Screaming at the Abyss: A Review of “Garden State”
This film is rated R for language, nudity, sexual content, and crude sexual humor.
Since Garden State has been compared by some to The Graduate, I felt as though I must see it. It is always a dangerous thing to compare a new movie to a film that many consider to be the quintessential coming-of-age film of the 1960s. The opening of Garden State, with Andrew Largeman’s Benjamim Braddock-like deadpan facial expressions and bare environment, remind one of The Graduate. At one point in the film, we actually hear in the background a Simon and Garfunkel song, “The Only Boy Living in New York.” As Andrew is trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life, “real estate pyramid schemes” seem to have replaced “plastics.” While Garden State does not reach the significance of Mike Nichols’ classic film, it does handle some of the same themes. As a matter fact, while I watched this film I kept thinking that if this is an accurate portrayal of this generation, we have not advanced beyond the 1960s. I think we are in a time warp in which every post 60s generation is repeating the same mistakes with sex and drugs, still struggling to find some meaning and purpose in life.Garden State is written and directed by Zach Braf of Scrubs fame. He also plays the main character, Andrew Largeman, a young, twenty-something, so medicated with lithium, Zoloft, Paxil, and other anti-depressants prescribed by his psychiatrist father (Ian Holm), he is numb and barely able to function in life. Having found some work as a TV actor in Los Angeles, he returns to his home in New Jersey when his paraplegic mother drowns in the bathtub. Because Andrew’s emotional life has been dulled by medication for so long, he cannot weep over the death of his mother. The spiritual vacuum of his family is parodied by the closing song at the graveside service, Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady.” At one point, Andrew says that he is Jewish, but he doesn’t “do anything Jewish.”While home, Andrew meets and eventually falls in love with Sam, played by Natalie Portman, who is also receiving medical treatment because she is a compulsive liar. Having chosen different ways to deal with a world that is dreary and monotonous, these two make an interesting pair to combine their searches for meaning.
Eventually, we learn that Andrew has been depressed since he was nine because he has been held responsible for his mother’s paralysis. Andrew remarks that it is amazing that his whole life has been determined by a 50 cent piece of plastic. Rather than spoil things by explaining that last sentence, suffice it to say that Andrew’s depression could have been handled in a more therapeutic manner than the use of prescription drugs.
Toward the end of the film, Andrew and Sam are taken by Andrew’s high school friend, Mark, played by Peter Sarsgaard, to a deep rock quarry. On the edge of the quarry is an old houseboat which serves as a home for a man and his wife. Andrew asks how deep the quarry is, and he is told that no one really knows. The man who lives in the houseboat likes to think of himself as the guardian of the “infinite abyss.”
Andrew realizes that his life, also, is an infinite abyss. Leaving the houseboat, Andrew goes to the edge of the quarry, peers into the abyss and begins to scream. He is joined by Sam and Mark, and they all begin to shout into this bottomless pit. The metaphor of the abyss and the primal scream in the face of it is a little over the top, but it does point to the despair felt by many of our young people in this generation. When trying to find some meaning in life, now that God is no longer an option, there is nothing but the abyss of meaninglessness.
How do the youth of today cope with the abyss, other than by screaming their displeasure in its presence? The solution for Andrew and Sam is found in one another. Their solution to the emptiness is in parroting clichés about love, seizing the moment, and embracing the anguish of life. Andrew finally decides to stop taking his medication, because he believes that to feel the misery and the pain is better than numbness: “It hurts, but it’s all we have,” Andrew says.
Standing before the abyss of unknowing is a common metaphor to describe our 21st century spiritual void. Life without God is an abyss of despair, and for many, numbness, screaming, and personal relationships are the only possible responses to this feeling of emptiness. But, as each of the generations since the 1960s is proving, these responses are not very satisfying.
Just as the soundtrack was so important to The Graduate, with “Mrs. Robinson” and “The Sound of Silence,” providing part of the mystique, the music for this film informs the feeling of depression and despair. “New Slang” by The Shins sounds like a Simon and Garfunkel tune, while “In the Waiting Line” (“I’ll shout and I’ll scream/But I’d rather not have seen”) by Zero 7 helps provide the right atmosphere for the searching, questioning, and lonely ambiance of this film.
Father Toms (c) 2005
