My Salinger Year Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

My Salinger Year Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson January 6, 2022

J.D. Salinger first tried his hand at screenwriting with an adaptation of his own story, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut," which director Mark Robson brought to the screen as My Foolish Heart in 1949. However, Salinger was reportedly so displeased with alterations the filmmakers made to his script that he'd never permit a work of his to be made into a movie again. That's why in the late Nineties, Salinger advised his lawyers to block a screening of the Iranian film, Pari (1995), which writer/director Dariush Mehrjui adapted from Salinger's novel Franny and Zooey, from being shown at Lincoln Center. Québécois writer/director Philippe Falardeau's My Salinger Year (2020) isn't based on any of Salinger's literary works but rather on Joanna Rakoff's 2014 memoir of the same name. Rakoff originally wrote an article in the September/October 2002 issue of Book magazine recounting her experiences working at the literary agency, Harold Ober Associates, which comprised a clientele of several famous authors including Salinger.

Falardeau's adaptation sticks pretty closely to Rakoff's book. My Salinger Year (UK title: My New York Year) opens in autumn 1995 with 23-year-old Joanna's (Margaret Qualley) decision to leave the English MA program at the University of California Berkeley for a hopeful writing career in New York. Joanna has to say goodbye to her best friend and roommate, Jenny (Seána Kerslake), as well as her boyfriend, Karl (Hamza Haq), as she moves from coast to coast. After a few interviews, Joanna arrives at a literary agency where she's hired by Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), the agency boss. The dimly lit offices are housed with wood-paneled shelves and typewriters. The old-fashioned Margaret believes that technology creates too much extra work for her employees so there's only one computer. Margaret is a tough, no-nonsense executive type who would much rather hear that Joanna is reading works by living authors, not dead ones. Joanna eventually hopes to read manuscripts but Margaret first tasks her with a clerical job of reading J.D. Salinger's fan mail. She should only respond with a pro forma letter explaining that Salinger cannot personally respond to any of the letters. (The notoriously reclusive author stopped corresponding with his readers in 1963.) After Joanna addresses the form letter, Margaret instructs her to put the fan letters through a paper shredder.

Margaret puts Joanna to work.

Joanna reads many letters from teenage readers who express to Salinger how much Catcher in the Rye has impacted their young lives and how they relate to Holden Caulfield, the novel's narrator and main character. Of course, Joanna becomes so personally intrigued with the readers' stories that she can't but help to send personalized letters back to them posing as Salinger. This is a way that she develops her writing style and literary voice. I like how Falardeau has Salinger's fans talk directly to the camera about how they connect to his literary world. In addition, he constructs both imagined and real spaces where Joanna converses with them. Late in the film, there's a scene where Joanna dances with her former boyfriend and intermingles with the guests at the Waldorf Astoria. The movie needed a lot more of that energy.

My Salinger Year becomes more interesting when Margaret asks Joanna to help with republishing Salinger's short story, "Hapworth 16, 1924" into a book. (It initially appeared in a 1965 issue of The New Yorker, which figures prominently in this film.) I enjoyed Falardeau's exposition of the technical and logistical decisions that go into the publishing process but his movie gets bogged down into lesser important subplots. One features Joanna and her boorish boyfriend, Don (Douglas Booth), who's also a writer. Don is writing a novel that ultimately isn't going to be very good. Joanna also sees through him and his selfish habits. Booth is a fine actor and his lackluster character is more the fault of Falardeau than it is his performance. Joanna has two poems published in The Paris Review and essentially wants to become a poet but the audience neither hears enough of her development as a writer nor sees much of an arc. The film captures Salinger's mystique well but its primary character still feels too remote from us.

My Salinger Year Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout! Factory brings IFC Films' My Salinger Year to US Blu-ray on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (disc size: 34.54 GB) that comes with a slipcover. Falardeau's eighth feature appears in its originally composed and exhibition ratio of 1.85:1. Cinematographer Sara Mishara shot the picture using Hawk V-Lite Vantage '74 Anamorphic Lenses 1.3x, which create a more "retro" look for the viewer. According to info on the camera equipment I obtained, these lenses reduce contrast and produce pleasant skin tones. The latter applies to how the camera captures actress Margaret Qualley's face (see Screenshot #s 15-17). The interiors of the agency are mostly dim except for shots with fluorescent lights (#1) and the natural light shining through the character of Margaret's office (#23). Joanna and Don's apartment is also dark (#s 3 and 19). On the other hand, other parts of the film (especially exteriors) are much brighter lit. André Crous of Celluloid Paraidso saw the film at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival and observed it's so brightly lit "that even the night-time scenes feel like they are taking place at high noon." This probably can be attributed to the enhanced flares the Hawk Vantage lenses are capable of generating. Shout! has encoded the movie at a mean video bitrate of 34000 kbps.

Shout! has provided twelve chapters for the 101-minute feature.

My Salinger Year Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (3266 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo downsampled mix (1570 kbps, 24-bit). A DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Descriptive Track (1592 kbps, 24-bit) is the disc's third sound option. My Salinger Year is a dialogue-heavy film so much of the aural activity is kept along the center and front channels. The surround speakers pick up occasional natural ambience. Composer Martin Léon delivers a pleasant, breezy score that's adequately amplified by the rears.

Shout! carries both optional English SDH and Spanish SDH for the feature.

My Salinger Year Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (2:03, 1080p) - IFC Films' official trailer for My Salinger Year presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo sound (1599 kbps, 24-bit).

• Bonus Previews - trailers for other IFC titles, including Come True (1:52), Little Fish (1:52), and Moffie (2:08). These load prior to the main menu launching and can't be accessed through the menu.

My Salinger Year Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I was both hoping and expecting that My Salinger Year would shed light on the cultural impact that Salinger had on Gen X. We receive some insights on that but the movie is really nothing more than a standard coming-of-age tale of a twenty-something writer finding herself. Shout! Factory's transfer and lossless audio are devoid of any noticeable flaws or defects. Unfortunately, this is a no-frills disc beyond some trailers. A MODERATE RECOMMENDATION.