Culture, Sports, Writing…or whatever
Now that I’ve graduated college and grown up and done everything I was ‘supposed to do,’ I’m surprised at how much everyone’s lying about how they feel. I’m most disconcerted at how much I find times where I’m lying to myself.
Okay, here’s where I’m going with this: This year, I did the dreamer thing and moved from small town to big city. My landing spot: Atlanta. One activity I’ve forced myself to do is explore. I refused to squander days in a city like Atlanta sitting at home watching Netflix. (Plus, I tend to romanticize adventures.) Turns out, I’m pretty decent at picking a spot of town and discovering neat restaurants or stores or parks or all the other stuff a part of town might offer.
But every time I mentioned moving to Atlanta to a family member or friend, or that I’d been living in Atlanta a couple of months, streams of advice vomited out their mouth. They’d lived in cities, you see, and since I never have, I must be cautious about which blocks I traverse and where I ate and how I dressed and what time it was and don’t do this and don’t do that because, Bren, you’re just not that city-smart yet. You’ll learn. Like we did.
After two weeks, I (largely) ignored that mountain of fearful living bullshit and went where I wanted. But December, I visited underground Atlanta. Ever since seeing the sign “Underground Atlanta” when I first moved here, it’s a place that seemed to teem with possibilities. My favorite being some hipster hangout spot, dotted with various ‘good eats,’ and where people stood on corners smoking Black & Mild’s debating local hip hop that hadn’t buzzed outside the city yet. Exactly two of those assumptions proved correct.
Here’s the scene: Possibly because it’s early-afternoon Monday, gesturing a more barren look than normal, backdropped by a gray sky, hinting at a more foreboding feel than warranted, this backgrounds as what those various friends and family members warned as “not a safe part of town.” Excusing those reactions on the weather, I continue on.
As I walk, a couple people approach me asking for money, but I tell them, sorry I don’t have any cash. A situation done and dealt with previously. I’m a city boy now; I know how to deny help to those less fortunate when necessary. Not a snarky thing, just a survival thing. I (still) feel slightly guilty lying.
I pause outside a Jamaican joint, debating if I want a bite. Really, I’m not thinking about my stomach but about my stepmom and her Jamaican co-workers, and how a pang of missing them hits me, and wondering what they’d think — “Sir!”
Me? “Sir!” A black, larger woman jogs across four lanes of traffic toward me, repeating “Sir!” Once reaching me, “Listen, listen,” she starts. “Sir, my momma’s from the islands and my daddy raised us in New Yawk. So when I tell you this spot right here’s the best Jamaican joint in Atlanta, I know what I’m talking about.” Pan over to the menu posted on the storefront.
“Look at me. I weigh 275 pounds. I know what good eatin’ is.” A mixture of hunger, longing, and amusement convinces me. Thanking her for the advice, I step to the door. “Sir, you think you could — you know — help me out a little bit?”
“Sure,” I reply, but keeping with my rule, “I’ll buy you some food.”
We walk inside and this woman acts like she owns the place, but she earns the attitude. “Hey Randy,” she says to the Jamaican wearing a chef hat. He returns a half-smile. “Look I brought you a new customer” — then to me “Randy’s knows how to do it, I’m telling you” — and back to Randy, in a tone that unnerves me, though I try to ignore it, “aren’t you proud of me?”
We order our meals: Goat curry over rice with fried plantains for me and ox tail combo meal, side of rice and beans, for her. She excuses herself to the bathroom and I fill my drink, find a table. My meal comes before my new acquaintance finishes her business so I sit down, picking at the plantains, half-waiting, half-wondering if she’ll join. I kind of hope she will, because even though I suspect something’s being pulled here, or how much this might be an act of some sorts, I’m buying it. It’s fun.
When she exits the bathroom, she walks to the counter, grabs her meal, says a few more words to Randy, fills her fountain cup, and exits the store. Not even a glance my way. Which is fine, give without expecting anything in return and all that, but my goat curry and plantains and fixings blend together to taste at best like spicy mush.
And even though I try thinking it through and rationalizing it, I remain feeling shitty and slightly used by the experience. I’m not sure if I’m entitled to that reaction, or even if I should feel any type of way about the whole event, especially because I willingly walked into the whole thing (I mean, I basically ran headfirst into a self-made wall of expectation) but that’s where I was. This is the type of event I fear transforms people into cynics. Sometimes, in moments like this, I wish I was the kind of person that says, fuck you, and dismisses the moment, but I’m not that person. I’m just not.
