The fact that he was a grave robber had no bearing on the plot or the theme.
The woman was integral in bringing the main character out of his funk. He was learning to love for the first time in his life and I think there should have been some reason WHY.
This was the woman who made him feel safe. Who he cried with for the first time in 20 years. There was no characterization of her beyond the quirkiness. There was no reason for him to feel safe and loved by her.
It’s hardly nitpicking to ask for some explanation why the character who was central in to the protagonist’s growth was a compulsive liar.
Here’s the thing: I don’t really care why the character was a compulsive liar. I don’t know WHY Branff (the writer) gave her a personality trait like that at all. Having no bearing on his growth, it was simply a distraction. But the entire movie seemed like whatever he thought of he put on the screen, so it was in line with that.
As for the dad. His motivations and characterization were clear.
He was a psychiatrist – that’s one way psychiatrists treat grief. The movie was about what happens when it becomes personal. He medicated his son because he believed his son would be so distraught that it was better off keeping him in a lithium-induced fog. His father was basically in such a fog himself (cf. his complete obliviousness to the fact that the bathroom had been redone even when asked point blank about any changes to the house) so it was no surprise that he kept his son that way for years.
For me it began losing momentum after they got the necklace at the boat.
I really like the Natalie Portman character. The random lying is something I do. No reason, I just to lie when it matters not at all. And the thing about doing something that has never been done before.
Sometimes I’ll just blurt out a random string of words and get some small pleasure from thinking about how I was probably the first person in the history of speach to string those words together, in any language.
I wasn’t keen on the ending. I would have preferred he left, because then he would have had time to realize that going off the drugs and then falling in love with the first girl that makes him feel something isn’t likely to be a good basis for a long-term relationship.
However, as much as I didn’t care for the ending, the conversation between the two on the stairs at the airport felt very real and Portman shined.
A good thirty minutes of the film was devoted to a quest to get a necklace that was obviously stolen from Largman’s mother’s corpse so I don’t see how his being a grave robber had no bearing on the plot.
I’ll admit that **obfusciatrist[/b has a point that the movie started losing steam after that and that it would have probably been better if it could have been wrapped up quicker after that point, but it was still a pretty sizeable chunk of the film and one that allowed him to discover the joys of everyday life and loving those he’s with.
While it may not have been integral, it was undeniably important.
Is that really “rescuing” her, though? She didn’t appear unhappy where she was. I never heard her say or imply that she didn’t want to be there anymore. I think she was fine with the place, she just wasn’t fine with being without him.
And for the record, count me in the “loved it” camp. I mean, really loved it. Best movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. So good that I didn’t care about the cliche at the end.
I liked the movie a lot myself but here’s something I don’t understand.
Why did the have to go on the quest at all? If the best friend is the one who stole the necklace, why did the guy in the boat have it? Did I miss something?
He stole it to sell and the man in the quarry bought it. At one point, while they were all sitting on the couch, he mentions offhand that he and his wife collect rare jewelry.
With regard to the necklace quest, I think that it’s more complicated than you’re apparently giving it credit for:
Necklace quest –
Go to hardware store and get 39 dollars for “returned knives.”
Get tank of nitrous oxide from God knows where to give to Diego at the hotel. (Mark, Peter Sarsgaard, mentions that he needs the tank back because he has 39 dollars tied up in a deposit for it.)
Diego tells them to go to the couple in the boat at the edge of the infinite abyss.
So Mark stole the necklace, sold it to Diego, who sold it to boat couple. Or so it seemed to me.
I liked the scenes with Mark and his mother, who have a relationship, even if it is a little odd. I mean, sure they hang out and get baked and snipe at each other, but they also seem to get along pretty well. As opposed to Large and his parents, who seem to have this reciprocal crippling thing going on.
And nobody else in the theater laughed at Aldous Huxtable. Sigh.
At least half the theater I was in laughed at the Aldous Huxtable joke.
I really liked the contrast between Sam’s house, with the pets everywhere and the elaborate hamster tunnels, and her warm, casual mother and Andrew’s parents’ formal house and his cold father.
I’m not sure why people are commenting on whether or not they’re screenwriters. People make movies in hopes of having some effect on their audience, not just having an effect on the screenwriters in the audience. The success of a movie isn’t determined by how tightly it adheres to the rules of screenwriting.
For what it’s worth, I really liked the movie, although I didn’t think it was perfect.
Oh, something else I meant to say. I didn’t see it said already so here goes. For any of you that watch Six Feet Under, wasn’t the cop that pulled Largeman over the same guy who attacked David Fisher? I’m pretty sure it’s the same actor, and it creeped me out a little bit.
I just got back from my third viewing and I still love it as much this time as I did the first. When it finally hits the dollar cinema, I’ll probably catch it a few more times. I really love this movie.
By the way, for once, I wasn’t the only one that got the Aldous Huxley joke. Gr8Kat, who I dragged along, laughed a bit at it and so did some other guy sitting on the other side of the theatre. No one else did though.
I saw it for the second time again and liked it nearly as much as before (a couple pieces of dialog bothered me that didn’t the first time; I don’t really care for Braff’s scenes with Ian Holm that much, although that might have something to do with the fact that I watched Alien right before that). I also appreciated the music more since I’ve been listening to the soundtrack non-stop since I saw it the first time.
So… does someone want to explain the Aldous Huxtable joke to me? Because, yeah, no idea. Never read the book.
The mistaken identity is most of the joke but it also has a second layer when you compare Huxley’s dystopic “Brave New World” to Huxtable’s, or rather, Cosby’s, utopian “Cosby Show”.
By the way, you say the soundtrack is good? I’ve been thinking about getting it but wasn’t sure if it would be worth it. How many tracks are there? What’s the length of the album?
Here’s track info. Almost every song that they use through the course of the movie is in there (when I watched it again today I think I noticed one that I didn’t recognize). It’s worth it just for “New Slang”, the song that Sam wants Andrew to listen to in the waiting room.
It’s on the short side - a little bit under an hour.
