The latest in generation-defining filmsA 'State' of limbo, like 'Graduate'
On the talking-'bout-my-generation movie highway, there are milestones that mark how successive eras are defined. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) etched high school alienation in a decade of conformity. The Graduate (1967) depicted a numb rebel, a baby boomer at the crossroads of suburbia and bohemia. Singles (1992) boasted Generation Xers newly independent of parents and longing for romantic partners. Garden State, Zach Braff's lyrical directorial debut, self-consciously announces itself as a baby buster generational marker - and richly deserves the designation. Written and directed by and starring Braff, lanky star of television's Scrubs, his semiautobiographical seriocomedy is about a struggling actor who's been suspended in lithium limbo since childhood.
On the talking-'bout-my-generation movie highway, there are milestones that mark how successive eras are defined. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) etched high school alienation in a decade of conformity. The Graduate (1967) depicted a numb rebel, a baby boomer at the crossroads of suburbia and bohemia. Singles (1992) boasted Generation Xers newly independent of parents and longing for romantic partners.
Garden State, Zach Braff's lyrical directorial debut, self-consciously announces itself as a baby buster generational marker - and richly deserves the designation. Written and directed by and starring Braff, lanky star of television's Scrubs, his semiautobiographical seriocomedy is about a struggling actor who's been suspended in lithium limbo since childhood.
When Andrew Largeman (Braff) flies home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral and is unable to grieve, it dawns on him that the drugs that his psychiatrist father prescribed to control mood swings prevent him from experiencing any feeling.
After he goes off his meds, "Large" notices the fog that shrouds him and also notes a stubborn sunbeam in the form of a girl named Sam (Natalie Portman) that penetrates the haze. If the term "plastics" is shorthand for the sellout soullessness of the older generation in The Graduate, then the operative metaphor here is drugs, prescribed by parents to control the behavior of their children. The specter of the drug generation making its kids drug-dependent haunts Braff's film in the chilly person of Ian Holm as Large's father.
Once the drug fog lifts, Large observes the evocative landscapes of his native state. These include a quarry where nuggets of wisdom are mined, a cemetery where long-buried emotions are exhumed, a medical center in a suburban office park where the lovesick are treated. There's also an unfurnished McMansion that symbolizes the unfeathered nest of a generation that's flown the coop but has yet to make a permanent home of its own.
The unexpected panoramas of Braff's film, which sells New Jersey as an infinite inventory of magic-realist real estate, are as striking as this tale of a male sleeping beauty awakened by an awkward charmer.
Portman hasn't had a role this good since Beautiful Girls, and her cockeyed pixie - an epileptic, compulsive liar, and fount of fun - makes Garden State particularly lush.
In its unfamiliar look at a familiar crossroads - what pop psychologists Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner dub the Quarterlife Crisis - Garden State has much in common with the tilt and the tone of Lost in Translation. Braff scores his story to the jaunty melancholy of The Shins and Nick Drake.
All too familiar is how Braff initially interprets the blank-faced Large, uncomfortably close to Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. But just when you'd like to smack Large's anesthetized face, he begins to express emotion. And then he resembles an awed toddler discovering just what his feet are capable of.
The best performances are those of Portman and the resourceful Peter Sarsgaard (Shattered Glass) as Mark, a gravedigger, pothead and mildly larcenous friend of Large's who introduces his pal to the buried treasures and mysteries of Jersey.
As a writer and filmmaker, Braff leavens the heavier passages of his saga with copious amounts of whimsy. Though this gives the film a sitcom feel, I like the way Braff sets out his character's problem and doesn't feel a need to neatly resolve it.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey
at 215 854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.
Garden State
*** (out of four stars)
Produced by Pamela Abdy, Richard Klubeck, Gary Gilbert and Dan Halsted, written and directed by Zach Braff, photography by Lawrence Sher, music by Chad Fischer, distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 42 mins.
Andrew Largeman. . . Zach Braff
Sam. . . Natalie Portman
Mark. . . Peter Sarsgaard
Diego. . . Method Man
Gideon Largeman. . . Ian Holm
Parent's guide: R (drugs, profanity, mature themes)
Playing at: select area theaters