Anyway, I leave and see her chatting to someone else back across the street. Pushing those irrational, reactionary thoughts out of my mind, I walk toward my car.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, responding to a few texts, a family of three appears outside my car. They had fallen on hard times, they explain, and need some money to pay rent, and I lie again, Sorry, no cash, before taking off feeling slightly more guilty and now jaded. That night, finding myself turning over the day in my head more and more, I went to see the new Hunger Games movie, a newfound response of mine. It (sort of) helped, but then Jennifer Lawrence’s character mentions Prim and my thoughts wander to the small girl who refused to meet my eyes as I lied to her parents about money.
Some days in the city are better than others.
So what I’m trying to say is that 2014 has been a strange year to process. Finishing college, graduating, sitting around doing nothing all summer following four years of nonstop motion, saying goodbye to everyone, breaking up with girlfriends but still talking to them when I know I shouldn’t, feeling lost or dissatisfied or ecstatic at various points in my “career,” growing up (whatever that means) (and trying to figure out what that means), meeting new friends, living in a new city, learning to deal with some of the troubling truths of cities (and by extent, the country), trying to keep up with everyone and failing numerous times, and all the other stuff I know people around me are going through but no one admits. And that’s to say nothing of how messy 2014 was in a national, real-world sense.
People deal with shit different ways; one of mine this year was watching movies. I’ve appreciated movies a bit, but usually as a side to reading, TV, gaming, etc. I don’t game anymore and I haven’t found TV that compelling lately, so movies filled the void. I used to swell with nameless dread seeing a movie because of its length (two and a half hours of just sitting there), but oddly that’s what comforts me now. For however long the movie plays, that’s all that matters; all other worries rendered meaningless until the movie ends.
So I’m ranking the films I’ve seen this year because writing and listing things helps me make sense of the world. The number beside each movie could change (and has changed) based on the day, but my feelings associated with them do not.
(One caveat: To make the list, a movie had to be released in 2014. Sorry, too many movies to name, but a sincere apology to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I haven’t so fully fallen for a movie since seeing Shawshank Redemption many Christmases ago.)
Hopefully we can understand each other a little more after this.
***
29) X-Men First-Class 2: The Irrelevant Subtitle No One Remembers
I hate ranking this as is. And as much as smart Internet writers have been lamenting Hollywood transforming into a franchise-churning machine, particularly when it involves characters in tights and capes, I ignored all the signs until this movie. This best describes my attitude for the past several years.
As a dork who actively defended that Wolverine Battles all of Japan’s Yakuza and Samurais movie, I can’t ignore how weak X-Men First Class 2 was. It aimed to jam as many characters as possible to achieve as many nerd-boners as possible with as much chaos as possible so you wouldn’t realize how tired and worthless as possible too many of these superhero movies have become.
28) Need for Speed
Long ago, I accepted I’m the precise target demographic for these type of movies. Fast cars that go vroom. Aggressively masculine, unknowable-against-their-own-desires lead characters who man-whisper banal, limited but positive worldviews. Scantily-clad women. Highly implausible action sequences. It’s my movie crack.
But Aaron Paul Vin Diesel is not. Had someone snipped around 25–30 minutes to this, it’d at least rank 10 spots higher.
27) Nonstop
Pretty sure I’d watch Liam Neeson take back taken things for hours on end. The object of desire this time — his humanity. (And a hi-jacked airplane…Iguess.)
26) Hunger Games: The Mockingjay Part 1 of a 1,000 (because let’s never risk anything and produce movies destined to churn money again and again and again and again and…instead of creating one dope ending to a trilogy, because who wants another Return of the Jedi? Fuck that.)
Can’t remember the last time I enjoyed something so thoroughly but left feeling kind of used afterwards. It probably involves sex of some sort.
25) This is Where I Leave You
I did not laugh harder at any movie all year than Adam Driver screaming “Shit! Shit! Shit!” while running late to his father’s funeral. During the matinee I attended, two older ladies turned around and amusingly laughed at me cackling uncontrollably while Driver vocally and metaphorically “Shit!”-ed on his family grieving their lost loved one.
I (kind of) wanna do this one day. (Don’t read this part. I’m telling you don’t.) It’d have to be the right person’s funeral of course. My grandfather would zombify and murder me on the spot if I did at his. Hm. Still don’t have a good answer of who. Is this too sardonic a line of thinking? Likely. (Okay, probably.) (All right, most definitely it is but death shouldn’t be as scary as we make it out to be.)
