The Ubiquitous Proust
I just remembered an old TIME article relevant to our interests and I thought I'd share it. Some of you have probably read it, but I simply couldn't NOT link it here. It BELONGS here.
Here is an excerpt:
"Aside from the darling Olive (Abigail Breslin), Frank is really the heart of this sweet film, and it turns out to be perfectly fitting that he has devoted his heretofore empty life to Marcel Proust. Frank's associations with Proust are only mentioned here and there (he likes to remind the family that he is a renowned Proust scholar while he's helping them push their disabled VW bus), but Proust is implicit in the film's best aspects. Frank moves in with his sister's family while he recovers from a suicide attempt after a particularly painful break up (Frank's grad student lover ran off with the number two Proust scholar), and has cut himself off from the world. He immediately relates to his nephew, Dwayne (Paul Dano), who has taken a vow of silence because he "hates everyone." As they are reluctantly dragged along with the Hoover family to help Olive pursue her dream to become a beauty queen, Frank and Dwayne begin to open up. Their own dreams have been crushed, but with Olive's unadulterated hopes as their catalyst, they are able to put their suffering in perspective and learn to feel again. In a particularly perfect scene, Frank explains to Dwayne that Proust was a "total loser" who eventually realized that the times that he suffered were the best times, since they were the times that made him who he was. Dwayne listens intently and concludes that in life you have to "do what you love, and f--- the rest". If there really is one lesson to be taken from Proust in pop culture, I believe Little Miss Sunshine has found it."
Here is an excerpt:
"Aside from the darling Olive (Abigail Breslin), Frank is really the heart of this sweet film, and it turns out to be perfectly fitting that he has devoted his heretofore empty life to Marcel Proust. Frank's associations with Proust are only mentioned here and there (he likes to remind the family that he is a renowned Proust scholar while he's helping them push their disabled VW bus), but Proust is implicit in the film's best aspects. Frank moves in with his sister's family while he recovers from a suicide attempt after a particularly painful break up (Frank's grad student lover ran off with the number two Proust scholar), and has cut himself off from the world. He immediately relates to his nephew, Dwayne (Paul Dano), who has taken a vow of silence because he "hates everyone." As they are reluctantly dragged along with the Hoover family to help Olive pursue her dream to become a beauty queen, Frank and Dwayne begin to open up. Their own dreams have been crushed, but with Olive's unadulterated hopes as their catalyst, they are able to put their suffering in perspective and learn to feel again. In a particularly perfect scene, Frank explains to Dwayne that Proust was a "total loser" who eventually realized that the times that he suffered were the best times, since they were the times that made him who he was. Dwayne listens intently and concludes that in life you have to "do what you love, and f--- the rest". If there really is one lesson to be taken from Proust in pop culture, I believe Little Miss Sunshine has found it."