by Tim Gordon
For more than two decades, writer and director Noah Baumbach has chronicled the contradictions of modern life with an unflinching eye. His films, from The Squid and the Whale to Marriage Story, are filled with characters who stumble through love, ambition, and loss in search of clarity. With his latest project, Jay Kelly, Baumbach turns his attention inward once more, exploring the emotional cost of self-reflection and the delicate balance between art and identity.
The film follows a celebrated actor, played by George Clooney, who embarks on a surreal, time-bending journey through the memories and mistakes that have defined his life. In confronting his past, he comes to realize that redemption is not found in perfection but in the willingness to keep trying. It is a story about art, ego, and the fragile hope that it is never too late to begin again.
Jay Kelly marks Baumbach’s first collaboration with actor and writer Emily Mortimer, and the creative partnership between the two emerged almost by instinct. The pair had long admired each other’s work but had never written together. From their first sessions, they discovered an easy rhythm that felt both challenging and deeply natural.
“I admired Emily so much,” Baumbach says, reflecting on the early days of writing. “It just felt like a good idea, and it really was. From the beginning, there was an easefulness to it, but when the heavier lifting came later, that is when the real writing began. You start with everything open, throwing out ideas, and then you have to listen to the script. The story starts to tell you what it wants to be.”
Mortimer remembers that discovery process as exhilarating. “It was like playing tennis with someone who makes you raise your game,” she says. “Noah was completely open and generous. He never made me feel there were mistakes, only moments where you needed to be brave enough to say the thing you really meant.”
Their collaboration was built on trust. When Mortimer fought to keep certain scenes or lines that Baumbach was tempted to cut, the creative friction only strengthened their partnership. “Emily will really fight for things she believes in, which I love,” Baumbach says. “Sometimes I get bored with a moment and want to move on, but she would remind me why it mattered. She was tough in the best way, and she kept the story honest.”
Baumbach and Mortimer approached writing like musicians working through a melody. They acted out scenes together, feeling their way into the dialogue’s rhythm until it sounded true. “We would read lines back and forth,” Mortimer recalls. “Noah would sometimes play the director character, and we would be crying with laughter. But through that laughter, we found the heartbeat of the story.”
The film unfolds largely aboard a train, which serves as both literal and emotional metaphor. “You have to feel like you are on a journey,” Baumbach says. “You get on, you do not stop, and by the time you reach the end, you have changed. The rhythm of the dialogue became essential because the film moves like a piece of music. The audience has to feel that forward motion.”
Both writers describe Jay Kelly as a story haunted by memory. During the writing process, they often joked that the film was their version of A Christmas Carol. Instead of literal ghosts, the actor is visited by fragments of his own past, each moment revealing the weight of the choices he has made and the paths he has left unexplored.
“We kept talking about memory, about how the past lives inside the present,” Mortimer says. “It is a story about reflection and acceptance. You realize that everyone is the hero of their own story. You do not have to be a movie star to have your life fall apart, or to rebuild it.”
Clooney’s performance grounds that idea in quiet humanity. His character moves through a series of encounters, some funny and others painful, with people who reflect the man he has been. The train becomes a moving stage for self-examination. Baumbach describes it as “an escape from his own life, but also a ride he cannot get off.”
The film’s final line, “I’d like to go again,” carries a bittersweet resonance that extends beyond its literal meaning. For Baumbach, it represents the essence of creativity and the human desire for renewal. “When an actor says that, it means they touched something real but did not quite get there,” he says. “That is what life is. You cannot redo the past, but you can keep trying in the present.”
Mortimer sees the moment as a revelation rather than regret. “It comes from a good memory,” she says softly. “He has been walking through all these difficult memories, full of guilt and confusion, but then he remembers something tender, his daughters, a moment of joy, a time when life felt simple and good. That sweetness is what breaks him open. It reminds him that a lot of his life was good, and that maybe he still has more to live.”
Baumbach adds that the line grew naturally out of their shared understanding of acting itself. “In filmmaking, when someone asks to go again, it is an act of faith. You think, maybe I can get closer this time. That felt like the perfect metaphor for where Jay ends up. He cannot fix everything, but he can move forward. The idea that the story ends not in defeat but in hope felt right.”
At its core, Jay Kelly is not a story about fame or failure, but about reflection. It asks how we measure the meaning of a life, and whether understanding can arrive too late. Clooney, in one of his most vulnerable performances, gives that question gravity and grace.
The film’s emotional power lies in its refusal to offer easy answers. Baumbach and Mortimer craft a world where nostalgia and forgiveness coexist, where laughter and pain share the same breath. The result is a deeply human meditation on what it means to look back without getting lost in the past.
“Maybe the story is about the courage to face yourself,” Mortimer says. “Because if you can do that, you can still change. You can still go again.”
In Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach, and Emily Mortimer create a film that feels both intimate and universal. It is a work of emotional precision, anchored by George Clooney’s restrained performance and guided by two artists unafraid to explore the vulnerability that comes with memory. Their collaboration has yielded a story that moves with the rhythm of real life, funny, melancholic, and ultimately hopeful. Like its title character, Jay Kelly believes that no matter how many times we falter, there is always another take waiting to be made.