24) 22 Jump Street
When the most laugh-worthy scene of the movie is credits rolling with all the possible “sequels” directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord could make, essentially euthanizing the foundational joke about worthless Hollywood sequels the actual movie had tried — sometimes well, sometimes not — to make, and hitting that macabre note harder and funnier than the entire movie combined, it’s safe to say 22 Jump Street missed some of its shots. Enjoyed it, though.
23) That Awkward Moment
Movies like this perpetuate my New York fantasy: Everyone’s having sex nearly always, everyone’s got wonderful jobs they love, apartment space isn’t that bad, people walk and talk a lot, but to a non-Sorkinian tempo (thank god, that’d be so tiring), and life’s capital-A Awesome.
Can’t wait to move there.
22) Wish I Was Here
Already wrote why this is “my type of movie,” but when did it become so intellectually hip to dump on Zach Braff? Critics, Twitter ‘intelligentsia’ (lol at that term), smart people I really respect, all shit upon Braff with glee.
Other than the criticism of how he financed this movie, it’s probably because Braff, within his projects and in interviews, does seem to take himself quite seriously. I tend to believe it’s an earnestness of his art, but (I guess) I could see why people might view it otherwise. Then again, being consistently semi-serious in a non-deprecating or non-mocking or non-accusatory fashion might be the hardest quality to uphold in today’s Internet culture.
21) The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
This is not a fair ranking. I do not like placing it here. But let me explain.
Eleanor Rigby exists in three different versions: Her, Him, and Them. It’s a story of a couple once in love and who remain tightly bound to one another, but their individual lives and histories muddled that up. The film documents their relationship’s fallout and them trying to figure out what to do with each other and themselves.
But what elevates Eleanor Rigby to cool status is that each version of the film tells the story from a different side. It supposedly focuses tightly on a character and refuses to show what the other character’s experiencing. Him and Her. Then, director Ned Benson fused the Him and Her versions into a Them.
Unfortunately, I’ve only seen the Them version because the Atlanta art house theater I go to lied and said they’d be showing all three then didn’t. Remain interested and enjoyed the movie, but felt a bit cheated not experiencing the project as intended.
20) Edge of Tomorrow
I was not sober when I saw this movie. Anything but. Didn’t matter much though because as it were, Edge of Tomorrow plays like a Tom Cruise fail-compilation within the well-worn narrative of Tom Cruise saving the world except, and this significantly improves the movie, Emily Blunt’s characteractually holds the key to saving the world. And not in some tired trope of Cruise needs to protect her long enough to travel from Point A to Point B way, but vice versa. Not too hard of a movie to comprehend, which is why I liked it so much in the state I was in.
19) Under the Skin
Did you know different countries contain different catalogues on Netflix? I read that on Business Insider a while ago and the article even taught readers how to manipulate their IP address to trick Netflix into believing the user’s in a different country, thereby allowing them to access these different Netflix catalogues. I didn’t do it because I’m lazy and a slave to the machine.
Anyway, visiting Canadian family during holidays, I wanted to Netflix Canada-style (which is way better for movies than American Netflix) and I had to choose between Under the Skin or Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson slightly pisses me off as a director so I went with the movie that had Scarlet Johannsen. I did not select wrong.
18) Neighbors
More on Seth Rogen soon, I promise.
17) Foxcatcher
I don’t believe this movie was cold and dark and claustrophobic and lifeless and cruel to its most redeeming character and cynical and stilted enough. I’m not joking. It feels like Steve Carrell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo believe they’re playing different movies or that director Bennett Miller doesn’t know where he wants Foxcatcher to take audiences. Miller attaches this removed aesthetic to his lens in the name of, oh I don’t know, objectivity? It doesn’t work.
Honestly, I’m only placing this movie 17 because I’m not sure where else to rank it and it has some awards season hype behind it. Middle-ish won’t upset anyone, right?
16) A Man Most Wanted
When Philip Seymour Hoffman died this year, friends approached me and apologized as if I had lost a dear family member.
It’s probably because I get choked up every time I see scenes like this.
Or watch wide-eyed and invigorated and usually want to scream at authority figures like this.
And because I so closely feel this.
