A Cinematic Decision for Indecision: Mumblecore’s Latest Team Picture

In an entirely uncharacteristic moment of clarity, Team Picture’s aimless, unlikely hero, David (writer/director Kentucker Audley) announces to a small group of coffee house attendees that he’s going to perform a song he wrote about a life decision.

While most of the time in mainstream cinema, such decisions involve life or death, to wed or not to wed, or how to stop a bomb from exploding, Audley’s David seems to be following in the completely non-ironic footsteps of American Beauty’s Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) — the only difference being that while Spacey’s Lester lived in comedic satire, David is the newest male protagonist from the independent film movement mumblecore. Yet the two could practically be brothers from another mother in that — like Lester — David longs for a life with the least amount of responsibility he can find. His decision is summed up neatly and succinctly in his latest ditty, a little something he threw together called “I want to quit my job tomorrow.”

No, this isn’t Office Space as work plays one of the smallest roles imaginable in the film, nor does David have any grand plans for the future involving college as he let every single application deadline pass without exerting any effort to actually fill one out. Instead he tells his boss (who also happens to be his mother’s boyfriend) that he has a little money saved up and has just decided he won’t work, sharing, “I just kind of want to be in my own world for a little while, explore some things I’m more interested in.”

However, unlike Emile Hirsch’s character in Into the Wild, David isn’t exactly one for adventure — preferring to travel short distances such as to Arkansas or Illinois when the mood strikes him — but mainly, he just doesn’t really think he’d like to do much of anything, opting to pass the time singing songs or hanging out in the front yard of his Memphis home in a lawn chair in front of a kiddie pool with his similarly clueless sidekick Eric (Timothy Morton). I could continue on but it’s best to view this for yourself.

Team Picture: Original Theatrical Trailer

And while indeed the sixty-two minute running time of Team Picture offers little in the way of a plot, it seems to serve as a nice cinematic balance and extension for David in epitomizing his slacker-like lack of ambition as he avoids coming up with any real serious plans of his own (whether it’s choosing a birthday restaurant to deciding whether or not to move) as he seems to stumble half-heartedly from one situation to the next and out of one relationship and into another one. In David’s quest to “escape the nine-to-five grind in order ‘to pursue something that [he's] actually more interested in, even if it’s just loafing around,'” as Audley stated, he tapped right into the sentiment that has pervaded throughout independent filmmaking’s latest craze in taking a distinctly different view of Generation Y.

Article Author: Jen Johans

Jen is a life-long film buff frequently dubbed a "Walking Movie Encyclopedia.” While earning a degree in Film Studies, she joined AFI and IFP. A three-time national award-winning writer, Jen also runs her site Film Intuition as well as its Review …

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