Modern Classic: Garden State
How do you rate a film as truly great? No, come to think of it, how do you rate a film when you can’t even categorize it to begin with? Garden State is one of these such breathtaking films; part drama, part black comedy, part love story, it is one of the few brave releases in recent years to tackle deadly serious subject matter and interweave it with the kind of catchy, loveable characteristics of cheesy romantic films that punch with only half the weight.
Garden State is the love-child of Scrubs main-stay Zach Braff; layered and pulsating with the beating heart of a generation of unsure youths and their culture, and featuring awesome band The Shins, it’s the kind of film that is so tragically warming it utterly defies the director’s age and film-making experience. But don’t go thinking that a lot really happens. Garden State isn’t filled with action. It runs much deeper than that: it is, quite simply, all about living and taking each day as it comes. It’s about what doesn’t happen, and how the future suffers for it, the past haunts.
Natalie Portman is excellent as the love interest—one can’t help but think that without this dynamic the film would have been left somewhat cold. Also impressive are Peter Sarsgaard—from Jodie Foster’s Flight Plan—and a slew of other faces which will have you thinking of old friends, times gone by that shouldn’t have been special but were, and all that is lost as we grow older and more set in our ways.
The sincerity of Garden State is in its excellent and accurate—if over-zealous by frequency of events—portrayal of friendships, grieving and loss. The scenes unfold as if unwritten, allowing the viewer to find themselves in the film, as though the on screen history were something so much more personal than the result of acting and staged events.
Before I go I just found this amazing enigin PLC if you are bored and looking for something else to read, I would highly recommend this one!
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