the situation and get help, but things get worse, and he has to defend himself when the Bishop tries to kill him. He seriously wounds the Bishop then decides that it would be better to kill the Bishop and cover up the murder than to report what happened to the authorities.
His home is an open and welcoming place. Everyone, the people that he loves, who subsequently enters becomes an accomplice. Even Richard knocks on the door, says, “Let’s get real,” figures out what happened and pitches in. What makes the murder scene in Nasty Baby so sweet: everyone simultaneously tries to protect each other. They hold each other, cover each other’s eyes, unquestionably leap at the chance to protect the others and never devolves into screaming or blame. No one threatens to turn someone else in. Nasty Baby isn’t concerned whether or not it will work.
On one hand, I hate when nothing happens in a movie, then bam! It feels gimmicky. On the other hand, Nasty Baby could be suggesting several things. Did Nasty Baby consciously name him the Bishop so he could stone homosexuals and it be a commentary on the church and how a community will choose those they love over the institution and force it out of the community? If so, worst-case scenario, Nasty Baby will be a fever dream told ya so fulfillment of everything that the extreme right has been saying for years. Best case scenario: community can be trusted and relied upon more than institutional authority, but must bear a burden that could ultimately strain the hard earned bonds of that community.
Nasty Baby also seems to be saying something about human behavior and original sin even in a liberal utopia of understanding and love. The Bishop is literally a Nasty Baby grown up, but so is the artist for showing no judgment and being selfish. When we see a baby in the final scene, it is a huge contrast to the artist’s representation of babies by adults-a cruel caricature that misses the innocence and lack of agenda by real babies that his project misses. Maybe no one deserves the happy ending that they want and seemingly get.
Part of me wants to see Nasty Baby again to see if it would benefit from a second viewing, but life is short. I liked Nasty Baby, but ultimately thought it was too overtly self-conscious and did not clearly communicate enough throughout the film whatever it was Nasty Baby tried to convey in the final scenes.