People identify with artists because they feel like avatars to our own emotions and experiences. Some reach us more directly, others indirectly. PSH did both for me. I recently learned that he was a big fan of Piedmont Park when he lived in Atlanta shooting scenes for Hunger Games. He liked riding his bike down the trails, saying hello to people as he passed. I smiled when I read that, probably because it reinforced everything I already believed about Hoffman and I too am a big fan of Piedmont Park. Wish you were still here, man.
15) Dear White People
Director and writer Justin Simien should have either went more satirical (my choice) or more character-driven with it, but I’m glad this movie exists. Particularly in a year like 2014.
14) Ride Along
Anyone who complains about Kevin Hart vehicles really means they prefer movies that surprise them. Take Hart’s upcoming Wedding Ringer for example. You already know what that’s about; you know what will be said and what will be mocked and you will laugh. This is because Kevin Hart’s a character actor playing ‘Kevin Hart’: A guy trying to play cool, gets in over his head, has some epiphany about who he is, accepts that, and realizes people love him anyways and becomes what he’s wanted to be as a result: cool. He’s the new Adam Sandler, but not as subversive.
Ride Along’s great because Hart finally looks comfortable acting full ‘Kevin Hart.’ Add in Ice Cube slightly lampooning against the idea of old ‘Ice Cube’? Too strong.
13) Guardians of the Galaxy
…and just when I thought I was out, Marvel creates a superhero ensemble movie so joyous and heartfelt where each character has a bona fide role to play, including Vin Diesel as Groot (!!!), that I find myself maintaining hope. It’s possible we can have nice nerd things that double as mainstream culture after all.
12) Gone Girl
Here’s a creepy attraction to admit: When Rosamund Pike, drenched in blood and mischief, gestures toward Ben Affleck, asking if he’ll join her in the shower, I was quite turned on. Like, possibly more than any other moment in film this year. I couldn’t help it.
Others have sucked the proverbial bone dry with essays regarding the “Cool Girl” speech which bifurcates the two very different movies within Gone Girl. I won’t touch that, but a foggy truth encompasses that speech when it comes to what guys nowadays find so seductive. Men are dumb and can be tricked and manipulated if a woman knows specifically what that man wants. But what I found so downright enrapturing to Pike’s performance was the hyper-awareness she fused within her character following that speech. A woman who knows exactly who she is and what she wants and fights for it at all costs describes what most men want and I assume vice versa.
(Although, to be honest, Pike’s character did lose a lot of credibility when she trusted that woman who admitted to unironically liking Kreayshawn with her money. Frustrated me a little bit when Pike acted soooo surprised she got robbed. Never trust anyone who even suspects they like Kreayshawn. Ever.)
11) Nightcrawler
How Jake Gyllenhall became Hollywood’s de-facto offbeat, unhinged character actor I’m still trying to contextualize, but so he is. I almost didn’t buy Gyllenhall’s crazy-guy Lou until he began re-arranging bodies at crime scenes to capture a ‘perfect shot.’ How he meticulously poses them, lining these lifeless bodies like a director re-arranging mannequins to provide depth, sort of nonplussed me. If anything, I might characterize myself as impressed to the dedication of his craft.
I can think of at least one photojournalist friend who might (and has) done something similar, although not to Lou’s scale. Maybe that’s why this movie has stuck with me: It feels wholly realistic when it should seem anything but.
10) The Interview
My Canadian family and I rented this on Christmas and watched it on YouTube because a) we support America even though b) Sony predominately views itself as a Japanese company and c) Seth Rogen’s a Jewish Canadian so I guess d) we were supporting the idea of America* because e) nothing matters to us more than our entertainment products especially f) one that’s laugh out loud funny as this one which g) smartly satirizes North Korea, media culture, America’s international view for itself despite h) what any high-browed critics might say otherwise although i) James Franco does overextend his Skylark character’s reach a bit and j) yeah, it’s another Rogen/Franco vehicle about dude-bros with heart but k) I like their dude-bros’ earnest sincerity, especially l) considering the slim layer of sophistication Rogen and Franco play them compared to Knocked Up and Pineapple Express days and how m) most of the physical agency is granted to the North Korean characters that n) Rogen and Franco ultimately rely upon to escape or else they’d o) die, making p) a backhanded commentary that America needs to trust other countries a bit more and q) stop believing that white men in power have all the answers except r) when it comes to making foreign leaders crap their pants which s) America’s still the best at doing.
