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Movie Review: Garden State
By William Sternman
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Garden
State
Starring Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ian Holm
Written and Directed by Zach Braff
Returning
home from Los Angeles to New Jersey (the Garden State of the title) to
attend his mother’s funeral, Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) seems
to drift through his life as though it were someone else’s. He renews
relationships with his old buddies, yet never connects with them. He is
the observer of his own life, but not a participant. As such, he made
me think of Christopher Isherwood’s self-description in Goodbye
to Berlin: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive,
recording, not thinking.”
His former buds, especially Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), are all in their own states of arrested development, still doing drugs and chicks as though they’d never gotten out of high school. “Large” (Andrew’s nickname) seems both bemused and benumbed by the kookiness going on around him. Although this was once his reality, it’s no longer real to him. Like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, he can’t make sense of any of it, although it makes perfect sense to everyone else.
The screenplay (written by Braff, who also directed) evokes Henry Ford’s description of history: "one damn thing after another.” It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Large meets one loopy character from his past after another, and even some new loopy characters, but it all feels random and meaningless. Then one of the loonies, Samantha (Natalie Portman), gradually and unexpectedly gives his life a new direction (Sam’s first piece of advice to him is sound and practical: to stop a seeing-eye dog that’s humping his leg, “Kick him in the balls”).
Like real life, nothing really seems to be happening in Large’s life because most of it is going on underground. When it eventually bubbles to the surface, like a subterranean spring, Large can break out of his cocoon and become himself.
But it’s more painful than he could have guessed. Sam reassures him:
I know it hurts. But it's life, and it's real. And sometimes it fucking hurts, but it's life, and it's pretty much all we got.
One of the remarkable things about Braff’s screenplay—and his direction—is that “nothing happening” is fun to watch, even while you’re wondering where it’s all headed.
As an actor, Braff’s deadpan face can tell you what’s going on inside his character with just the slightest inflection of his eyes or mouth. Even though Large appears to be almost catatonic in his non-reaction, Braff lets you know that there is a live person behind those noncommittal eyes. Waiting for his character to make its first appearance is what keeps you watching.
Braff can currently be seen as John "J.D." Dorian on the TV sitcom Scrubs. He also played Benji in The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000).
My only complaint about the movie is its meaninglessly generic title. Even though I lived in Camden, New Jersey for a year (my Babylonian exile), the state’s nickname conveys no more to me than “Keystone State” (where I live now) or “Hoosier State” (where I’ve never lived). On second thought, it may be the perfect metaphor for Large’s meaninglessly generic life up to now.
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William Sternman's short stories have been published in England, Hungary, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the U.S. His book and movie reviews have appeared in Audience, Films in Review, Bestsellers, The Drummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and www.movie-vault.com. He has been a volunteer tutor at the Center for Literacy since 1998. He received a fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
©
2004 Me Three