Kirstiecat | Blog

rating:9/10

Increasingly what I think we’re starting to see is a new kind of genre of films…they are pseudo real and as nonfictional as some autobiographies. They are the films that focus on character development instead of plot devices. Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone You Know was very much like this for me and I had the same emotions while seeing this. The reality is that life is painful and the watching of reality could be just as full of heartache. Yet, we rejoice when others “get it” and understand the small insights that make life both devastating and worthwhile. Neither the writer Michael Arndt nor the mother in this film, played aptly by Toni Collette, will shield you from these either. (Perhaps the best scene in the film is one in which Collette decides it’s okay for her eight year old daughter to learn the harsh truth of her uncle’s hospital stay and depression)

I knew I wanted to see this film because Devotchka was on the soundtrack and the way that it starts out was slightly reminiscent of Magnolia only instead of a super long Aimee Mann track, we hear an equally extended Devotchka song while seeing snippets of a moment in each of the major film character’s lives. Throughout the film, we’re revisited by various reworkings of “How it Ends” to make up the film’s score.

And, of course, the characters are all very quirky. Steve Carell delivers a much different performance than audiences will be accustomed to as the middle aged #2 Proust scholar in despair because his lover has fallen for another man. To add to the turmoil, he’s been fired from teaching and overlooked for a scholarship. Kinnear also sticks to a more serious role than usual as the man who cannot achieve success with his own 9 step program. Abigail Breslin plays your average eight year old who looks up to the smiling girls she sees on Beauty Pageant tv while her older brother played by Paul Dano is a Donnie Darko obsessed with Nietzsche instead of the supernatural. Alan Arkin is a say-what-you-mean grandpa who isn’t always appropriate while Collette is the mom who tries to keep the family together in times of crisis. There are some absurdities with plot but the film doesn’t completely fall into the usual plot devices and hackneyed jokes because the concentration is how the characters develop and change as people. It’s also a film that is as much about growth and competition as it is a criticism of the beauty industry and what it does to people. Like life, it leaves us generally in an open ended scenario about many different issues but the sense of closure can be experienced in what the characters gain in understanding during the expanse of the film’s time.

If in the Chicago area, check out movie showtimes in the area through the Chicago Reader

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 11:54 pm and is filed under films, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.