Review: "Garden State"
Starring Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard
Written and directed by Zach Braff
3 stars (out of 4)
Twenty-six-year-old actor Andrew Largeman (Braff) received low-level fame and local notoriety in his home state of New Jersey when he portrayed a mentally handicapped football star in a family-themed film. Large, as his friends back home refer to him, hasn't been home in years, but L.A. life isn't easy: he works at a Vietnamese retaurant to make rent between auditions and lives in a sparse, almost empty, apartment.
Andrew has to go home, though, because his father, Gideon (Ian Holm) calls to tell Andrew his mother has died. Gideon is also Andrew's psychiatrist, and has been medicating his son for years for depression. At the doctor's office Andrew complains he's been taking so many pills for so long he's gone numb, and doesn't even know if he needs them.
Andrew's salvation and the catalyst for his reinvention is Sam (Portman), an epileptic whom he meets in the doctor's lobby. Sam has a penchant for lying, an adopted brother named Titembay (from the Sally Struthers ads featuring children with "flies all over their faces"), and several pet hamsters. The latest of these, Jelly, has just died, and she and Andrew bury it in her backyard on what she refers to as a date.
Being home also affords Andrew the opportunity to see old friends, most of whom spend their time partying and getting high or waiting around to party and get high. These include Mark (Sarsgaard), who collects ("invests") in Gulf War trading cards and other obscure memorobilia, and Jesse (Armando Riesco), who invented noiseless velcro and spends his work-free days bored out of his mind.
Some word of mouth has characterized Garden State as this year's Lost in Translation (2003), but that's not fair to either film. Garden State is about love, yes, but much more than that: it's about finally growing up. Andrew has been living for decades with his father's cold ways and mountains of prescriptions, as well as the guilt of a personal family drama I will not here discuss. He's acting, yes, pursuing his dreams or whatever his friends want to call it, but he's also numbly drifting through his own life, functioning only because he can.
Andrew has been afraid his whole life, and his trip home and decision to readjust his life (and medication) is not the sudden urge of a man merely in love, but rather the last bit of stregth a drowning man might use to push himnself that much closer to shore. Andrew Largeman is literally fighting for his life, or at least his possession of it.
Braff, of TV's Scrubs, is pitch-perfect as wandering Andrew. He has written and directed a film filled with moments of touching, uplifting humanity, as well as painfully sharp and joyously abundant humor. Full of wonderfully constructed scenes and perfect images, Braff and director of photography Lawrence Sher make sure that the eye is given as much to feast upon as the ear. I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud so often watching a smart, endearing comedy full of characters to love and in whom I saw myself. I think it was Rushmore (1998). Natalie Portman also shines as the emotionally scattered but dependant Sam, who benefits as much from Andrew as he does her.
Garden State shows two people trying to figure out how to live, how to understand life and love and why it can hurt so much and still be so beautiful. At the end of it all Andrew is nowhere near where he wants or needs to be as far as his life is concerned, but he has a renewed vision if what is important, of what's worth fighting for. He's setting out to see what awaits him, like the narrator in Frost's "Into My Own" (1913), which concludes:
"I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true."
