Screaming into the abyss of your life

Catholic New Times, July 3, 2005 by Din Yalonen

At the end of Garden State, Andrew Largemen, along with two friends, screams into a suburban ecological hole. This is not the cheesy stuff of the Friends TV show, where the characters mindlessly jump into a water fountain; this is a metaphor for actively creating community where there was none.

This is a movie about the thirty something generation lost in suburban sedation. I think that is the intended audience.

Andrew Largman's father has a huge home that he built to protect and keep those he loves happy, except that no one is even content--for get about happy. Andrew accidentally pushed his Morn over into a state of paralysis when he was a boy. Since that day, his doctor Dad has prescribed lithium.

We meet Andrew as he comes home for his mother's funeral. She has just drowned in the bathtub.

They say that self-loathing is a luxury of the middle-class. In this film, it is shown as a habit from which the characters cannot escape. I think this is why I liked the film. These young adults, who are depressed, bored, self-obsessed, apathetic and generally unimpressive, as supporting actor Peter Sarsgarrd declares, learn to break the spell by actually caring about each other just a fraction more than them selves.

There is nothing very political about Garden State. The movie is simply about waking up to yourself and others around you. Once done, you begin to notice the lepers on the side of the road. In this movie, that's each other.

Andrew is changed by the car e that his new 'unimpressive' friend Mark offers him, as well as the joy that his new girlfriend, played by Natalie Portman, brings to his life. These are simple things, but they can be "everything," as Andrew declares at the end.