I SEE MOVIES: Away We Go
My special kryptonite as a moviegoer are dead parents and cancer. This is certainly because, in the space of five fairly recent years, I had cancer, got cured, immediately lost my father, and then, more slowly, lost my mother, too. I also know from my own youthful fiction writing that cancer and death are irresistibly dramatic story arcs. So I demand a lot from cancer stories and dead parent stories. When I can't find anything in them that resembles my own real-life experience, I-often unfairly-dismiss them as convenient plot devices and lazy writing.
When they feel real, though. Those are movies I will follow anywhere.
And so it is that I have come not to bury Away We Go, as as so have before me, but to praise it. I went into the theater with no real idea of the kind of movie I was about to see. First of all, it feels less about babies, as the trailer might have you believe, and more about the connections that turn individuals into family units and places into communities.
John Krasinski of The Office plays Burt, an insurance broker who conveniently can do all of his work over a mobile phone (and who displays, it must be noted, a few irritatingly Jim-like tics--the bulging eyes of innocent dismay, the apparent mugging at invisible cameras). His girlfriend Verona (played with serious charm by Maya Rudolph) is a freelance medical illustrator. Their jobs allow them a degree of mobility and freedom that I think a lot of reviewers find exceptional and therefore intensely irritating. (I think it's worth noting, haters, that ESPECIALLY IF YOU DO NOT OWN A HOUSE, we are all a lot more potentially mobile than we assume.)
The couple has moved back home to be near Burt's parents-Verona's mother and father died when she was 22. When Burt's parents announce they are moving to Antwerp for two years, practically on the eve of their first grandchild's birth, Burt and Verona realize that there is nothing keeping them tied to this place and set off on a cross-country journey to make a home of their own. Which, God, how I recognize this process of elimination-what cities do you think you might like to live in? Which of them has at least a couple of friends or family located nearby so that you are not jumping into the void?
Burt and Verona conduct a cross-country interview process. And here too is where a lot of reviewers got turned off, because basically Burt and Verona feel superior to everyone they meet. Phoenix: Verona's former boss drinks too much and is insensitive to her children's feelings (at one point, she announces to them that she is sure her 12-year-old daughter is a lesbian, because she "walks like a dyke"). Madison, WI: Burt's childhood friend LN (nee "Ellen") is some kind of psychotic attachment-parenting earth mother who makes love to her creepy New Age husband in the same bed she shares with her two young kids. Montreal: Burt and Verona's college chums have a rainbow coalition of happy and adopted kids but are struggling to absorb their own sadnesses and disappointments.
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: I still don't understand how this somehow ruins Montreal as a possible home on its own, though the movie seems to assume that it does. In reality, I think Montreal ultimately doesn't work for a reason the movie doesn't seem to make much of. Which is that as kind and delightful as their college friends are, they are not family, and family is what Burt and Verona are aching for.
Twice during their journey, they brush up against the scraps of family still out there. There is a sweet encounter with Verona's sister in Tucson, and a painful one with Burt's brother-whose wife has just left him and their young daughter-in Miami. Both times, I wanted to yell at the screen-home, home, that is home you have just bumped into. (Although on the other hand, I wouldn't want to live in Miami or Tucson, either.) The movie comes alive during these scenes, and Burt and Verona suddenly feel so much less like they're floating above it all, evaluating the foibles of the people below, and committed, engaged in the happiness of the people around them.
I like where the movie ends up, sort of, but I'm not entirely satisfied by how it gets there. A chance encounter with an orange tree near the end of the movie inspires a long speech from Verona-her first significant words about the parents she lost, even though her continuing grief is the dark center of all her anxieties about her ability to be a good mother and a good partner to Burt, to not be a fuckup. There is a conveniently unoccupied house. On the surface, their problems have been solved. Just underneath, though, it feels, in Verona's stunned face in the final scene, that she feels, at best, as if she has only put herself in the best position to receive the answer when it finally arrives.
It's a First World problem, I suppose, not being able to decide where you should live and what kind of family you should have. Life would probably seem much simpler if Burt were struggling to keep one of the few remaining jobs on a GM assembly line, or Verona was wondering how they could afford daycare if she kept working or how they could afford food if she didn't. Possibilities are a luxury.
Families are a luxury, too. There is a profound existential loneliness in losing your parents, especially if you are childless yourself. In a way, it feels impossible to feel at home anywhere because it doesn't feel like there's anywhere where you belong any more, no place that needs you specifically. Dave Eggers famously knows this; he wrote a book that was in large part about losing his parents at age 21. He also has identified the only workable solution-to cling to the people you love and to try to bring back a little of what you have lost by having children yourself.