*Oddly, Canadians never call America America. If you ever have a conversation with a Canadian, they will refer to this country as “the States.” I always think of it as some unconscious meta-commentary on American identity: we view ourselves as a collection of varying individuals/most people, when asked where they’re from, will name a state not “America” or “the United States”/possibly it’s a slight quip from Canadians to delegitimize American Exceptionalism, considering their neighboring role as America’s little brother. Or maybe they would rather say two syllables (“the States”) instead of three (“America”). No idea, really
So, yeah, good movie.
9) Happy Christmas
Somewhere in some different dimension, I secretly hope a version of myself exists that makes movies. For too many reasons to list, the sliding doors of my life led me to discover a romantic passion for film at a young age and dream of creating likewise art of my own. In this reality, I hope Joe Swanberg never was born because his movies (along with the Duplass brothers) are the type I’d envision myself producing.
What draws me to Swanberg’s projects like Happy Christmas or something like Drinking Buddies is that he risks nearly everything with each project. (I heard on a podcast once, I believe it was a Bret Easton Ellis episode, that he’s been bankrolling most of his previous films through his own credit lines, even his own mortgage once; how insane is that!?) For nothing seemingly more than artistic merit, he recorded Happy Christmas on 35-millimeter film, which is an incredibly expensive endeavor for something so quiet like this. It does provide a living aesthetic to the movie but still. Most of his films don’t strive beyond just sitting with these broken characters who have no clue what their life should be. Some come across as self-aware, but others, like Anna Kendrick’s character in Happy Christmas, don’t realize how shitty and selfish they can be. Or if they do, it’s on a subconscious level, which they’re hiding from themselves for whatever reason or another. Seriously, the baby might be the happiest human in this movie.
Maybe I like Swanberg projects so much because for once I can look at a movie screen and see someone like myself. I enjoy that.
8) Interstellar
Boo if you thought this movie (or any movie over 120 minutes) is too long. Boo if you didn’t buy Nolan-as-told-through-McConaughey’s sappy, positive message about love’s infinite reaching possibilities. Boo if you think Christopher Nolan, director, is overrated.
Mostly, boo if you didn’t see this movie in theaters because, fuck, it was epic. And I do it mean that in every sense of the word.
7) Snowpiercer
Don’t you hate when writers quote their own tweets? Like as if it’s some lazy shorthand that can’t be simply written out? Or possibly re-written afterwards with added, possibly necessary context?
So do I.
https://twitter.com/BrenBures/status/489961581862608896
6) Lego Movie
No movie has filled me with delight like Lego Movie. And I’m counting other films I saw for the first time that didn’t release in 2014. It entered that HBO channel rotation and I’ve caught it four or five viewings at different moments, finding myself watching the whole thing again.
Full disclosure: Father-son stuff can be an emotional blindspot for me. I can’t properly judge the merit of something because my feelings floodgates overrun and gush into any critique or reaction I might have. In other words, the big “reveal” of this movie got me. It was awesome. Everything is awesome.
5) Top Five
Top Five had to be top five. Did I make some excuses and lie to myself a bit to get it here? Of course I did. I regret absolutely nothing.
I was listening to Juan Epstein at the gym and it was the episode with Chris Rock and ?uestlove on it. They were there to promote the movie (?uest served as musical director) and discuss old-school hip hop/debate various hip-hop top five’s (producer, rapper, group, etc). It was a dope episode.
Anyway, ?eust said, when he first saw the movie exclaimed, “This movie was made for me!” I found myself saying the same. Hip hop culture embedded throughout, the small scope of the film, various people arguing their top five rappers, DMX singing, Woody Allen’s more upbeat notes — he practically hits you over the head with it; Chris Rock named his character Andre Allen for Christ sake — and flourishes of Nora Ephron, and ultimately how it’s about two people rediscovering passion and love. Also, it’s damn funny. How can I not think and feel like it was made for me.
4) Birdman
Only within the past six months or so have I become acutely aware how a director’s choice of shot can influence my perception. An arc shot vs. a close up vs. smash cuts, etc. Because I’m ultimately a predictable human being, my favorite’s the long-take or one-shot. I can’t deny my awe and childish giddiness when a director nails it. My old roommate and I binged through True Detective during summer and when we got to that show’s iconic one-shot, I lost my mind. The next day, when he left for work, I re-watched the episode then immediately afterwards re-watched just the scene. Later in the week, I forced the girl I was seeing at the time to watch, devoid of any context since she’d seen none of the show, because wasn’t that just so damn cool.
