*** (out of ****)
Starring Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Saarsgard, and Ian Holm
Directed & written by Zach Braff
2004
109 min R
I could be a cynic and call “Garden State” a Hollywood copy of an independent film. Its relative plotlessness and themes of disillusionment and self-realization are straight out of the arthouse theater. But its glossy look, addiction to exposition, and the elaborate computer-generated landscape that springs up in the third act betray the mark of a big studio. I can imagine a struggling indie filmmaker standing outside the theater where he just saw an afternoon matinee, bitterly smoking cigarettes and running his fingers through the hair that he has to cut himself to save money for a new wide-angle lens. He grumbles about “Garden State’s” soundtrack-available-in-stores-near-you soundtrack and about how its writer-director-star only got the movie made because he’s so well-connected.
But today I’ll be an optimist and I’ll praise “Garden State” as an arthouse movie for people who think they don’t like arthouse movies. Yes, writer-director-star Zach Braff is well-connected because of his work on television, but so were John Frankenheimer and Sidney Lumet. Braff’s film asks questions that are not only age-old, but ones that we ask ourselves at so many stages in our lives: what’s the point of all this? Why do I keep going? What difference does it make and does anything matter? (I think these questions are existential, but I keep learning and forgetting what that word means.) Again and again we resort to the same answer to these questions, which is that our value derives from the love and warmth of family and friends, and not whether our lives are remarkable, extraordinary, world-altering, or blessed with wisdom or excitement.
Braff does not really expand on this answer, but there’s something reassuring about that. No matter how often we ask the same question and use the same answer, we’ll find ourselves asking and answering all over again. It’s good to be reminded. The protagonist learns his lesson from observing those around him, and most chiefly from the love of a good woman, although to “Garden State’s” credit we don’t realize that she’s good right away.
To this end “Garden State” is a “dram-edy,” that genre so beloved of late, comprised of episodes that are funny, sad, awkward, uncomfortable (and often brilliant) all at once. A stoner and a man in a suit of armor get in an argument over the ratio of flakes to marshmallows in cereal and end up exchanging threats in Klingon. The scene is both absurd and filled with genuine menace. “Garden State” begins with a long rhapsody on pointless lives in small town New Jersey. A recently-rich inventor admits that he’s never been more bored in his life. A young man takes up gravedigging and collecting trading cards for a lack of anything else to do. All the houses look lived-in and grungy. Disputes rise up out of nothing. Drugs, drink, and random couplings are enjoyed joylessly, as if loudly insisting “we’re having fun!” actually means we’re having fun.
At the center of all this is a struggling young actor (Braff himself), who’s been numbed by a lifetime of anti-depressants. It’s he whom we follow from place to place, although he barely seems to be there, and he sometimes, literally, blends into the background. He’s come home from L.A. to attend his mother’s funeral (“I didn’t cry” he confesses) and to avoid talking to his psychiatrist father (Ian Holm). It’s his father who put our young actor on lithium, and as we watch the world joylessly whirl and cavort around him, we suspect that it was done to keep him numbed to just how banal and empty life can be. All of Braff’s loser high school chums refuse to believe that he hasn’t become a big movie star; he carries their surrogate, non-articulated aspirations. Having Braff play an actor is a handy way to show how we get so many of our expectations—those we don’t get from mom and dad—from television and the movies. When we think of how beautiful and blessed with story arcs TV people are, it’s seldom an encouraging comparison.
As director, Braff shoots with perfectly-framed and glossy detachment. He puts himself in the center of almost every frame, which seems appropriate. Someone like Braff’s numb actor might not be able to feel anything towards those around him, but he might get wrapped up in arranging crumbs or pencils into perfect lines. Working from his own script, he creates a gentle romance between his actor and a local girl (Natalie Portman) who is probably a pathological liar and whose quirks would be annoying if they weren’t so underlined by sadness.
“Garden State” stumbles in its third act with self-help platitudes and excessive tying of loose ends. There have been spurts of needless exposition all along and some of the strumming, sentimental pop songs verge on “telling” instead of “showing.” The nearer we get to the end credits, the more Braff gets carried away with “what we’ve learned” today speeches and conversations. Imagine if “Citizen Kane” ended with someone yelling “Look! Rosebud is that sled! It explains everything and nothing! Allow me to elaborate.” “Garden State” certainly does not lose that much control, but you do wish people would stop kissing, throwing their arms around each other, and explaining things. It’s a forgivable first-time director mistake though, finding that hard balance between what to say and what to leave unsaid. Of course a cynic would say that you have to explain everything in a Hollywood movie.
Finished December 4th, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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