(no subject)
Just saw Garden State with Mattson and Robson.
It wasn't the most techincally together movie of all times (oh, the
sight of Robert wincing in pain every time the shot would drift in and
out of focus), and the plot might have worked better if it had been
more developed, but on the whole, I liked it.
I love the quirky bits (most of which you do see on the preview), but I also like that they don't take over the movie.
Natalie Portman's character is in a way an example of how American movies deal with characters. They're rarely human, and most often they tend to be just one idea compressed into human form. They're an idea that acts like a catalyst or just a big explanation waiting to happen, and when it does, the character becomes obsolete.
In real life, I don't know if you get to meet people who just change your life in 4 days by explaining things to you.
Still, Natalie Portman's character wasn't as bad as it could have been. In fact, in the 1st half of the movie, she's utterly loveable. Maybe I'm just a big Natalie softie at heart.
One thing that I absolutely LOVED was the difference between the first half of the movie and the second half of the movie. The first part looks and feels like a fairly pleasent ecstasy trip - all the quirky little things happening and Large being kinda surprised by everything and really out of it. This is supposedly the effect of the years of being on lithium. And I love how he counters the effects of lithium with ecstasy, so a natural mood change is replaced by one end of the drug spectrum with another.
Then in the second half, as Large becomes more and more grounded in the real world and the effects of the lithium start wearing off (though in real life, after 16 years of being on antidepressants, he'd go through major withdrawal symptoms, but nevermind), the whole feeling of the movie changes - it just FEELS more lucid. The quirky things mostly stop happening - this I thought was important in that, in a way, by not being so numb to his own inner workings, he sort of internalises the quirks. The world around him isn't so quirky because in becoming less numb to it, and to himself, he's also becoming more a part of the world.
I like movies like this. It's become so common to just numb ourselves to whatever it is that we're feeling. Instead of dealing with whatever it is that's causing us to feel lonely or isolated or unhappy, we just surround ourselves with people (the most effective form of noise) as a distraction, to the point where we panic if we're by ourselves, because we're afraid of the silence. We don't believe in silence anymore. And all solitude just gets equated with loneliness. So in the end we feel lonely even when we're not by ourselves. We feel numb. I feel numb.
I love the quirky bits (most of which you do see on the preview), but I also like that they don't take over the movie.
Natalie Portman's character is in a way an example of how American movies deal with characters. They're rarely human, and most often they tend to be just one idea compressed into human form. They're an idea that acts like a catalyst or just a big explanation waiting to happen, and when it does, the character becomes obsolete.
In real life, I don't know if you get to meet people who just change your life in 4 days by explaining things to you.
Still, Natalie Portman's character wasn't as bad as it could have been. In fact, in the 1st half of the movie, she's utterly loveable. Maybe I'm just a big Natalie softie at heart.
One thing that I absolutely LOVED was the difference between the first half of the movie and the second half of the movie. The first part looks and feels like a fairly pleasent ecstasy trip - all the quirky little things happening and Large being kinda surprised by everything and really out of it. This is supposedly the effect of the years of being on lithium. And I love how he counters the effects of lithium with ecstasy, so a natural mood change is replaced by one end of the drug spectrum with another.
Then in the second half, as Large becomes more and more grounded in the real world and the effects of the lithium start wearing off (though in real life, after 16 years of being on antidepressants, he'd go through major withdrawal symptoms, but nevermind), the whole feeling of the movie changes - it just FEELS more lucid. The quirky things mostly stop happening - this I thought was important in that, in a way, by not being so numb to his own inner workings, he sort of internalises the quirks. The world around him isn't so quirky because in becoming less numb to it, and to himself, he's also becoming more a part of the world.
I like movies like this. It's become so common to just numb ourselves to whatever it is that we're feeling. Instead of dealing with whatever it is that's causing us to feel lonely or isolated or unhappy, we just surround ourselves with people (the most effective form of noise) as a distraction, to the point where we panic if we're by ourselves, because we're afraid of the silence. We don't believe in silence anymore. And all solitude just gets equated with loneliness. So in the end we feel lonely even when we're not by ourselves. We feel numb. I feel numb.