Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach’s new film about the personal sacrifices required of people who make movies, and of people who support those people, had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival’s Werner Herzog Theater on Saturday night, two days after its international bow at the Venice Film Festival. I have no doubt that upon reading that sentence, some will reflexively say, “Boo-hoo! Who cares about the problems of people in Hollywood? People in the real world have real problems.” And I can understand where they’re coming from. But do you know who won’t be among them? People in Hollywood, who also happen to account for the vast majority of people in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For that reason — and even more so because the film is tremendously well made in every regard — I suspect that Jay Kelly will be a significant player this Oscar season.
The film, which Netflix will release in theaters on Nov. 14 and on its streaming platform on Dec. 5, stars George Clooney as the title character, who not only looks and behaves a lot like George Clooney (read: suave and charming) and is also a movie star (described as one of the last real movie stars), but also shares a similar history both personally (hailing from Kentucky) and professionally (a favorite of both critics and the public). I don’t at all mean to suggest that Clooney is playing himself — he is, I can say as someone who has covered and crossed paths with him over the decades, a much more thoughtful and generous guy than Kelly — but they certainly share a lot in common.
Jay Kelly, like all big movie stars, is supported by a “team” that includes a manager (Adam Sandler), a publicist (Laura Dern, who won an Oscar for Baumbach’s Marriage Story), a makeup artist (Emily Mortimer) and a bodyguard. He has a ton of fans, but also, as is the case with all big movie stars, plenty of people who aren’t fans. In Kelly’s case, his own two daughters (Riley Keough and Grace Edwards) and father (Stacy Keach) have major issues with him. So, too, does a friend from their long-ago days in acting class (Billy Crudup), an unpleasant encounter with whom sparks an existential crisis for Kelly.
The film becomes a road movie as Kelly, on the spur of the moment, heads to and through Europe in pursuit of his youngest daughter and en route to a film festival to collect a career achievement award, forcing his entourage to drop everything and join him, and forcing him to be amongst regular people for the first time in decades. The whole ordeal prompts Kelly to think back to key people and decision points in his life, and to literally — through movie magic — walk into those moments as an observer of his younger self (Charlie Rowe). As you may have gathered by now, there are undeniable echoes of Sullivan’s Travels and 8 1/2.
The film’s original screenplay, by Baumbach and Mortimer, is razor-sharp — from the “Pickles never expire” scene with one of Kelly’s early directors (Oscar winner Jim Broadbent), whose career did; to the interactions between Kelly and his old classmate, which take a wild turn; to the moment in which Kelly and his manager frankly address the nature of their long association. Baumbach has received screenwriting noms for The Squid and the Whale, Marriage Story and Barbie, and this script is in the same league, so I think the awards conversation around Jay Kelly must start there.
Then there’s Clooney. It took real guts for an A-lister to take on a part like Kelly; the somewhat dismissive “note” that both Clooney and Kelly occasionally receive is that they’re always playing themselves, and this is a film that might further perpetuate that mistaken belief. (After Sunset Blvd., many assumed that Gloria Swanson was actually living a life like the deranged has-been she played in that film, and her career wasn’t especially helped by its success.) But only an extremely skilled actor could convey all of the things that are silently going on beneath the surface for Kelly, and I suspect that the Academy, which has nominated Clooney for four previous performances — in 2005’s Syriana (for which he won best supporting actor), 2007’s Michael Clayton, 2009’s Up in the Air and 2011’s The Descendants (for which he lost to Jean Dujardin for a performance in another movie about the toll that Hollywood can take on an actor, The Artist) — will do so again for this one.
Then there’s the supporting players from the film’s huge cast (which will surely be nominated for the best ensemble SAG Award). At the top of the list is Sandler, who, for nearly 40 years, has been acting in movies, and even if many of them have not exactly been critics’ darlings, he has brought a lot of people a lot of joy over those years — and has, by now, actually given quite a few performances for which he stretched himself in impressive ways, including those in 2002’s Punch Drunk Love, 2004’s Spanglish, 2007’s Reign Over Me, Baumbach’s 2017 film The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), 2019’s Uncut Gems, 2022’s Hustle and now this one. His character is a decent, hardworking guy who loves his family, but is also an operator (“Puppy!”) and often puts his prized client first, out of a belief — or hope — that they are truly friends, and then has to confront the possibility that he may have been wrong all along. I suspect that the combination of accumulated goodwill and this nuanced performance may earn the Sand-man an invitation to the Oscars for the first time as a nominee, as it should.
That same courtesy ought to be afforded to Crudup, who absolutely crushes a complex assignment with very little screen time. The Method acting bit and the parking lot bit are mini-masterpieces.
I could go on about Dern, Keach, Patrick Wilson, Eve Hewson and the other performers, who shine under Baumbach’s direction (Baumbach has never received a best director Oscar nom, but that could change); the collaboration between Oscar-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren and Emmy-winning production designer Mark Tildesley, which made possible those scenes in which the present meets the past, as well as an impressive opening oner; the original score by the great Nicholas Britell (Succession and Moonlight), which especially punctuates the climax of the film; and more. But the bottom line is that all of these elements will likely add up to a nice array of Oscar noms, and make Jay Kelly a serious contender for best picture.