Deborah Lipp

Garden State (2004) 10/10
Andrew Largeman (writer-director Zach Braff) returns to his New Jersey home to attend his mother’s funeral, after being away for nine years. Tentatively exploring the life he left behind, he meets Sam (Natalie Portman) and hangs out with his old friend Mark (Peter Sarsgaard).

Garden State was nothing like what I had expected, which is, of course, the danger of a movie getting “buzz”—you think you know what to expect. The buzz, as filtered through my understanding, was that this was some kind of total slacker movie with disaffected, ironic characters and a disaffected, barely-there romance, all about how disaffected “this generation” is.

Instead, what I saw was a movie about the value of life and the way that being disaffected is a trap. Dead-end people are, it turns out, dead-ends, and not really living their lives, and the notion that this is somehow noble is just one more nail in the coffin of misery clouded by being stoned.

Many of Andrew’s old friends (Mark in particular), embody that misery, and Andrew observes them as he observes his own growing need to feel and engage. Sam, on the other hand, is fully engaged; fanciful, goofy, compassionate, awkward, and embarrassed by her own eagerness. Andrew’s journey among the stoners and jerks and pet lovers is punctuated by odd moments of humor and wonderful visuals; a knight in full armor walking through a suburban home is perhaps the movie’s single best image—I laughed out loud. The understatement throughout is what makes it work, and there are many lovely jokes carried across entirely by that understatement.

For Andrew, and for Braff, irony and numbness aren’t a lifestyle; they are something forced onto you—literally, in Andrew’s case, but it’s a damn good functional metaphor. “We’re not ironic because we think it’s cool,” Braff seems to be saying; “We’re ironic because you told us not to feel and this is all that’s left.” I don’t know if this is “right” or “true” about Braff’s generation; I do know it’s true for Braff and he conveys it in a way that is touching. As Andrew wakes up to life, we root for him to stick with the process, and he has Sam there, rooting for him too.

Natalie Portman’s performance is amazing. In an era where actresses prove they have chops by playing plain roles, and using pounds of makeup and false noses to do so, Portman makes herself plain in a unique way—by acting. It’s all in the body language, the vocal intonation, the duck of her head and the just a bit too loud laugh. She’s just geeky enough to not be beautiful, and yet still be Natalie Portman. It’s quite impressive.

Ian Holm doesn’t get to do much as Andrew’s father, but the relationship is well-written and played, right up until a too-pat ending. I can accept the ending, though, because it’s the ending Andrew believes he has; if he finds out later that life isn’t that simple, that’s fine too.

See Garden State for the humor, the sweet romance, and for the journey through Weird New Jersey.