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?