4.08.2008

It's a Wonderful Wife

Lars and the Real Girl

I was struck by two thoughts when I watched this film, 1) Alexander Payne would have been the natural choice to direct it and 2) it probably wouldn’t have worked if he had. Lars is a gentle, nostalgic, fluff piece that leaves the messier aspects of a story at the door. Interestingly, it’s also where they probably belong. Shaun has already described the plot in detail in his solid post on the film and I agree wholeheartedly with his comment that the film lends itself to varied interpretations.

Upon reflection, Lars and the Real Girl is structured in a way that makes it almost the inverse of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, a vastly misunderstood movie that is in fact one of Capra's most relentlessly gloomy works. While its framing draws on the backward-looking myth of the small town, the film actually reflects a far more realistic and nasty view of contemporary 1947 America. The opposite is true of Lars and the Real Girl where 60 years later, the corrosive effects of modernization have yet to make an appearance in this small, unnamed American town. It is here where Lars and the Real Girl tips its hand. These wholesomely heart-warming townsfolk make Andy Griffith’s Mayberrites look like drug-dealing scumbags by comparison. This moves the entire story, and it is an interesting one, into the realm of fantasy and I think that’s where it belongs. It doesn’t matter that in any real town in North America, Lars would be ostracized and likely beaten to death by drunken wahoos out on a bender, nor does it take away from the films underlying themes of acceptance and that some people in our society need protection, even if it is from themselves.

While I agree with Shaun that the fetishised objectification of Lars’s fuck doll was clearly representative of our contemporary desire for trinkets and gadgetry, I found the larger story, that of the community’s unlikely reaction to Lars’s fantasy, the more interesting part. I think from that perspective the film works on both levels where it might not have if someone like Payne plumbed the story for it’s more lurid aspects. By keeping it decidedly light, they may have made it more interesting.

2 comments:

Withnail said...

a good laugh on that one. you definitely put what i was going for with saying "lars would have been humiliated..." much better with being "drunkenly beaten." i liked that. ha ha. perfect.

it is a delicately directed film, and i think you are spot on with alexander payne. i have not seen paris je t'aime yet, but from what i have seen he really dives into his focal subjects, which if he had a hold of this script he might have made the whole townsfolk less believable, insofar as he might have put his actors in a position where they are playing stupid as opposed to the reality of the situation.

i appreciated that review, and you covered a fair amount of ground on what i think will largely be a misunderstood film.

sadly i have not seen "it's a wonderful life," but with the reference you made, i am very curious now.

Anonymous said...

just saw Lars and the Real Girl, Gosling did a great job playing out his character's psychological transition from totally dysfunctional to somewhat functional; it was nice of them to leave out the predictable small-town drama as well