A film not to my taste, but still recommended for younger audiences (with mild reservations)
After doing blog entries on all of Tom McCarthy’s films (two with New Jersey locales) and on Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler (see my October 2 entry), also set in New Jersey—and all the New Jersey films here give some acceptable enough (to me) way to represent New Jersey cinematically—I’ve thought several times I ought to cover Garden State, which was written and directed by Zach Braff, who has starred in the TV show Scrubs (which I never saw).
Having lived in New Jersey for most of my 50 years, and being such a film aficionado, it has always intrigued me deeply when a filmmaker has tried to depict New Jersey, particularly its local-color aspects, aside from it being merely providing an anonymous, grubby locale for a Mafia movie. I confess I don’t exactly know how I’d depict what little I know of the state, though I think I’d want to be as accurate as possible, and to represent that, yes, there is a lot of greenery here, and the humidity here can be awful in the summer.
I first saw Garden State in the theater, I think. Since then, I’ve seen it a few times on DVD, including this past week. It has always not quite clicked with me; I figure it has devoted fans, to judge from its Wikipedia article, and it would seem to appeal to audiences about Mr. Braff’s age (and younger). So I don’t want to spoil its fans’ fun and say it is lacking in important ways.
By the way, as should be obvious, I don’t post movie reviews simply to have the last word or to “set received wisdom”; but I do try to adhere to a set of fairly acceptable standards, without being strongly conformist, and when my tastes and a film’s expected audience tastes don’t mesh, I try to indicate why, without saying it is simply a bad film.
Garden State was made in and around a rather upscale part of the state near New York City and especially Newark—in (among other towns) the Essex County towns of Maplewood, Livingston, and South Orange (the last town is so “tony” that it has the highest number of gas streetlights still in the state, there for a practical reason as recounted in a recent article in the state’s Star-Ledger). Braff is (according to his Wikipedia bio) originally from South Orange, having graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood; and with numerous stars in the popular arts having come from those towns (accordingly creating local fans and a sense of their towns’ being a good breeding ground for stars), I’m sure a good chunk of Braff’s fan base is from there.
If you were to say what zones of the state (especially among upscale areas) tend to have a certain character and integrity—and thus would be depicted a certain integrally colorful way—then I believe this Essex County region is one; Bergen County, which I consider an “unofficial borough of New York City,” is another such zone (and part of this film was produced there too, but apparently not much of it).
Morris County is yet another zone with upscale elements, and actually Tom McCarthy’s movies The Station Agent and Win Win represent parts of that, or neighboring areas, fairly well—the views of locales, and the qualities of the characters are fair enough to those areas (though with a certain movie-clichéing, or –styling, method to drawing character that is pretty inevitable). I don’t know if Bergen County has its own “on-the-make director” who is producing films relevant to that area. But as for Garden State, I would say it reflects the characters of young people there—a certain irony, whimsicality, and so on—without really echoing the nature of the area well (and I can say this without being so very familiar with the area, though I’ve long known some people from there, because as the film uses the area, it seems pretty undistinguished).
Garden State is a film more about “inner space” than external environs—which I think was mainly Braff’s intention anyway—and for me—this is quite a subjective view—I think if you’re going to situate a film in a part of New Jersey, the location has to be something of a well-depicted character too. It need not be picturesque, but it should be conveyed in a way that allows us to see how the characters in the film could be flourishing (or suffering) there, as that place is likely to do it to or for them. Though people well outside the state may think that because New Jersey is geographically small it is therefore fairly uniform in character, and happens to have a lot of unsavory elements (toxic dumps, refineries, mob burial locations), if it is looked at constructively it is a densely packed state with a rich patchwork of different regions and their associated cultures and mentalities. Generally speaking, you can travel from one socioeconomically homogeneous zone to another that is noticeably different in about 20-25 minutes (that’s more to the west; in the east, toward the city, the drive can be even shorter).
I think it was Braff’s intention to make a film that was more about young people working things out in a young period of their lives than about the area they grew up in, but this film has always struck me as rather odd, and I think part of the reason is that it doesn’t give a good feel for what I know of the state.
Other aspects of the film that detract from it for me have less to do with the “criterion” of being good with “local color,” and I think I’m more objective to cite flaws here. But I want to discuss this film here as one that is worth seeing at least once, not only because of the young talent involved that makes it as lively in ideas as it is—Natalie Portman as the budding girlfriend “Sam” (Samantha) is especially good with a certain spirit and precision she brings to the role. The film did make a profit—$35.8 million after a $2.5 million cost, according to Wikipedia—but there’s something quirky enough about it that while some might not mind one viewing, they wouldn’t fall in love with it.
Incidentally, Jersey Films was the producing studio; this company is, as far as I know, co-owned by actor Danny DeVito.
