Pack Up Your Bags. It’s Time to Go Home.
by Kelly Tong
About two years ago, Zach Braff returned to his home state of beautiful New Jersey. It was a sad event, for his paraplegic mother had passed away. Numb from lithium, Braff spent most of his first days in a conscious coma. It only took Natalie Portman’s quirky personality to return him to reality, to rediscover what love is, and to come to terms with the fact that no human being is absolutely sure of what he wants. Who are you, Natalie Portman? Are you a wizard of sorts? How can you work such miracles and solve all of one man’s existential problems in a couple of days?
Garden State was an unexpected cinematic success of 2004, and from observation, it becomes apparent that its fan base consist mainly of young adults. The film stands out as a result of writer, director, and actor Zach Braff’s ability to be subtle in both his dialogue and cinematography. He has also been complemented on his selection of an “indie” soundtrack, which has over a year become so popular that certain individuals are listing the Garden State Soundtrack as their favorite band. But why a review of Garden State now, when Zach Braff is on to bigger and better things?
As pretentious as the story became in Garden State when symbolism began to seem forced (as in the line “Good luck exploring the infinite abyss”), Braff’s story about a character stricken with indifference and determined to care for anything again is an odyssey upon which most people wish they could have embarked. Essentially, everyone has a great-return-home story to tell, yet they are all similar – home just never feels like home anymore the second time around.
As with all stories ubiquitous, filmmakers eventually see the success of one and then reproduce it countless times with different celebrities. The returning home plot has been rapid fired by independent film makers in the past couple of years, from Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown to Steve Buscemi’s Lonesome Jim to Adam Rapp’s Winter Passing. Though the lead characters may vary, the plot line and direction essentially remains the same. For example, the protagonist is an ennui-stricken man or woman in his or her late twenties who is forced to travel back home as a result of some tragedy or incentive. In any case, the journey back is not one about which to be very excited. Also, most of these are filmed in a similar way; they maintain that “indie” style with handheld shots and use of film that shows that it was a low-budget project.
Ultimately, the films all receive the same criticism and their audiences are left unsure of why they enjoyed the film (probably because it looked artistic and not liking it might cause someone else to call you a philistine). The Onion AV Club film reviewer Keith Phipps notes a common problem that is present in Winter Passing starring Zooey Deschanel. Phipps states, “Deschanel's trip to her childhood home in Michigan's Upper Peninsula allows for plenty of soul-searching, but writer-director Adam Rapp should have remembered that soul-searching alone makes for a pretty dull film, particularly when it's as familiar as this.” Subtlety is without a doubt difficult to master in film, for the director may run the risk of adding too much symbolism, to the extent where it is simply blatant.
What may come out of this trend may be the new type of
teen movie for the sex comedy generation. Audiences that go see Winter
Passing were at one point in their lives fans of American Pie and She’s
All That (Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word fans, but rather, people
who saw these movies on television on afternoon and decided to watch
it in its entirety and ultimately thought the film was alright). It
seems as though in our generation, we are currently replacing our Jason
Biggs and apple pie with depressed characters longing for a place to
call home and people to call family. This may be a bit pretentious,
but if anything, the rising popularity of the great-return-home movie
marks the growing intellectualism in our crowd. Perhaps this generation
is going through an existential crisis. Or perhaps, on a more realistic
level, we just go to these movies to watch Natalie Portman and her protégés
work their anti-depressant magic.