Just imagine, Verona's sister speculates early in the movie, this unborn baby may possess some feature-a nose, a tilt of the head-that skipped them entirely but brings their parents back to life. And so, as dissatisfied as I was at the ending, as frustrated with Burt and Verona as I sometimes felt, when the movie ended, I had tears on my face. As the credits rolled, my friends and I looked at each other, and all of a sudden, I was sobbing embarrassing, convulsive sobs. I was so sad for Verona. I was so sad for Dave Eggers. I was so sad for me.
When they feel real, though. Those are movies I will follow anywhere.
And so it is that I have come not to bury Away We Go, as as so have before me, but to praise it. I went into the theater with no real idea of the kind of movie I was about to see. First of all, it feels less about babies, as the trailer might have you believe, and more about the connections that turn individuals into family units and places into communities.
John Krasinski of The Office plays Burt, an insurance broker who conveniently can do all of his work over a mobile phone (and who displays, it must be noted, a few irritatingly Jim-like tics--the bulging eyes of innocent dismay, the apparent mugging at invisible cameras). His girlfriend Verona (played with serious charm by Maya Rudolph) is a freelance medical illustrator. Their jobs allow them a degree of mobility and freedom that I think a lot of reviewers find exceptional and therefore intensely irritating. (I think it's worth noting, haters, that ESPECIALLY IF YOU DO NOT OWN A HOUSE, we are all a lot more potentially mobile than we assume.)
The couple has moved back home to be near Burt's parents-Verona's mother and father died when she was 22. When Burt's parents announce they are moving to Antwerp for two years, practically on the eve of their first grandchild's birth, Burt and Verona realize that there is nothing keeping them tied to this place and set off on a cross-country journey to make a home of their own. Which, God, how I recognize this process of elimination-what cities do you think you might like to live in? Which of them has at least a couple of friends or family located nearby so that you are not jumping into the void?
Burt and Verona conduct a cross-country interview process. And here too is where a lot of reviewers got turned off, because basically Burt and Verona feel superior to everyone they meet. Phoenix: Verona's former boss drinks too much and is insensitive to her children's feelings (at one point, she announces to them that she is sure her 12-year-old daughter is a lesbian, because she "walks like a dyke"). Madison, WI: Burt's childhood friend LN (nee "Ellen") is some kind of psychotic attachment-parenting earth mother who makes love to her creepy New Age husband in the same bed she shares with her two young kids. Montreal: Burt and Verona's college chums have a rainbow coalition of happy and adopted kids but are struggling to absorb their own sadnesses and disappointments.
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: I still don't understand how this somehow ruins Montreal as a possible home on its own, though the movie seems to assume that it does. In reality, I think Montreal ultimately doesn't work for a reason the movie doesn't seem to make much of. Which is that as kind and delightful as their college friends are, they are not family, and family is what Burt and Verona are aching for.
Twice during their journey, they brush up against the scraps of family still out there. There is a sweet encounter with Verona's sister in Tucson, and a painful one with Burt's brother-whose wife has just left him and their young daughter-in Miami. Both times, I wanted to yell at the screen-home, home, that is home you have just bumped into. (Although on the other hand, I wouldn't want to live in Miami or Tucson, either.) The movie comes alive during these scenes, and Burt and Verona suddenly feel so much less like they're floating above it all, evaluating the foibles of the people below, and committed, engaged in the happiness of the people around them.
I like where the movie ends up, sort of, but I'm not entirely satisfied by how it gets there. A chance encounter with an orange tree near the end of the movie inspires a long speech from Verona-her first significant words about the parents she lost, even though her continuing grief is the dark center of all her anxieties about her ability to be a good mother and a good partner to Burt, to not be a fuckup. There is a conveniently unoccupied house. On the surface, their problems have been solved. Just underneath, though, it feels, in Verona's stunned face in the final scene, that she feels, at best, as if she has only put herself in the best position to receive the answer when it finally arrives.
It's a First World problem, I suppose, not being able to decide where you should live and what kind of family you should have. Life would probably seem much simpler if Burt were struggling to keep one of the few remaining jobs on a GM assembly line, or Verona was wondering how they could afford daycare if she kept working or how they could afford food if she didn't. Possibilities are a luxury.
Families are a luxury, too. There is a profound existential loneliness in losing your parents, especially if you are childless yourself. In a way, it feels impossible to feel at home anywhere because it doesn't feel like there's anywhere where you belong any more, no place that needs you specifically. Dave Eggers famously knows this; he wrote a book that was in large part about losing his parents at age 21. He also has identified the only workable solution-to cling to the people you love and to try to bring back a little of what you have lost by having children yourself.
Just imagine, Verona's sister speculates early in the movie, this unborn baby may possess some feature-a nose, a tilt of the head-that skipped them entirely but brings their parents back to life. And so, as dissatisfied as I was at the ending, as frustrated with Burt and Verona as I sometimes felt, when the movie ended, I had tears on my face. As the credits rolled, my friends and I looked at each other, and all of a sudden, I was sobbing embarrassing, convulsive sobs. I was so sad for Verona. I was so sad for Dave Eggers. I was so sad for me.