Mumblecore Makes A Noise

Anton Bitel introduces a low-key movement in US independent cinema

The group consolidated its identity at the next SXSW, where Swanberg premiered his paean to technological alienation LOL (2006), and newcomer Aaron Katz screened his debut Dance Party, USA (2006), whose characters, though 17-year-olds, prove just as dazed and confused as the usual mumblecore anti-heroes.

The following year, both Swanberg's Hannah Takes The Stairs (2007, but released in the UK in January 2009) and Katz's lyrical follow-up Quiet City (2007) premiere. Bujalski and Mark Duplass had starring roles in the former, and Swanberg in the latter, as though to underline the sense of collaboration and community between these filmmakers. When, later in 2007, SXSW producer Matt Dentler was invited to organise a series of these micro-indie 'New Talkies' at New York's IFC Center, it became clear that mumblecore was beginning to make noise.

Mumblecore combines the improvised no-budget naturalism of John Cassavetes with the slacker sensibility of early Richard Linklater (some journalists and bloggers have even dubbed mumblecore's practitioners the 'Slackavetes'). At the same time, it exploits current filmmaking technologies (all bar Bujalski are dedicated to DV) to realise truly independent visions in ways never previously possible with more costly, less portable film stock.

The characters in these mildly narcissistic non-dramas are typically stuck in the middle of something - between jobs, partners, bands, or life phases. While they do not mumble as such, the inflection of their speech with endless 'ums', 'ahs', 'likes' and 'y'knows' reflects a generation groping to articulate its confounded sense of what it really wants. This is what makes mumblecore as timeless and universal as it is culturally specific. We may not all be white, middle-class, American and under 30, but everyone at some point feels a little lost.

Of course, mumblecore is too understated ever to go completely mainstream, and when the inevitable second rank of less talented imitators enters the fray, it may begin to outstay its welcome even with diehard fans - but as the likes of Bujalski, Swanberg and Katz themselves grow older and move on, so too will the focus of their films. The Duplass brothers' latest, the critically acclaimed Baghead (2008), may be a sign of things to come. Mixing their nuanced attunement to comic characterisation, their experiences at the bottom end of the filmmaking food chain, and the tropes of horror, this holds out the altogether more commercially appealing promise of a genre mutation. Mumblegore, anyone?