So yeah, I like one-shots. And Alejandro Iñárritu filmed an entire film deceivingly as one shot with Birdman. Where he devised cuts or utilized breaks in case he needed to swap in different takes pops as obvious if you look close enough. But the fun of Birdman is allowing the magician to wow you even though a part of you knows a secret compartment hides a rabbit under the hat. Regardless, because of these extended takes not typically asked of actors and actresses, a presence embodies these performances, like they were stage actors (which is what they’re playing). Alive I would classify them. Almost surreal. Thinking about it, isn’t that what film should feel like anyways? Hyperrealistic life?
3) Inherent Vice
I have not seen this movie, but I’m assuming how I’m going to react. Paul Thomas Anderson remains my favorite working director and Joaquin Phoenix might be one of the last working people in Hollywood committed to his art over fame. (He made a mockumentary about it actually.) I would feel remiss if this movie wasn’t on this list.
(Ed. Note: I have since seen this movie. Twice. It’s ranked where it should be.)
2) Boyhood
A strange thing’s happened with this movie: Every critic likes it; no, they love it. A scant few have decried it, but these people so plainly wish to appear contrarian it comes across as it is: preposterous. If you were to poll critical opinions nationwide, Boyhood would surely beat out any other movie that’s debuted in 2014.
But nobody I know in real life has seen it, save a few film friends. To a patron who may see one (if that) movie a month, urging them to see a wandering meditation on experiencing adolescence during our increasingly unknowable technology age, where change feels constant not variable, may not exactly qualify as ‘must-see.’ I found myself describing the plot to family and friends as “well, this kid basically grows up with like iPods and stuff over about 12 years.” But that’s why Boyhood’s so fucking amazing! A swath of people committing themselves to a project like this, adding the conceptual element of time to filmmaking and acting is something never achieved or even tried. All to document, year by heartbreaking year, how it feels to lose innocence and learn how to define what you accept as your reality of the world. It’s art in every reaching, semi-annoyingly highbrow sense of the word; that’s it. But I’m worried it’ll be remembered only in a critical sphere instead of the much bigger world it so lovingly depicts.
1) Whiplash
So what if I’m biased? So what if I love this movie because it holds up a funhouse mirror to some combination of my high school and present self? So what if I had an instructor precisely like J.K. Simmons who’d routinely discourage kids out of some misplaced yearning for greatness? So what if I identify with Miles Teller, character and actor, too closely? So the fuck what?
Here’s Andrew Nieman (Miles Teller) who wears a naked hunger on every inch of his being, with an animalistic desperation for success feeding off Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) and his ravenous craving of being associated with importance. One symbiotically needs the other, pushing at each other’s outlines when human expectation would beg otherwise. And the camera! It doubles as an audience stand-in, or more aptly what director Damien Chazelle embodies as sort of where these two men envision the attention and power of the room is being placed. (If you’ve seen the movie, that’s why the final shot cuts where and when it does. What happens after that final shot’s irrelevant to these two.)
It’s the only movie I’ve paid to see twice this year and given the chance I’d pay a third, possibly a fourth. Nothing fully captivated me this year like Whiplash’s final scene, a masterpiece marriage between the elements of film like directing, acting, editing, sound production, and storytelling, among others. At work, at home, I’ve listened to the film’s soundtrack, which includes bits of the story. As it replays in my ears, the film’s images flicker in my mind and I feel like merely by its music, I’m experiencing Whiplash all over again. It’s the one movie that returns to me time and time again unexpectedly.
As more impressive technically, historically, artistically other movies might compare, Whiplash ultimately meant the most to me out of any movie in 2014. Complicated as the rest of the year might have been, this of all things, I see clearest.
***
I suppose I should wrap this up in some tidy way, but I’m not that interested in that. No real ending’s in sight anyways. Instead here’s the soundtrack I repeated while writing this because I’m trying to keep it too real.
“When we were kids, my brother and I used to pretend that we were heroes. The only ones who could save the day. But maybe we’re just the regular people; the ones who get saved.” –Aidan Bloom, Wish I Was Here
“Hey Sol, do you ever wonder at what point you just got to say fuck it man? Like when you gotta stop living up here, and start living down here?” “It’s 7:30 in the morning, dawg.”–B. Rabbit and Sol, 8 mile
“So what are you doing now that you’ve graduated?” –Every adult in my life the past four months
Yesterday, my friend and Twitter personality @perrykos tweeted this at me.