An overview of the story
The film narrates the casual activities of a young man, Andrew Largeman (nicknamed “Large”), who has been struggling as a neophyte actor in Los Angeles, now visiting home in an unnamed (I think) New Jersey town (in Essex County) after his mother has died, following a phone call from his father. He has lived away from home for nine years, and in returning, he meets up with old high school friends, including Mark, a stoner who works as a gravedigger (maybe I should switch the order of those attributes, to reflect priority?); another young man who invented “silent Velcro” and now, having sold the rights to his invention, lives in a mansion; and assorted others such as a former somewhat dork-ish classmate who is now a local policeman (who pulls Large over when he has been riding his old motorcycle-with-sidecar).
Large, we find, seems in a numb, vaguely seeking state—he is off psych meds for the first time since being prescribed them by his psychiatrist father. In fact, his mother had been wheelchair-bound since Large was nine, when Large had accidentally caused his mother to fall against an open dishwasher door, and had broken her neck, causing her paraplegia. Much more recently, his mother drowned, leading his father to phone Large back home. So we have a nexus of sad family conditions—both long-term and sudden/emergent—but the film is a quirky comedy, so we get such things as Large, an unobservant Jew, at his mother’s burial amid family, with a woman with a heavy Ethel Merman–like accent (played by Jackie Hoffman) singing, for liberal-style ceremonial purposes, the pop song “Three Times a Lady.”
The film combines a number of directorial styles, some of which are obvious. The visual style is one of the most interesting things about it—it is fairly arrestingly colorful, with pointed framing of scenes and situations; in these ways it recalls director Hal Ashby, whom one of the film’s makers (the DP, I believe) refers to in the interesting making-of doc. The film’s Wikipedia article says, “Braff has cited such films as Harold and Maude, Woody Allen films (specifically Annie Hall and Manhattan), and the films of Alexander Payne as influences on Garden State [italics added].” I can see the influence of Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, both visually and in incidents/humor to some extent; but I feel the Woody Allen likenesses are a little more of a stretch, though one might say that Braff gives his generation’s own version of the neurosis-focused sort of story that Allen has been big on.
But the Alexander Payne likeness I think is a really big stretch—I am thinking of About Schmidt (2002), which I really like (and which is more artfully and subtly melancholy than Garden State is). Payne pays very close attention to humorous detail as seen in real life, in service to a larger story of a sort of “seeking meaning or succor” that is germane to middle-aged mentalities. Meanwhile, Braff, I think, is detail-oriented but in a style of drawing droll little vignettes that seem like the baubles of little ideas (as you tuck into a notebook for future use) that strike the fancy of young (college-educated) people, rather than like the accretion of banal details that reflect an understanding of everyday life, adding up over the long term, among average, aging middle Americans.
Garden State has a sort of surreal manner at times, or an aggressively quirky-humor-inserting way of weaving a story. Believe me, I understand this as a strategy for young writers. I did the same thing; whether with short stories when I was in high school, or with novels when I was in my early twenties, you tended to build stories out of imagination-capturing details, and if you were given to absurdist or simply quirky humor, you felt that this sort of thing could do a lot to fill out a solid story. But as you get older, stories become more matters of long processes, actual dramas with a beginning, middle, and end—because the stories you want to tell are matters of life processes, developing an identity and building whatever your “project” is through work, patience, luck/accident, and suffering, not so much “little issues” or “doo-dads” you want to set out like droll dashboard decorations for others’ passingly amused consideration.
Some telling details
This may sound a little bitchy or too-cold to the film’s young fans (I would assume its strongest fans would typically be 35 and under). Let me comment on some specific themes or details of the film, which can show what I mean.
The psychiatric “case” angle; a doc’s ethical breach. One premise is that Large has been on medications—we find they are lithium, Depakote, Paxil, Zoloft, and Celexa (the first two are mood stabilizers, and the last three are antidepressants)—that we know are the type, in such a combination, used for bipolar disorder (manic depression, as it used to be called). But the film depicts the situation as if Large’s psychiatrist father has, almost as punishment (or out of short-sighted rage and maybe fear), put Large on these meds because Large, as I described above, caused his mother’s paralysis in a “freak” accident, as Large describes it. It should be obvious that for Large’s father to treat his son in a doctor/patient way, especially long-term (and especially for such a supposed problem in this case as long-term bipolar disorder), is a gross conflict of interest (which, when Large sees another doctor, is brought out in a way in the script). Never mind that if the father’s motivation was revenge, fear, or the like, this itself would also be grossly unacceptable (for any psychiatrist treating anyone). But maybe we can accept this as a sort of Kafkaesque premise, and appreciate the story as to how it unfolds, and “affirms life,” from there.
Incidentally, this premise—and especially Large’s more humane emotions being unlocked by his new girlfriend Sam—recalls, for me, The Graduate (1967; see my September 14 review), though it has some fairly obvious affinities with Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) too. Even the odd opening scene, which is apparently from a dream of Large’s, where he is on a plane (in disaster mode and with weird music playing), seems to echo the more everyday-life The Graduate, as does the whole story aspect of coming home, suffering ennui, etc.
