It’s rare when every friend you come across independently tells you to watch the same movie. You’ll love it, they say. You’ll really grasp those uber-profound themes. Relentless wisecracks will make you laugh out of the side of your mouth. The soundtrack will make you feel like a born and bred hipster sporting ringer tees and ripped jeans, jamming to Belle and Sebastian on your iPod. It’s even rarer when they are wrong.
This is the first film I ever wanted to walk out of. I didn’t because I’m a cheapskate. But if I wanted an overload of pretentious angst like I got that night, I should have shut myself up in my dorm room and put Dashboard Confessional and Linkin Park on shuffle.
I could not for the life of me relate to Garden State. You didn’t relate either, but you probably think you did. Garden State, for me, holds the façade of complacent genius of a poem I wrote in third grade. Everyone wrote those kinds of poems in third grade. They are the kinds of things that make me want to punch myself out when I look back on who I was when I wrote them. That is a tiny idea of how I feel about Zach Braff, except he has no excuse to be writing this kind of slop at his age.
Natalie Portman is hot. She’s a fantastic actress. But not only is she miscast in this film, but she is also digging about for a dreg of indie credibility. Hipsters unite! Three cheers for Portman!
I realize that my friends are going to hate me for writing this column. Perhaps this commentary is pretentious in itself. I’m willing to take that risk because I, for one, was pretty damn confused about the tear-catching paper cup in the bathtub. I mean, are you kidding me? Is this happening?
Garden State feels so long. That is because it is so boring. It is also because it is derivative of many beautifully wrought films—American Beauty, Annie Hall, Lost in Translation. There is an old adage that states: In order to be regarded as genius, do something that has been done, and has been done well... then do it better. Unfortunately, Braff takes only the first part of this statement into account.
His film is cliché. Braff is attempting to convey a progression in true human emotion. Main character awakens to a sterile white room in the beginning. Main character gets bad news, walks past a couple of automated faucets for some dry laughs and goes home. Main character meets girl, falls in love, divulges secrets, comes clean, leaves girl, comes back to her anyway, the end.
Braff’s character slowly but steadily emerges from a medicated stupor, and I think that’s great. It is supposed to be dazzling, how the movie progresses from the sterile silent whiteness of a solitary bedroom to the raging cinematography in the rock quarry—but it isn’t. In fact, as the plotline developed, I found myself feeling more and more sedated. Brain cells committed suicide. Feet fell asleep. Medication sounded like a good idea. There are a few funny moments in the beginning of the film, but they are trite. I know at least four pot-smoking moms. The only thing I can salvage out of this film is the main character’s graveyard-digging sidekick. He was the man.
Other than this one exception, I just didn’t care enough about any of the characters by the time Braff’s character spilled the beans during the fireplace scene. And if I didn’t care then, I was definitely not in the mood for the bathtub scene—or the father-son scene—let alone the typical airport ending.
But I do certainly love the Shins. I saw them live junior year in high school and a second time this past summer. But God forbid I ever hear New Slang on any of your iPods, and the accompanying account of where you first heard it. And if I find one more conveniently dreary little Coldplay song in yet another poorly acted, skeletally scripted coming-to-terms-with-my-young-and-terrible-life film, I’m buying a copy of Napoleon Dynamite for repeat viewings and never seeing another movie again.
J. Patricia Kim is a Trinity sophomore.
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