So instead of finishing packing for Atlanta, I decided to go see it. He was right; it is my kind of movie. As asked, here are my thoughts:
-Some movies are made for fun and to blow stuff up. Other movies are meant to capture the human condition and express some keen insight about our world. Then there’s movies like Wish I Was Here, that isn’t concerned with legacy or character conventions or Hollywood success; it’s meant to communicate emotions and moments. Let me explain: Wish I Was Here is about Aidan Bloom, a semi-allegorical Zach Braff who’s fledgling as an actor and dissatisfied with life. He swears freely in front of his children—so much that a Costco-sized Swear Jar is full of his curses—disavows his Jewish heritage, and has a stilted relationship with his brother and father. His wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) experiences sexual harassment at work where she plugs numbers into spread sheets, a shitty job necessary to pay bills and feed the family. Nobody, to start, is that happy in this movie.
-Then, Wish I Was Here changes and gains momentum when Aidan’s father’s cancer returns and this fractured extended family is forced to come together. Previously broken, they adventure down a spiritual journey to fix themselves, despite themselves. They attempt to rediscover happiness.
-There are moments in life nobody warns you about: I imagine it as some unexpected gust of wind pushes you off the cliff and you fall. Nobody warns you because they can’t—they’ve regained their feet and moved on. Either that or they’d rather forget. I have to think your father dying and giving up on your dreams is one of those moments. To be a bit personal, graduating from college is another.
-Life is funny because it feels like two contradictory thoughts about it exist in my head at all times: 1) Everybody seems to know what they’re doing or supposed to do, myself included, and that life has numerous branching paths, each with slightly varying workloads and emotional stresses, and all you have to decide is what road to travel upon. 2) Nobody knows what they’re doing. Everybody pretends and perpetually searches for some greater meaning, especially as 20-somethings. Life is a constantly-shifting terrain with no nearby cartographer and no tools to plot where you’ve been and where you’re going. You might find temporary asylum, but that construction will crumble if you stay too long. Because of this, everyone is mostly wandering.
-Dreaming is a pretty modern concept; well, dreaming awake that is. Our lives are mostly satisfied, in a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs-type of way. I sometimes fantasize what it would be like to live like 500 or a 1,000 years ago, when nothing was knowable outside of your immediate vicinity. I don’t think they worried too much about their brands or blogs or Twitter followers or fulfilling their creative, spiritual needs. That’s a pretty 21st century/millennial problem, isn’t it?
-Older generations mock millennials because this is our “BIG PROBLEM” (and they usually present it in that mocking, deprecating way): What do I do with my life? What will bring me the most satisfaction? What will make me happy? But if this is our problem, shouldn’t we deal with it? America’s Greatest Generation has led us to this point, have they not?
-All these thoughts and ideas are woven into the DNA of Wish I Was Here. Aidan Bloom’s father provides money for Aidan’s children to attend private Jewish school and insists on obsolete ideas of work and patriarchy. Everyone else in the movie outside the Blooms seem to be pretty fine with life. Sarah and Aidan ask one another “When was the happiest you’ve seen me?” in a way that indicates they’re not sure what makes them happy anymore. Aidan keeps working to jumpstart his dead-end acting career because he believes he shouldn’t give up on his dreams.
-I like a lot of moments in this movie, but one stands out: Aidan brings his children out to some red rocks formation in the Californian desert because it’s the “greatest place on earth.” He gets his kids to stand atop these rocks with him, their arms wide open looking like they’re waiting for something spiritual to strike them. Aidan admits to his children he loves this place because he had the greatest epiphany of his life here and it’s transparent he’s searching for another one. They camp here for the night, and after his children fall asleep, Aidan tends the fire, still searching. The next morning his son Tucker asks, “Did you have your epiphany, Dad?” “No,” Aidan replies.
-Little movie-nerd aside here: Shots like that one and how the sun outlines Sarah as she’s surfing near movie’s end highlight Zach Braff’s wondrous eye as a director. It feels he’s more concerned with accurately capturing these moments and emotions than creating an appealing movie for everyone (especially critics). Also, still great at producing his own cinematic soundtracks.
–Wish I Was Here might be a bit heavy- and ham-handed for some, but @perrykos knows me—I liked this movie a good bit. It hits the right tender spots and ends optimistically, but not necessarily upbeat. In the end, we’re all still wanderers with some vague notion of where we’re going, but certain knowledge of where we’ve been.
[a] millennial reservations 