The fre­net­ic thrills of the Safdie Broth­ers’ sec­ond feature

The Safdie Broth­ers have an affec­tion for losers. From repeat offend­ers to hero­in junkies to degen­er­ate gam­blers, their pre­ferred kind seems to be those who are inex­orably addict­ed to trou­ble; tick­ing time bombs who get roped into chaot­ic spi­rals of self-oblit­er­a­tion over and over again. Hav­ing built off a suc­cess­ful career out of spik­ing the viewer’s heart rate many­fold, it’s safe to say that the sib­ling film­mak­ers get a kick out of play­ing cru­el God with their flawed cre­ations — throw­ing them curve­balls at every turn only to watch them end up caught between a rock and a hard place.

Pre­dat­ing their break­out hits Good Time and Uncut Gems is the 2009 dra­ma Dad­dy Lon­glegs, yet anoth­er vir­tu­oso dis­play of guer­ril­la film­mak­ing that has large­ly flown under the radar as a pur­port­ed­ly for­ma­tive work, which is about to be redis­cov­ered thanks to a new hand­some home release cour­tesy of The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion. Though per­haps not as pol­ished or glossy as their sub­se­quent efforts, the film sketch­es a good deal of the direc­tors’ pet inter­ests and styl­ish call­ing cards with all the panache and verve that we’ve grown to expect in their work. Draw­ing from their own tur­bu­lent child­hood and film­ing in their old New York stomp­ing ground, the Safdies gift­ed us with their most exas­per­at­ing yet aching­ly empa­thet­ic anti­hero in their entire cat­a­logue in Lenny (Ronald Bron­stein), a mid­dle-aged divorced pro­jec­tion­ist loose­ly based on their actu­al father.

Lenny, who bare­ly man­ages to scrape by work­ing night shifts at a Man­hat­tan movie the­atre, has to take care of his two kids Sage, 9, and Frey, 7, (Sage and Frey Ranal­do) over the two court-ordered weeks he’s giv­en each year. Ful­fill­ing his parental respon­si­bil­i­ties through­out that brief peri­od proves to be an insur­mount­able chal­lenge for a one-man wreck­ing crew who can’t even take care of him­self, let alone his two sons, on his own.

Sage and Frey, pre­sum­ably accus­tomed to an infi­nite­ly firmer and more respon­si­ble par­ent­ing on their mum’s side, seem to ini­tial­ly wel­come their dad’s free­wheel­ing spir­it — treat­ing their brief stay togeth­er like a sort of crazed odyssey through the con­crete jun­gle of New York City. And though it may at first appear that Lenny’s parental incom­pe­tence is some­what com­pen­sat­ed for with his over-enthu­si­asm and con­ta­gious play­ful­ness, it soon becomes clear that he’s thor­ough­ly inca­pable of stick­ing to the straight and nar­row with­out fum­bling him­self and every­one around him into insol­u­ble predicaments.

The Safdies’ cracked-mir­ror vision of the Amer­i­can dream dis­solves any bound­ary between fic­tion and real­i­ty, glid­ing through Lenny’s every­day life in a stream of quo­tid­i­an vignettes that bleed into each oth­er in what’s best described as a man­ic com­e­dy of errors. This bold flout­ing of nar­ra­tive cohe­sion, along with the use of inva­sive hand­held close-ups, ama­teur cast­ing and diegetic sound, instils the film with a claus­tro­pho­bic qual­i­ty that deft­ly echoes the con­ges­tion and fren­zied pace of the city that nev­er sleeps.

Whether it’s spend­ing the night in jail, get­ting mugged or for­get­ting to pick up his sons from school, Lenny is seen con­stant­ly wrig­gling his way out of snares, greet­ing every major set­back with a shrug of indif­fer­ence and an impromp­tu, often ill-advised scheme. The film rev­els in his jit­tery dys­func­tion, feed­ing off Bronstein’s mer­cu­r­ial pres­ence as we watch his char­ac­ter fail mis­er­ably many times over.

A less­er direc­tor would have neat­ly wrapped up the sto­ry with a sug­ar-coat­ed third act where our flawed anti­hero learns a valu­able les­son and comes out of it as a bet­ter man, but deliv­er­ing mawk­ish melo­dra­ma or cathar­tic clo­sure are nowhere near the Safdies’ prime con­cerns. Their char­ac­ters tend to go from A to B with­out ever find­ing such a thing as enlight­en­ment or redemp­tion, no mat­ter how des­per­ate­ly they seek it, doomed to live in per­pet­u­al igno­rance with one foot already in the grave.

The last we see of Lenny is him car­ry­ing his belong­ings around the side­walk and load­ing them onto a Roo­sevelt Island tram, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly abduct­ed his kids from school long after his cus­tody had reached its eleventh hour. This moral ambi­gu­i­ty and lack of res­o­lu­tion cuts to the very heart of Dad­dy Lon­glegs. But where their recent films have sel­dom allowed their char­ac­ters an amount of dig­ni­ty in the face of hard­ship, the Safdies con­scious­ly refuse to reduce Lenny into any sort of one-note car­i­ca­ture, imbu­ing his char­ac­ter with chutz­pah, pathos and off-kil­ter charis­ma to the point that you find your­self grudg­ing­ly root­ing for him.

Admit­ted­ly, to feel sym­pa­thy for a man who, halfway through the sto­ry, drugs his own kids with a heavy dose of sleep­ing pills because he has to do a night shift and can’t find a babysit­ter, might be ask­ing too much of the audi­ence. The Safdies cer­tain­ly know bet­ter than to expect our pity, espe­cial­ly for such a remark­ably irre­deemable human dynamo. But even though it’s hard not to squirm and turn away in dis­gust when­ev­er Lenny’s reck­less neg­li­gence active­ly puts the well­be­ing of his sons in per­il, the Safdies man­age to walk a tightrope between con­stant­ly push­ing our but­tons with­out com­ing off as emo­tion­al­ly manip­u­la­tive at any giv­en point of the film.

It’s only fit­ting that Dad­dy Lon­glegs won the 2010 Inde­pen­dent Spir­it John Cas­savetes award, named after the patron saint of Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma whose fin­ger­prints are smeared all over this film. One can’t sim­ply watch Lenny with­out see­ing traces of Mabel Longhet­ti (A Woman Under the Influ­ence), Cos­mo Vitel­li (The Killing of a Chi­nese Book­ie) and Sey­mour Moskowitz (Min­nie and Moskowitz) among many oth­er of his neu­rot­ic leads all over him.

Being likened with Cas­savetes’ char­ac­ter stud­ies should of course be tak­en as the high­est com­pli­ment. Through his career, the mav­er­ick direc­tor sur­veyed the every­day ail­ments of social mis­fits, out­casts and freaks alike with bru­tal hon­esty, dis­till­ing life to its essence and urg­ing the view­er to look past their flaws and find human­i­ty in their plight. Dad­dy Lon­glegs, and every oth­er Safdie Broth­ers film for that mat­ter, is endowed with the same unyield­ing com­mit­ment, seem­ing­ly guid­ed by the faith that try­ing our best is, ulti­mate­ly, all any of us can do.

Dad­dy Lon­glegs is released on Blu-ray by Cri­te­ri­on in a new 4K dig­i­tal trans­fer super­vised and approved by direc­tors Josh and Ben­ny Safdie on 16 August.