Andrew Largeman in the Garden State, written and directed by Zach Braff, is a movie in which we see a main character who is detached from life. We watch as Andrew Largeman grows in his level of emotional capabilities, starting out seemingly unable to feel emotion of any kind due to being highly meditated by his psychiatrist father, and ending in falling in love with Sam a girl he meets along the way.
He seems to have a detachment from life based on the fact that the opening scene depicts airplane crash where he is calm and relaxed and shows no fear. While others around him are terrified, screaming and crying, he just turns on the air vent and relaxes. He feels detached, with how he seems ok with dying and shows no emotion. While he does that, a phone appears ringing, pulling him from his dream into a white room that is very clean and neat. He has a blank expression on his face as his father tells him, by leaving a message, that his mother died by drowning in the bath tub. His blank expression doesn’t change with the news of his mother. He gets up after his father tells him of his mother's death, we see him looking into the mirror with a split in the middle, and the cabinet behind is full medicine.
We move on to see him driving to work, we see him stuck in traffic. We come to see that he doesn't really care, like it doesn't trouble him that a gas pump nozzle is stuck in his tank still. It seems he doesn't care for his lateness; he also doesn't seem to care much about the Vietnamese style restaurant he works at. A woman at one of the tables he is waiting on was being demanding and rude but he just seems not to care much as he walks away. He seems to just walk though life; at the airport he is in the bathroom washing up; it feels ...
... middle of paper ...
... not gonna do it, okay? Cause like you said, this is it. This is life. And I'm in love with you... I think that's the only thing I've ever really been sure of in my entire life. And I'm really messed up right now, and I got a whole lot of stuff I have to work out, but I don't want to waste any more of my life without you in it. And I think I can do this. I mean, I want to. I have to, right?”(Braff)This is Largeman's journey from a man drugged and numb to his own life into a carefree man who is ready to love and feel the pain.
Largeman journey from a heavily mediated man that felt nothing for anyone or life now has grow to a man who one love and feel pain his journey with Sam help him see there is more to life then the medicine cabinet full of meds.
Works Cited
Garden State. Dir. Zach Braff. Perf. Zach Braff, Peter Sarsgaard and Natalie Portman. 2004. DVD.
When he first wakes up he just kind of stares at nothing, he can’t respond or even focus on anyone it seems. After the accident he has to learn everything by observing those around him and what they are doing. He also seems to listen to the sounds, expressions, and words they make to try and make sense of what’s going on around him and what are the people doing to him.
...ut Jake in a confused state of his life. His love has always been the river, giving him hope, peace, friendship, brotherhood, and love. The river gave him everything but has now taken away his only brother for no reason at all. No matter how much he tries to get away from his past, the river is his life and has become his home.
Big Fish. Dir. Tim Burton. Perf. Ewan McGregor. S GOLD The Entertainment Network, 2003. DVD.
The Hangover. Dir. Todd Phillips. Perf. Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, and Justin Bartha. Warner Bros., 2009. DVD.
Andrew Adamson, Ann Peacock, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Liam Neeson, Ray Winstone, and Dawn French. Prod. Mark Johnson and Philip Steuer. Perf. William Mosley, Anna Popplewell, Georgie Henley, and Skandar Keynes. Buena Vista Pictures, 2005. DVD.
...e to cope with the ominous recurring flashbacks and the heart-aching memories he suffered from every day. He may have been able to be saved if he only had an outlet to express his feelings. To that end, the significance of connection and communication between one another cannot be further stressed and hopefully this story was encouragement enough to reach out to fellow loved ones and even acquaintances in an effort to gain better relationships and advance as a society.
Big Guy share his self-destructive behaviour as an open invitation for the narrator’s guidance and support. She is able to offer this to him through simply being present in his life, she does not judge or ridicule his behaviour but is just there experiencing it with him. Such as when she plays into his attempt to crack his teeth by drinking ice water and coffee, she is also chewing on ice in an act of support. This is her first acknowledgement of Big Guy’s feelings towards his mother’s suicide. As well, when she talks about Big Guy’s fathers approach to the suicide, “his father had added, “And what’s more, the Cubs lost” (153), the inclination to support Big Guy strengthens, as she relates it to how he addresses situations, “matters large and small” (153), from then on. This reinforces the lack of support and significance his father is employing on his mother’s suicide. These examples show the narrators devotion and understanding of Big Guy as a whole. The road to recovery begins as she allows him to lovingly razor X’s onto her mosquito bites without question. This acknowledges the truest form of trust and consents Big Guy to let go and the two to connect, “We take the length of the couch, squirming like maggots” (164). This then signifies their re-birth, “If it’s
Bridesmaids. Dir. Paul Feig. Perf. Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Rose Byrne. Universal, 2011. DVD.
