"good luck exploring the infinite abyss": thoughts on garden state

(Contains spoilers. Welcome to the Internet!)

Now that it's come to The Screening Room, I finally got to go see Garden State last night. Obviously, it's generated a lot of buzz since its initial release, and most of my friends who saw it before I did and have similar taste in art enjoyed the film. So, I went to the theatre with a warm glow of affection ready to lavish on Zach Braff and his little movie that could.

I think I hated it.

In the film, Braff plays Andrew Largeman, a somewhat successful actor who returns to his home in New Jersey for the first time in nine years to attend his disabled mother's funeral. (Largeman is "responsible" for the freak accident that caused her disability, and her disability may have led her to finally commit suicide.) At the same time, he goes off the legion number of psychiatric drugs he's been on for the better part of his life. Within four days, Largeman regains his ability to feel, falls in love, repairs his estranged relationships with friends and family, and everything more or less ends Happily Ever After.

I am not going to accuse Garden State of being a badly-intentioned film or having its heart in the wrong place. I don't think either of those things are the issue — on the contrary, Garden State means extraordinarily well. It just doesn't know enough to make its intentions reality. There were certainly things I enjoyed while watching it, particularly its visual style and the incredible use of light in some of the scenes. While much of the script made me cringe (when the long-anticipated first kiss between the lead characters happens, I should not be whacking myself in the head with frustration at one of the most contrived and stupid moments I've ever seen on screen), much of its remainder was very funny and very clever. But the movie as a whole pretends to have access to a pain much deeper than it can authentically represent, and adds too much self-conscious artifice to what it could otherwise genuinely express. It is so facile that I was personally offended by it, and in fact, my issues with the movie are probably largely personal ones. My father unexpectedly passed away just under a year ago. We had a very strained relationship that we were not able to resolve before his death. It was not my fault that he had heart disease, but I am still dealing with the guilt of having drunkenly told a friend that I was sure my father would go to hell the day before they found his body and three days after he actually died (I was never even informed that he was missing). I do not mention this to throw myself a pity party (BYOB!), but to demonstrate the profound unreality of Largeman resolving all the major issues facing him in four days. And yes, I do understand the concept of "suspension of disbelief," but this was beyond ridiculous. In fact, Largeman doesn't really even deal with most of what's facing him, replacing his medication with another band-aid solution in the form of a romantic relationship. I don't know what Braff's inspiration for the film was. However, the movie came off as a well-meaning but shallow attempt to understand what a real-life, difficult situation is like in order to use its trappings to create a "meaningful" piece of art.

"I know it hurts. But it's life, and it's real. And sometimes it f***ing hurts, but it's life, and it's pretty much all we got." Oh, REALLY? Wow! This film has opened up entirely new worlds of meaning in my life! Like, life hurts, but it's still, like, worth it and stuff? Oh man!

This is the part when someone says "Well, I'd like to see YOUR movie!" and I direct them to the video I made for my Grade 11 biology presentation on impotence: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Was Mysteriously Unable To Shag Me.