Garden State

Every once in a while, a film comes along that perfectly captures the pulse of a generation. In 1967, The Graduate burst onto screens, making a star of Dustin Hoffman and perfectly summing up baby boomer alienation in one word: plastics. The 1980s may have been a less turbulent decade, but the MTV-fed children of the Reagan era needed a hero as well, and they found one in Matthew Broderick's slyly confident Ferris Bueller. While Large (played by writer-director Zach Braff), the glassy-eyed protagonist of Garden State, may not achieve the same iconic status as Hoffman or Broderick's characters, it is not for lack of trying. Although Braff has brushed off comparisons between his film and The Graduate, anyone who has seen the latter movie cannot help but recognize it as the template for Garden State, from the opening scene (which takes place on an airplane rather than in an airport but features Large with the same clouded facial expression that Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock wore) to the use of Simon & Garfunkel on the soundtrack.

The degree to which Braff succeeds at aping Graduate director Mike Nichols's style varies throughout the course of the film. At the beginning, Braff's manner of directing is stylized to the point of distraction. A first-time director, it may be that he was not confident enough to explore other, less overstated ways of expressing his character's alienation. However, just as I was about to write off the movie as a wanking exercise for its director, Braff wisely eased off on the fussy visuals and let the film's strongly-etched characters and warm, witty humor take center stage.

The film revolves around 25-year old Large, an aspiring actor called home to New Jersey for his estranged mother's funeral. His senses long dulled by the daily diet of tranquilizers his psychiatrist father (Ian Holm) put him on when he was nine, Large registers the events around him, but is incapable of reacting to them. Having not been home in nearly a decade, he looks around in glazed wonderment at the friends and family members he left behind. One of his best friends, Gleason, languishes in his mansion, having reaped the profits from his invention of a silent form of Velcro (a neat twist on The Graduate's "plastics" reference) but unsure what to do with the rest of his life. Another, Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), supports himself by working as a gravedigger and spends his downtime sitting around aimlessly and smoking pot. For both of them, high school never seems to have ended.

Things change, however, when Large meets Sam (Natalie Portman), a sweet yet slightly off-kilter inhabitant of his hometown. As Large proceeds to wean himself from his medications, the bond between him and Sam grows, leading them both in unexpected directions.

Braff, a New Jersey native, has admitted to using his own life as a jumping-off point for the film. As a result, Garden State's evocations of suburban American life ring especially true. In addition, he seems to have picked up some of the wonderfully bizarre humor from Scrubs, the NBC sitcom he stars in. Helping matters considerably is his choice of actors, all of whom bring their roles, many of which could have easily been unsympathetic or annoying, vividly to life. After years of being mired in the bad dialogue and extravagant costumes of the Star Wars films, Portman looks positively relieved to be able to act again. She turns in a glowing performance as Sam, registering her warm, Annie Hall-esque eccentricity as well as her vulnerability. Braff, Sarsgaard, Holm, and Jean Smart (in a small role as Sarsgaard's mother) also shine in their respective roles.

While Garden State doesn't exactly break the mold in terms of coming-of-age films (for instance, it lacks the bite of Don Roos's Opposite of Sex), it nevertheless stands as the witty, wonderful debut of someone who appears to have a great deal of promise as a comedy director.