MY MOVIE SHELF: Jarhead

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 225  Days to go: 226

Movie #152:  Jarhead

Here’s a funny story about how I’m a terrible person: Jarhead is not my movie. It belongs to my father-in-law and I borrowed it no fewer than four years ago because I’d never seen it, and in that time, I still never watched it, never returned it, never even opened it. But I kept it on my shelf and even packed it in a box and moved it to my new house so I could, eventually, theoretically, watch it. I considered returning it once Jarhead began the rotations on HBO and Showtime, or when it became available on Netflix and I could just watch it from there whenever. Still didn’t return it, still didn’t watch it. If not for this project, I still wouldn’t have gotten around to watching it, I can almost guarantee. I would consider it good news that I could now return the movie in good faith, but at this point I think he owns it on blu-ray. I’m really a terrible, awful, horrible person.

Jarhead is one of those movies that intrigues me based on its cast and crew, but  turns me off based on its subject matter, and so I find myself wanting to watch it but putting it off indefinitely. Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard are interesting actors who rarely if ever take on uninteresting projects. Sam Mendes is a very particular, thoughtful director who has helmed films that are quiet and pensive while boiling just beneath the surface. And Roger Deakins is one of the most celebrated cinematographers of all time, known for the stark beauty of his photography and lighting, but not necessarily pictured as the go-to guy for war films. Then again, despite my preconceptions, Jarhead is not the typical war film.

Jarhead is kind of a cross between Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan in that it is gritty and uncompromising in its depiction of the brutalities and realities of being in a war zone, but absurdist and sort of funny in its depiction of the insanity that brews and builds from being in a situation so insular, so stressful, so primed for violence and then denied it. It’s about the pointlessness of being kept away from loved ones, of hurrying up and waiting while the rest of the world spins on. It’s about the anger, the frustration of not being yourself anymore, of not knowing who you are or who anyone else is or even how to act, and yet being completely dependent on the people in your company — for safety, for companionship, for reassurance, for strength, for intelligent discourse, for everything — even though they’re all just as messed up as you are. It’s about going home to a life that doesn’t make sense to you anymore and trying to fit in again, even though you can’t.

Sarsgaard and Gyllenhaal are unsurprisingly good, and Jamie Foxx is nothing short of riveting as a staff sergeant who lives and breathes the Marines, who believes in the life and the work. I found myself watching his performance and wondering about this man, wondering what kind of man it must take to walk that line, and then he addressed it himself toward the end of the film. It felt right and good to get to that place, to get to that resolution that he knows who he is and he acknowledges not all soldiers are like him. It made the movie’s epilogue even more effective.

There’s no real resolution here, no real answer, which definitely feels true to Mendes’s work (I haven’t read the original novel, so I can’t really judge it by that), and the cinematography is striking in its sameness — the desert is everywhere, even in the sky, even in the faces and uniforms and tents of the armed forces. Everything is sand colored (even the dreams, even the vomit). The one scene where Swof (Gyllenhaal) walks through a burned out bomb site — complete with charred bodies and vehicles — is visually arresting because of the sand-colored footprints he leaves in the blackened earth. Simply amazing.

I can’t say Jarhead is a movie I’ll watch again anytime soon, but I’m glad I did finally get around to watching it. Oddly enough, it was both interesting in its acting and artistry and distinctly Not My Thing, never managing to land solidly on one side or the other. In that way, it’s kind of like Swof’s experiences in Iraq, I guess.

Welcome to the suck.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Garden State

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 257 Days to go: 256

Movie #120: Garden State

Zach Braff is an artist.

Having been familiar with him only from Scrubs, where he played the whimsical and dreamy John Dorian, I wasn’t sure what to expect the first time I saw Garden State, which he wrote, directed and starred in. Maybe it was because I was in the particular age demographic the movie was speaking to, but I loved it and related to it. Braff’s film managed to tap into the directionless ennui of those past high school and college age but not yet successful and established in adulthood. It dealt with the encroaching issues of anxiety and depression in America’s young adults, and the numbness of being overmedicated and unimportant. It’s a feeling I recognize, and one I’m loathe to visit again, but I appreciate the meticulousness and authenticity with which Braff recreates it.

As Andrew Largeman, Braff comes home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral — an event he greets with mixed emotions due to this complicated past relationship with her and his father (Ian Holm). He meets up with lots of old school acquaintances (most notably Peter Sarsgaard as Mark), goes to some of those twentysomething parties that still reek of high school and college even though the participants should’ve long outgrown those tendencies, and meets a girl named Sam (Natalie Portman) in the waiting room of a neurologist’s office. He and Sam are instantly fascinated with one another, and they become quick friends, hanging out for almost the entirety of the short time Andrew is in town.

Back in 2007, Nathan Rabin of the A.V. Club wrote about the atrocious movie Elizabethtown, coined the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” to describe Kirsten Dunst’s ridiculously odd and thinly drawn character, and assigned Portman’s Sam that same status after the fact (two and a half years after Garden State came out, in fact), calling her a “prime example.” He’s since (recently, in fact) requested the term be permanently retired, but it will probably always follow Sam around, especially because Garden State was a modest hit whereas almost nobody (thankfully) remembers Elizabethtown.

The thing is, though, I don’t really agree that Sam is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Yes, she’s eccentric, and she does goofy things to “be original,” but it’s not like she doesn’t have her reasons. The entire idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that she exists solely as a sexist fantasy to cheer up the male protagonist, but while Sam is an outlet for Andrew to express himself and vocalize some thoughts and feelings he’s had for some time, she’s not the catalyst of them. Like I said, he’s had them for some time, and he actually stops taking his medication before he even leaves Los Angeles — at least two or three days before he meets Sam. And she really doesn’t do anything but support him on the journey he’s already taking. Not only that, but Sam has issues of her own. She’s epileptic and sensitive about it, so she lies as a defense mechanism. She’s just as broken as Andrew is, but in different ways. In fact, it’s Andrew’s easy acceptance of her that allows her to come clean about her epilepsy at all, so he’s just as much as a savior for her as she is for him. Not only that, but she has her own agency, her own ideas. She’s not going to kiss Andrew until she’s ready, she has no problem whatsoever expressing her discomfort with certain situations, and she deflects Andrew’s tendency to downplay serious situations with jokes, not because she’s there to cheer him up, but because she wants him to be more sincere in his life.

As for whether Sam exists solely to interact with Andrew, I mean, that can be said for any other character as well. Why is Andrew’s father there? Why is Mark there? Why is any character in any story there except to enhance and build the story the author is telling? Superfluous characters are Jean Smart and Jim Parsons as Mark’s mom and former classmate, respectively, who are now romantically involved. They add a lot less to the depth and arc of the story than Sam does. But without them, we wouldn’t get Parson’s hilarious delivery of “By the way, it says ‘balls’ on your face.” or this perfect exchange between Mark and Andrew:

Mark: “I’m going to kill that motherfucker.”

Andrew: “Pun intended?”

The ending, after Andrew leaves Sam at the airport, feels a bit tacked on, as if whoever the studio focus grouped the movie for couldn’t deal with an ambiguous ending, but that’s a small quibble in a film that really shows a lot of heart and promise — both as an individual achievement and as a picture of Braff’s potential as a filmmaker. I didn’t get to see Wish I Was Here when it was in theaters (babysitters are hard to come by), but I’m looking forward to it on DVD. I’ve heard mixed reviews, but I have faith in Braff and in what he can do. I think he’s earned it.

So take care, and “Good luck exploring the infinite abyss.”