The Duplass brothers (co-writers and -directors Jay and Mark) are devout practitioners of something I’ll call moment-based filmmaking. Graduates of both the Mumblecore school and its ambient hype, they have coaxed a more palatable style from that movement’s core of strident naturalism. They build self-effacing stories from off-handedly naturalistic moments, the assembly of which serves an organizing theme. Tough to pull off and magical when it works, moment-based filmmaking is intrinsically opposed to plot — to machinations of any order — and aggressively favors the spontaneous over the crafted, evoking the narrative satisfactions of a three-act structure as if by a sort of ingenious accident. The Duplass brothers are determined to remain true to their eccentricities and equally bent on breaking into the big time, and their struggle manifests itself quite nakedly in the curious case of Cyrus, their third film and also first to feature a cast of well-known actors.
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REVIEW: Fascinating, Frustrating Cyrus Loses Its Nerve
