It is. It is totally exhausting. 

Wanderlust

get it? michael sho-WALTER?

David Wain is like that weird cousin I used to see at family gatherings. Most of the time, I kind of try to avoid him. Most of the time, I don't get his jokes, and he makes me cringe a lot more often than he makes me laugh. But also, I feel a certain undeniable affection, like we have known each other for a long time. That's actually true, in a way--I used to stay up late watching The State after my parents went to sleep when I was in high school. And even then, I didn't get it, but I was fond of it. All of these shows--Wet Hot American Summer, The State, Stella, Wainy Days, Role Models--I like them even though I don't exactly think they are funny. At least, not most of the time. The occasional laughs are big laughs, but they are few and far between. Maybe it's a thing I have to be in the right mood for. If so, I was in the seriously right mood for Wanderlust, because I embarrassed myself laughing at it.

overreaction, pre-review, written in a big hurry, rushing to judgment

This is one of those movies I should just decide right now that I will never see because I already know what's going to happen, which is that I will sit there alternating between bemusement and rage, hating everything about the movie, and then later everyone will have thought it was cute or charming or sweet. I did not rewatch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I hated, for years, but it kept coming up on respectable smart film critics' best-of-the-decade lists, so I thought maybe I had been in a reactionary mood when I saw it. After all, it came out in 2004, and maybe I was still figuring out that it's not exactly fair that all the stories seem to be told by men for men about men and their desires. A discovery like that can make a person overreact for a while. So I finally went back and gave it another chance, just a few months ago. And I hated it, I hated it. It's so gross the way we watch this whole story that is not just theoretically told from his perspective, but literally constructed solely from his memories, she has no existence in this movie. There is no Clementine. And we're supposed to have feelings about their relationship, to care what happens to them, and never mind the fact that they are both so terribly unpleasant and unimaginative and ugly, they are also just one person not two. Just this one man, and his internal fantasy about a life. Note: I also find the movie impossible to follow from a plot standpoint, and not very pretty to look at, but I'm getting into the weeds now. I'm not here to talk about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, except in that it is sort of the quintessential movie in which there is a relationship between an ordinary man and an impossible imaginary fantasy girl.

But this movie. Ruby Sparks. Jeez. In case you don't have time to watch the preview, the premise is that Paul Dano's character is a writer, and he creates a flesh-and-blood woman out of nothing. He's the inventor of her. Sort of like Pygmalion, but less progressive. It's a cute idea, I get that. Except that it's deeply troubling--and also a massive cliche. Consider the idea that a woman's very existence depends on being the object of love. It's troubling and it's also so very very boring.

It's like Zoe Kazan (who wrote the screenplay, and also stars in the movie) read about manic pixie dream girls, and she thought: the trouble with every Zooey Deschanel character is that it's theoretically possible for her to express an opinion. What we really need is a story about a woman who is literally controlled, internally and externally, by the man at the center of the story. What we need is a movie about how fun and awesome it is to be the girl in that story, or in that relationship.

Watching the trailer, I felt sort of sick and gross, this dizzy feeling I get when I am forced to realize that people don't see things the way I see things. It's not unlike the feeling when I can't find my keys, even though I know exactly where I left them. Like the reality I live in is just not quite the same reality where anyone else lives. It's unsettling to know that people I can most of the time communicate with are loving the wit and/or charm and/or humor of a thing I find mostly baffling and sometimes outrageous.

From the trailer: "You can make her do anything you want. For men everywhere, tell me you're not going to let that go to waste." Ha ha. Get it? Men want women to do stuff that they don't necessarily want to do. It is rough for men everywhere.

I know, maybe the movie will redeem itself. I admit there is a possibility that the movie is not what I think it is, that in the end somehow it's a movie about female agency not a movie at the expense of female agency. I recognize that I am rushing to judgment.

I am trying to think of examples of stories in which a woman defines the fantasy, they must exist. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Stranger Than Fiction, and the thing is, that movie is still all about the dude. It's all about the experience of being fictional. So I don't think it works as a counterexample. Certainly there are movies by and about women, great movies that reflect experiences of women or tell good stories about women. But it's hard to think of any where she has all the power and his desires are just a reflection of her needs.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

It's been a month since my last post announcing our next Tuesday move. Perhaps this Tuesday we'll actually watch it (I suck).

In the meantime (read: tonight) I watched another movie about a kid and a parent that is really about the kid: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. I picked the movie because it stars Jodi Foster in '76, the year she did Taxi Driver and Freaky Friday. She acts opposite, at least in part, a very distressing Martin Sheen (who, next to Foster the year of Taxi Driver, unavoidable reminds me of John Hinkley Jr.). There is also this Scott Jacoby, who seems more familiar than IMDB says he should.

I really loved it. It's like a lot of things jumbled together: Harold and Maude, Arsenic and Old Lace, the snippets I remember from The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Netflix categorizes the movie as a thriller, and it has won awards as a horror film. To me, though, it feels a bit more like a sad but very relatable fantasy: living alone in a big old house of your choosing, walking alone to town to buy one item, going to the library, studying languages, reading, listening to music, befriending a magician, growing up on your own time, getting away with murder. Watching it, I got the sense that I loved things I was supposed to find unsettling, and was unsettled by the things that should have warmed my heart.

I think it would make an excellent play.

[photo: I could probably do without the magician.]