Last night Sarah reported that she wanted to watch a movie, so we sat down and rented “Garden State,” which she had seen, but I had not. (If it seems odd that Sarah would request that we watch a movie but then defer to me to make the pick, then YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T KNOW MY DOG.) She mentioned that it was “dark,” and “weird,” and that I might not like it.
I did. A lot, I think, although like Anchorman and some other things I’ve seen recently, I’m probably going to have to watch it a few times before I can say for certain. The best way I can describe the film is another adjective that Sarah applied to it: “Awkward.” It was clearly designed to be that way. Zach Braff wrote, directed, and starred in the film, and plays a character that withdrew from all emotions at about age 14. Much of the movie plays out like pimply freshman trying to hold a conversation with the senior homecoming queen. “Uncomfortable” is another good word.
The basic plot is that Andrew Largeman (Braff), a struggling actor in LA, flies home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. While there, he goes off his psychiatric medication, visits old friends, meets a strange girl named Sam (Natalie Portman), and begins to explore his guilt about the accident that paralyzed his mother and contributed to her untimely drowning in a bathtub.
(Holy crap, that paragraph looks like something I ripped out of a Leonard Maltin piece. Apparently any idiot can write movie reviews. This is awesome.)
Much of the awkward feel of the movie comes from Portman’s character, who is outgoing and talkative to a fault. Something strange will happen, like when her mother meets Andrew for the first time and immediately reports that one of their pet hamsters has died and needs to be buried, and Sam immediately launches into a giggly monologue about how weird things must feel, and how Andrew probably just wants to run for the door, and then there will be a painful silence. Later, she introduces him to her inescapably African brother, which requires a lengthy explanation, followed by a repeat of the “you probably want to run, and that’s okay, if you want to leave, I won’t -” and Andrew interrupts her and asks her to stop saying that, if he wanted to leave, he would have left.
She is also a pathological liar with a strong guilt complex; she’ll say something in one scene, and then in the next, apologize and reveal the truth. At least once during the early scenes I turned to Hearnwife and said “Natalie Portman is pissing me off.” She agreed.
The thing that made the movie the most difficult for me to watch is a bit of a spoiler, so I’m going to steal a page from James Lileks and make the text the same color as the background. To read it, just select it as if you were going to cut and paste the text into an email to send to your newspaper editor brother to say “Hey, you should give this guy a weekly column, he’s freaking hilarious:”
Sam and Andrew meet at the neurologist’s office. He’s there because of some odd headaches that he’s been getting, and she says that she’s there to meet a friend. Later it’s revealed that in point of fact, she has epilepsy. The problem was that after Sarah had described the film as “dark,” I assumed that meant “the ending is really depressing,” which meant that I watched the remainder of the film under the assumption that Sam was going to have a grand mal seizure and die.
But she never does.
This is probably why I ended up liking the film, to be honest; after sitting on pins and needles for 90 minutes waiting for the depressing death of the pretty girl with the fun outlook on life, at the end when she’s alive and she and Andrew are together making out in an airport, I felt very uplifted.
But it’s also why I need to watch it again, to see if I missed some things while worrying about Sam’s health, and see if I actually like the film.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch. Right now if you have Comcast and HBO, it might be available “On Demand” for free. It is in our area, anyway. But then, we’re living in a major metropolis, and I think most of my readers are still living in trees and throwing poop at tourists.
I’m not insinuating that Sarah is a dog, because I like not getting stabbed when I sleep. I’m just being weird. And quoting another movie, just to perpetuate the theme.
