Don't Follow Her To England
I've become, like Mesh mentioned yesterday, a "Garden State" trailer junkie.
I want to point out writer/director/actor Zach Braff has a blog. Cool.
Also, the Garden State website is a great example of what I love about the fusion of film, photography, music, & web technology.
I have a question: when, in the history of movies, did *girls* move into the wierd salvific role they so often play in the "young, purposeless, angst-ridden male" movies. Don't get me wrong, I totally identify. I call it the Lloyd Dobbler effect. In our PoMo post-hippie non-fight club maleness it only makes sense that we'd look to a girl to provide meaning, but when did it get so dang everywhere? Was the first Say Anything? I'm gonna need somebody with a much bigger knowledge of film (and the time to think about it) than myself to fill me in here.
Ties into one reason why I liked All The Real Girls so much: it spun that whole "girl will save the aimless slightly dorky single guy" motif on its head. Made it, in my opinion (and forgive me for having to say this), a much more emotionally realistic film. No truly screwed up relaationship in this world was every the product of one person's baggage, its an insult to the drepravity & complexity of both persons involved to think that any one can be blamed.
And as my mind keeps flailing: makes me think of Anderson's twist with Max Fischer's obsessive pursuit of Rosemary. I'm not sure if Max believes Rosemary will save him, at least not with the level of self-aware aplomb of someone in their early-to-mid twenties; but the nascent seeds are still there.
Alright, one more viewing of the Garden State trailer and back to work.
Josiah Q. Roe | By Josiah Roe | 11:37 AM
Comments
Hah, it's funny you said that. I've totally become a junkie too since you posted it yesterday. I was going to show it to my environmental economics students today, but I think they already think I'm weird enough as it is.
Posted by: scott cunningham at July 28, 2004 11:49 AM
Incidentally, you can download "Such Great Things" by The Postal Service from their website for free.
http://www.subpop.com/bands/postalservice/downloads.php
Posted by: scott cunningham at July 28, 2004 12:11 PM
The "redeeming love of a woman" is a major theme of Wagner's operas, so it's at least that old in quasi-pop culture. I've noticed it a lot in recent film as well.
Posted by: Jonathan at July 28, 2004 01:37 PM
Scott, its "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service, and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie (one of my fav bands) is also The Postal Service (along with Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello).
If you like The Postal Service, you need to pick up Death Cab for Cuties "Transatlanticism", which is pretty much Ben Gibbard songwriting his divorce. Its brutal.
Posted by: JosiahQ at July 28, 2004 02:02 PM
The salvific woman is pretty ubiquitous in comtemporary film, but I wouldn't blame "Say Anything," in which Lloyd plays the more redemptive force. I do think that the cliche reasserted itself in the 80's, when the close examinations of male-female relationships (via Bertaloucci, Altman, Coppola, etc.) were generally replaced by simpler, more box-office friendly tales. I suspect that Tom Cruise films (Top Gun, Days of Thunder) played a role...
Posted by: mesh at July 28, 2004 02:24 PM
I think a lot of that is Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson's doing.
Posted by: gosey at July 29, 2004 10:28 AM
I've been waiting for this film to come out for months and I think I've watched the trailer over a hundred times. It was the same with Amelie, which, when it finally came to Chattanooga I went to a matinee every day that it was here.
But there's just something about that Garden State trailer. I was so relieved when I saw that it's coming to my little downtown theater in Colorado.
Posted by: Gypsy at August 2, 2004 05:19 AM
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