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September 16, 2005
Talkin' 'bout the Blue-blues: Watching Garden State & Prozac Nation
Andrew Largeman enjoys an astonishing arc--by the end of Garden State he has, to my eye, discovered two life-altering things. The first one is this: to live is to be free to feel, even if there is much sadness in this world, and much pain to be felt--and there is and there is.
But Andrew hits on this higher license of an un-medicated existence, and sums it up concisely to his father: "Maybe it's best just to be who we are. Maybe that's best.'' Andrew discovers that to live is to feel, and be damned suppressing the blue-blues because suffering is existence. It's a valuable but idealistic lesson; idealistic because there are grades of suffering, and if we are to accept the deepest forms of depression as a disease, not as a disposition, then we must also accept some forms of suffering as insufferable. And so perhaps there's something else to add to Andrew's discovery--to live is to feel is to suffer, and it's worth it, but baby, you gotta be brave. Maybe ol' Doc Thompson said it best when he wrote: "Buy the ticket, take the ride''.
Andrew's arc contains another discovery: the importance of wriggling free from the various platitudes that regulate our lives, masquerading as wisdom. In other words, Garden State's quiet charm is defined by a warm and gentle fuck-you to received advice. When Andrew attains both grief and happiness--and eventually love--through the playfully persistent Nat Portman, he then temporarily abandons her in yet another moment of sterility--a pre-determined observation of the platitude "I've gotta go find myself''. He realises his error quickly though (who, exactly, is the author of this wisdom?), and grasps that to live is to feel, and to feel now, to feel all the time. He returns to the source of his happiness, determined, this time, to live. And so they kiss and hug and return warmth to the airport's lino floors, white walls and the inaudible buzz of bumble-bees.
While Garden State humbly challenges our faith in science and family, and has the skill and heart to ask "how are we to live?'' Prozac Nation is its opposite. Too keen to record its maniacally ill narrator, the film only has time for a self-martyring documentation of self-destruction. It is, ultimately, a violently narcissistic film, much too self-obsessed to observe anything larger than its own protagonist's fall. At the very end of the film, Prozac is introduced, and its narrator comments, quickly and clumsily (she is supposed to be a writer) that it seems that everybody is taking this shit. End film. This, surely, is the firmest sign of the film's self-obsessed nature--at a point when some larger observation could have been made, the film ends, seemingly too exhausted for social observation after the fervor of self-documentation.
Prozac Nation's an awful film about an awful person, but, in Garden State, bless it, Braff's given us a charming reminder that we can still be astonished with this world. We just gotta be brave enough to take it.
Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at September 16, 2005 11:41 AM
Comments
exactly why i abandoned the pills months ago, m - the guy on the pills ain't me. it's a fine line between living and being alive. at least sans fluoxetine i stare my own experience right in the eyes, there's no veil to play with as well. why make your suffering 'meta'? it's bad enough that people have to go through depression at all, much less negotiate the process/methods of dealing with that depression through a cloud of guilt, or a stigma that the inexperienced often clumsily attach.
someone we both know and care for recently kicked the meds after four continuous years. one of the bravest things - for them - they may ever do. i was really proud.
r
Posted by: reuben at September 16, 2005 2:45 PM
selah.
Posted by: marty at September 16, 2005 5:56 PM
rubes,
will we see you xmas?
love m
Posted by: marty at September 18, 2005 10:01 AM
nah, but i will be there in the first week of dec (my sister turns 30) ... trying to avoid being in perth at year's end. haven't had my first melb NYE yet! will you be around first week of dec? can't wait to catch up, drink ridiculous amounts, play, mock you about the magpies being just above the drop zone ... : )
Posted by: reuben at September 20, 2005 8:57 AM
Marty,
Reading this has made my day even better...and allows me to appreciate Garden State even more.
Bless your little observant heart ;)
Dan
Posted by: Dan at September 23, 2005 8:25 AM
& bless yours, daniel, & bless yours...
Posted by: marty at September 23, 2005 11:00 AM
