Everything Must Go (2010)

A Man amongst his things

         

Nick Halsey is having a rough go.

He’s an upper-level business executive, experiencing just about the worst possible week imaginable. After being called into his snarky, cocky, younger supervisor’s office, he’s read the litany of disciplinary strikes on his 16-year record (most alcohol related), given a token parting gift, and told unceremoniously he’s been fired. Going from bad to worse, he arrives home to find the locks changed, his wife gone, and literally all his belongings strewn across the front lawn of his suburban Arizona home. As if that weren’t enough, his wife has frozen all he assets from their joint bank accounts and credit cards, so he’s got little more than the clothes on his back. Where would any of us turn next?

Surrounded by all his stuff, with nowhere to go and little support network (beyond Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boys), Halsey (Will Ferrell) simply begins living in a recliner on his yard.

This is the premise for a film that took me totally off guard.

As Halsey, this is the quietest, least-comedic performance I’ve ever seen Ferrell deliver. Possibly the greatest comedic actor of his generation, we’re used to seeing him do inappropriate things, at inappropriate times, to hysterical effect. But who knew he also had this amount of range, depth, and ability to be so affecting? It's revelatory to see him reign it in like this. Think Adam Sandler in “Punch Drunk Love.” Or Bill Murray circa "Broken Flowers" and "Lost in Translation." He expresses so much pain and sadness through subtle facial expressions, and long stares. Struggling, and barely keeping it together, we feel Halsey is one very small straw from breaking down entirely. Farrell’s work here is Oscar worthy. I’m not kidding. I’m not speaking in hyperbole either. It's so incredibly different from how we've grown used to seeing him. This performance (and the film itself) was terribly overlooked.

Needing someone to watch his stuff so he can go for more beer, Nick befriends a curious teenage boy named Kenny (Christopher Jordan Wallace). Kenny seems similarly lonely. His mom cares for one of Nick’s neighbors, while Kenny rides his bike endlessly up and down the street. Nick offers Kenny five bucks if he’ll watch his stuff. Kenny says he wants some beef jerky, too. From there, the pair embark on the first tentative steps towards an unlikely and uncertain, but mutually beneficial, friendship.

After neighbors complain, a policeman friend (Michael Pena), who also happens to be Nick’s AA sponsor, tells him he can’t legally continue to live this way. However, municipal ordinances allow for yard sales to last up to five days. Why not try that? Nick has no intention of selling his old exercise equipment, work shirts, tacky lamps, wooden dressers, a canoe and assorted tchotchkes, and is resistant to even the idea, at first. Reluctantly, however, he realizes he has little choice than to at least pretend that’s what he’s doing, in order to buy himself some time to come up with a better plan.

When most of life’s stability and routine is gone, and the accumulation of that life is laid out plain in the front yard, how to go about determining which stuff is actually important and valuable enough to keep, vs what’s just useless clutter? Nick’s existential crisis is tangible and in the open, between his street and his front door.

He acquiesces by at first selling a half-used bottle of mouthwash, and some floss, for fifty cents. A light bulb goes off. Maybe none of these things are meaningful anymore?

There’s also a pretty, young, pregnant neighbor, who’s just moved in across the street, Samantha (Rebecca Hall). Like Nick, Samantha’s from New York, where she lived with her husband, and taught photography courses. She’s unpacking the house, while her husband is still back east. Eager for friendship (and possibly more?), Nick takes every opportunity to chat her up. Seeing this crazy neighbor living on his front lawn, Samantha is personable, but understandably cautious.

The film was directed by Dan Rush, whose IMDB biography lists nothing beyond this single movie, and an appearance on the Charlie Rose show. To his credit, Rush doesn’t allow Farrell’s character to become clichéd, nor the film to swerve into sentimentality. Halsey’s not a Jekyll-and-Hyde drunk, responsible and mature one minute, a slobbering, stumbling mess the next. Rather, he just perpetually drinks, leaving him unable to act appropriately in several crucial situations.

How many of us know someone who’s had one too many, makes a grievous mistake, and finds their life forever changed? Given his lack of attention to his wife, and reckless drinking, it makes sense that, Nick would’ve sabotaged both his marriage and career so thoroughly.

Throughout “Everything Must Go,” there’s a sense of sadness and wanting. Nick misses his wife, and can’t even bring himself to admit that they’re having problems. He’s hopeful for reconciliation, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Which is interesting. Too many movie characters fall into hopelessness, and are then somehow miraculously “saved” by some outside person or event. A lesser film might’ve gone that route. Nick simply tries to make it through each day.