...himself from the experience" when he suffers his violent coughing spells, all of which could most possibly be his lasts breaths. Morrie get his method of detachment from the Buddhist philosophy: One should not cling to things, as everything that exists is impermanent. In detaching, Morrie is able to step out of his material surroundings and into his own type of world where he has time to relax and think more about the type of world that his loved ones live in. Morrie does not intend to stop feeling this detachment, but instead he wants to experience it wholly because it is only then that he is able to let go, to think about something other than the stressful situation that he is in. He does not want to die feeling upset, and in these frightening moments, he detaches himself so that he may accept the short span of his life and accept his death, which he knows may come at any time.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dir. Michel Gondry. Perf. Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet. Focus Features, 2004. DVD.
How can you be big and small at the same time? In Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chief Bromden is one of the inmates in an insane asylum who escapes the Institution. Many of the other inmates are afraid of the Institution and cannot escape. How does Chief escape? McMurphy helps him break free. He teaches Chief how to be strong and independent again. He listens to Chief and helps him get back his self-confidence. McMurphy influences Chief to do things for himself. Having this help, Chief finds himself and his self-confidence. This leads to Chief escaping the Institution because he can face the world on his own without hiding under a false identity of being deaf.
American Psycho (2000) offers a devastating social satire of the 1980s materialistic and hedonistic high society. Ironically, the film's monsters-in-hiding become increasingly evident even as the cinematography attempts to obscure most of the victims of Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) with the dark hues of the nighttime. Additionally, the point-of-view (P.O.V.) editing in relation to Patrick Bateman illustrates his frustrations to the audience and shows his struggle to not only become the best in his society, but also prevent others that are either not fit for his society or those with particularly annoying idiosyncrasies from being a part of that society. The character study depicts the daily activities of Patrick Bateman, a young New York stockbroker working for Pierce and Pierce, as he hides the murder of Paul Allen (Jared Leto) from Detective Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe). As the film progresses, Patrick's mask of sanity slowly slips as he finds out that he is not the idea of Patrick Bateman that he reflects himself of being throughout the film and realizes the disconnection that he has from the world around him.
Love has been the cause of some of the greatest feats, discoveries, and battles in the history of man. It has driven men to insanity and despair, while it has lead others to happiness and bliss. This idea that love has a strong influence on man’s decisions can be seen in the poem, “Love is not all” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The most prominent theme presented in “Love is not all” is that although love is not a necessity of life, it somehow manages to provoke such great desire and happiness that it becomes important.
Some people believe that there is no such thing as “true love” they believe that love is nothing but an illusion designed by social expectations. These people believe that love ultimately turns into pain and despair. This idea in some ways is true. Love is not eternal it will come to an end one way or another, but the aspect that separates true love from illusion, is the way love ends. “True Love” is much too powerful to be destroyed by Human imperfection; it may only be destroyed by a force equal to the power of love. Diotima believed that “Love is wanting to posses the good forever” In other words love is the desire to be immortal and the only way that we are able to obtain immortality is through reproduction, and since the act of reproduction is a form of sexual love, then sexual love is in fact a vital part of “True love”. Sexual love is not eternal. This lust for pleasure will soon fade, but the part of love that is immortal, is a plutonic love. You can relate this theory to the birth of love that Diotima talks about. She says that love was born by a mortal mother and immortal father. The mother represents the sexual love, the lust for pleasure. The father represents the plutonic love that is immortal. Plutonic love is defined as a true friendship, the purest of all relationships. A true plutonic love will never die; it transcends time, space, and even death.
Fantastic Mr. Fox. Dir. Wes W. Anderson. Perf. George Clooney and Meryl Streep. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009. DVD.