Portman’s Sam adds some juice, while there are tiny problems in how the character/Portman fits in. Sam, short for Samantha, is a girl Large meets in the waiting room of a doctor’s office (typically—and maybe as some young people should be warned about—a droll image is a seeing-eye dog trying to have sex with Large’s leg in the waiting room). Starting with small talk, Sam and Large eventually kindle a friendship…. Sam is played by Natalie Portman, who gives probably the best performance in the film (Peter Sarsgaard plays Large’s friend Mark, and is also pretty vivid; Mark, by the way, among his other functions and avocations, collects “Desert Storm trading cards” as an investment).
Sam, we find, is a quirky sort in her own right; she is a compulsive liar, and suffers epilepsy with the result that her employer requires her to wear a cushioned helmet at work (to protect against injury from falls, I guess). Portman gives this character enough energy, lightness, and harmless eccentricity to show how she really could inject “new life” into Large.
One of their first exchanges has Sam give him praise for how he played a “retarded quarterback” in a movie; here we can see the film’s comic aims running up against how it could have been crafted better. Portman is an actress who, because of her intelligence, is good at enlivening an intelligent character. It doesn’t seem that her Sam could be so crass as to talk about the “retarded quarterback” as she does—and the joke gets extended a bit; the script isn’t too bad considered in the abstract, but maybe if the tones, and the timing, were a little better, this could have sounded more credible and appealing and less awkward.
A lethargic sense to timing in some scenes, apparently not intended. The same thing pretty much happens for a scene where Large gets pulled over by a cop who turns out to be a former high school friend. The scene is framed, blocked, and lit well enough. But there is something rather balky, lethargic, about how it comes off. This sort of problem happens several times in the film—a tentative or desultory quality to delivery from an actor, or between actors; something about the timing, the verve that could have been woven through the exchanges, is off…even while the film’s visual quality makes it seem as if it was fun to make. And—maybe this is just me getting old—I thought sometimes the actors’ talk—particularly Braff’s and Portman’s—was too quick and jumbled out.
I think that being an actor in a film while you are also directing it must be hard. It requires an energy going in two directions—being part of an ensemble of people acting in a scene, and being an “overseeing” manager working from a critical eye on the proceedings. I think this film might have worked better if Braff had directed someone else in the Large role. Clearly Braff had a poignant story in mind, and a visual sense to marry to it, to get on screen, and he had production collaborators that seemed behind this project without a hitch (to judge from the DVD making-of doc, which often can seem like a marketing tool on some DVDs). But while on screen he usually seems “simpatico” in appearance and general demeanor, and while he is supposed to be a young man coming off meds for the first time in many years, it seems in some scenes that he could (have) clicked better (with us and with actors), and maybe could have gotten some of the scenes with others to work more fluently. Other viewers might disagree with this assessment.
Details that don’t seem to work, and one that does. Some details seem quirky enough, and aren’t to my taste. It’s OK when people diverge on issues of taste for certain details in a film, but when the film seems to make a point of including a preponderance of not-tiny details that raise problems of taste (or raise questions of meaning), then that is more of a problem with the direction. For instance, a shot of a little dog seeming to masturbate—it is droll enough that it is not quite offensive—seems almost gratuitous and uninteresting, not merely in bad taste. A sequence with a friend (played by TV actor Jim Parsons) who works at a fast-food joint that features a medieval theme—the friend’s work uniform is a big, clanking suit of armor—seems a little too weird (because it is not realistic as to facts—or is there such a thing somewhere as a fast-food worker dressed in armor?). Braff could have juiced this up a bit with some riff: “Hey, do you wear that suit so you can sleep at work? Is that armor for sleep?”
One detail that works, and yet is atypical of the film, is a rather riveting existential moment—which is the sort of thing that the film could have nailed down more often: Large, gravedigger friend Mark, and the inventor of silent Velcro are sitting in a graveyard, and suddenly Large pauses as he watches Mark—and the two exchange a long look because Mark is stealing jewelry out of a coffin; Sarsgaard’s half-guilty, half-defiant look is right to the point.
The climactic (is it?) scene. The graverobbing discovery is actually important to the plot, because the scene that seems where things come together in some way for Large before he prepares to head back to California is when he and Mark, accompanied by Sam, go to a weird place that combines a big hole in the ground—dug for a foundation?—that seems like a canyon. A watchman lives on the site—which also features old, seemingly abandoned construction equipment—and the watchman’s home is a converted, elevated old boat. With rain pouring, the three young people ascend to the boat, whose male inhabitant gives Mark what Mark is buying as a gift for Large: an odd piece of jewelry that had been Large’s mother’s favorite necklace. (Of course, later Large affirms his budding romance with Sam, which seems to mean he’ll stay in New Jersey.)
The three young people, on their way out from the boat, pause to stand on top of a steam-shovel cab and yell into the big hole in the ground. This image is actually one of the marketing images for the film. There is Simon & Garfunkel music playing, but I don’t know how this all comes together, what it means. S&G’s classic songs turning up in the likes of the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty (2003) seems a more resonant creative use of their music than is done here, but I’m just an old codger; what do I know.
The film is nice, not great; but maybe you would like it more