This movie has much to say about materialism, marriage, alcoholism, and the faces we keep behind closed doors vs the ones we show the world. How do we define our lives? Through our jobs, three-car garages, cars and salaries? Or though the company we keep? I’m not sure Nick, or the film, have any concrete answers. He may not have it figured out, but we hope that he does. He’s not a bad guy, merely one struggling to keep it together during the most difficult of times. Too many of us find ourselves in similar predicaments, too often. Maybe it’s time to clean the attic?

Stories We Tell (2012)

What an extraordinary film.

When I sat down to watch the documentary “Stories We Tell” (directed by Sarah Polley), it was late on a Sunday night. I’d just spent endless hours watching football, and was preoccupied by the mediocre performance of my fantasy team.

However, after I hit play on “Stories” what I found was that almost immediately I became lost in one of the most detailed, fascinating, engrossing, entertaining, emotionally honest, and at once tragic and hopeful stories I can remember seeing in a very long time.

The film starts by showing several people preparing to give what appear to be fairly straight-forward interviews. Cameras and lighting are being set up in different rooms of houses and apartments. Subjects fix their shirts, check their teeth, and engage in small talk with the unseen off-camera interviewer.

We’re then introduced to several characters, identified only by their first names. Once the conversations begin (which we quickly learn are with several family members, and a few close friends), Polley asks her subjects to simply reminisce about their memories of her mother, a vivacious, pretty, blonde, Canadian actress who, by all accounts, was convivial and charismatic.

By relating their memories, Polley is able to get her subjects to speak openly about her mom, as well as the most intimate details of their own lives, and how the two connect. Her pointed questions nudge them along, allowing each speaker to provide a little bit more clarity to the picture. The degree to which her subjects open up is remarkable. As is the story that follows.

Along with the interviews, Polley uses dramatic recreations, and real-life home movies effectively, to further the story. We see what life was like for her and her family, growing up in middle-class Toronto. Some of it is set in the late 60s, other parts (judging by the cars parked on the streets) as recently as the 90s.

The subjects reveal contradictions about this woman, and the family’s shared history. One recalls her being an open book, while another describes a woman with secrets and subtle nuance. Which is true? Both? What emerges is the complex portrait of a woman much admired by all those around her, whose life (like all of ours) was far from perfect, or simple.

The trusting atmosphere the director must’ve created is evident in the levels to which the characters are willing to share. Reaching back sometimes decades into their memories, each family member gives their take on who this woman was, and what she meant to them personally. Reading pages of recollections in an empty recording studio, Polley’s father is particularly eloquent and touching.

What Polley uncovers (discovers?), and what the film is truly about is how, unwittingly but inevitably, we all create our own distinct narrative. Ultimately, based on our limited experiences (ones shared with the many, many other people around us), we make the best sense we can of the world. In the process we unknowingly alter and bend that story, to suit our own needs. How accurate is it? Depends upon who you ask. As well as upon their flawed take on events. Ask ten eyewitnesses to an argument what really happened, and you’ll likely get ten versions of “the truth.“ To complicate matters, often we project that subjective understanding onto those nearest us, and accept that as reality. But when it comes down to it, how much do we honestly know about the inner thoughts, feelings and motivations of even our closest friends and family?

Several times while watching “Stories We Tell,” I considered how I might go about writing an accurate review. Once I realized how much I liked the film, and how much I wanted to recommend it, I wanted to describe it in a way that would do the film justice, without revealing too much. Maybe I always do this? But I mention it in this instance because, along the way, the movie uncovers several details about the elder Mrs. Polley’s life, the veracity of which some of its subjects aren’t entirely clear about. They are surprising, perhaps even to the director. I won’t divulge them here. To do so would be cheating you.

But how, then, to make “Stories We Tell” sound interesting enough that you’ll want to invest your time? I mean, from what I’ve said so far, it might come across as some self-indulgent vanity work, where the director does little more than ask people about her mom. Trust me when I say this isn’t really what the film’s about. Or better put, it’s not ALL that the film’s about. And it doesn’t even begin to capture the scope of this movie. It works on so many other levels. Its aspirations are so much greater.

Rarely (perhaps never?) have I seen documentary where subjects so willingly share so much about their most intimate thoughts and feelings. The level of honesty the interviewees display is incredible. The story that ultimately unfolds, and what the director discovers about her own life, is truly amazing. It is simultaneously so beautiful and expressive that I wondered briefly “was this whole thing scripted? Was the story a product of an unusually creative imagination? Is this just the result of a terrifically gifted film maker?” Though I know it’s not fiction, the story and how it’s revealed, as well as its characters, are all almost perfectly poetic.

It is ultimately tremendously satisfying and rewarding. It’s not often that a movie makes me reflect on my own family history. This one certainly did.

What “Stories We Tell” illustrates so poignantly is that each of us does, indeed, have our own unique, wonderful, and significant story to tell. That Polley bares hers so openly and sincerely in “Stories We Tell,” is a genuine gift.