Second Negative

Garden State

“You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? That idea of home is gone. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”

I’ve been thinking about what to say about Garden State for a few days, but it’s impossible to really explain how I feel about it. It was a wonderful movie. It’s about being lost, and then re-discovering yourself in the strangest of places with the strangest of people. It’s also a love story, a drama, and a comedy. It’s a portrait of modern life in your twenties. It’s about trying to find home again.

The story follows Andrew Largeman, who hasn’t been home in nearly ten years, but returns for his mother’s funeral. She drowned in the bathtub. When Andrew was younger, there was an unfortunate accident that left her paralyzed, and his psychiatrist father has had him on high levels of medication ever since. He takes a chance and leaves the medication behind when he comes home.

At home, he struggles to find the right words to heal old wounds that he shares with his father. After so long, what can be said to heal a relationship that has caused so much sadness? He spends the days re-connecting with old friends who make up in bizarre behavior, what they lack in ambition. He goes to the doctor because of bad headaches, and meets a girl named Sam. Sam has a quick grin and a contagious excitability. She opens his eyes to a life that he has almost forgotten. An existence apart from feeling nothing as a substitute for feeling good, and a reminder that real life is often wonderful and painful at the same time.