|
 |
Several observations about "Garden State" by Alex Sepiol 1. Wes Anderson has become the Quentin Tarantino of this still-young decade. Or at least this summer. Everyone's got an indie soundtrack, a muted color palette, and depressed young people these days. 1a. Fortunately, "Garden State" is a much less obvious and much less spiteful variation on the Wes than "Napoleon Dynamite." Perhaps as one should expect from a writer-director-star, Zach Braff is a much more emotionally invested storyteller and storybeing. 1b. It's curious that Wes Anderson should become a template. His films seem so handmade and, well, singular. I'd go on, but I don't want to betray the rest of this list. 2. Peter Sarsgaard is my new favorite actor. Playing a yuppie editor with morals in last year's "Shattered Glass" was when I first really noticed this guy. In "Garden State," he plays the definitive intelligent rogue. Yes, he's still living at home at 26. He keeps perpetrating these stupid schemes to make money. He drinks, smokes pot and aggressively slouches. But Sarsgaard's nuanced performance enables this character to notice the limitations of his life, recognize that he should move beyond them, and decide that it's not really worth it. 3. That specific character and performance perfectly hit what the film was clearly trying to do the entire time. To make a statement through its mid-20s protagonists about its generation. Did it work? Well... Making a Statement is an ambitious act, but this film proposed that a lack of ambition is one of the defining characteristics of This Generation. Fair enough, but the result was that the medium and the message were at cross-purposes. The result: lots of wonderful little snapshots of recognizably authentic contemporary behavior, followed by embarrassing "cathartic" moments that you can find on "Oprah" or "Dr. Phil" any day of the week. 4. I'm sure someone has commented on the proliferation of both Prozac and Ecstasy, and the correspondence of each pill's effects on its users. And I'm sure someone has also brought up Brave New World in such a discussion. But seeing it dramatized on the big screen was new for me. Playing it for a joke with characters talking about that book by "Aldous Huxtable" (sic) undercut the filmmaker's ambition. 5. But then again, Zach Braff is also a sit-com actor. I like sit-com actors: John Larroquette, Tony Shalhoub (yeah, OK, "Monk" is a one-hour, but c'mon), Steven Weber, Tim Daly... maybe I just really like "Wings." Ooh, David Hyde Pierce too. He's great. 6. Natalie Portman was doing that quirky hyperactive bohemian thing that Kate Winslett did in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Huh, this must be some new actress trend. That's really awful. Stop it. 7. Lawrence Sher, the d.p., deserves a lot of credit for this movie. It takes a lot of courage to just go with a muted color palette. It could turn out just boring, but if you have a lot of confidence with your shot composition, well... you can almost be as nifty as Robert Yeoman. Yay for you. 1c. I think I'm going to watch "The Royal Tenenbaums" again this week. To read more by Alex Sepiol check out the blog at the end of the world. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| lunchboxing.com 2003 | all content © | all rights reserved | suck it so hard | feel the rhythm of the night |
