Why I Like Netflix and Its “Cyber-Ilk”

This is in response to Richard Corliss’ “Why Netflix Stinks: A Critic’s Complaint”:

1. I like the way Netflix complements my public library’s DVD and video holdings. When I want to pick something out that I can watch that very night, I go to the CLP; when I identify a film that I want to see at some point, I turn to Netflix. I like being able to queue up 50 or 100 such films. Andrew O’Hehir identifies a number of internet resources that can also scratch that “instant gratification” itch in a useful article for Salon called “Movies online: The future is (almost) here,” including Netflix itself, which offers instant access to many films. The point: I don’t use Netflix exclusively, and I don’t think I’m atypical in that regard.

2. I like the fact that Netflix allows me to keep movies for as long as I want. This makes it possible for me to watch films a number of times over a period of days and weeks. It allows me to work with these films if I want to, to watch them slowly, closely and carefully and to harvest screencaps from them that I can use for analytical purposes.

3. I like being able to open Netflix in one window of my browser while I read articles from the latest issue of Cinema Scope, Senses of Cinema, or Rouge in another. When I come across a film that sounds interesting, I can immediately add it to my queue or even watch it online in some cases. It’s almost as if the “knowledgeable cinephiles” who write for those publications like Michael Sicinski, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Adrian Martin are my “video store clerks.”

4. I like being able to rate and/or review the movies that I watch and to access the ratings and reviews of anyone on my “Friends” list. If I notice that Peter Nellhaus, Dennis Cozzalio, and Ted Pigeon have all given a film four or five stars, I will almost always make a point of watching that film. So it’s almost like these “knowledgeable cinephiles” are my “video store clerks,” too.

5. These ratings, which are typically sortable, are also a great organizational tool. When I’m looking for a film to ponder or write about I can pull up a list of all of my four star films (these are, for me, Movies That I Will Probably Want To Watch Again At Some Point And May Want To Write About) or three star films (Movies That I Might Want To Revisit). It’s like having a browsable library that consists not just of movies I own, but of all the movies I’ve ever watched.

6. This month I will apply for jobs in Fargo, North Dakota; Annville, Pennsylvania; Logan, Utah; and Indianapolis, Indiana, among other geographically diverse locations. It’s nice to know that moving to one these places, which almost certainly won’t and probably never did have a video store comparable to Kim’s Video, is not tantamount to giving up on participating in film culture. While it’s true that there’s no substitute for living in a bona fide cinephile community in a city like New York or San Francisco, people all over the country now have regular and affordable access to just about every film that gets an R1 DVD release or is made available online. We can study these films and write about them on blogs or for newspapers, magazines, or journals. Our voices can be heard, even if there is a slight delay.

7. I like the fact that I no longer feel compelled to see every film released in theaters that looks half interesting. I am intrigued by The Hangover (2009), but I probably won’t see it, since I can just add it to my Netflix queue and know that it will arrive in my mailbox on whatever day it’s released on DVD. Instead I’ll see a movie with a bit more risk/upside, such as Departures (2008), or maybe I’ll do something else entirely, like go to a coffee shop or “stroll around a mall.” I also like knowing that if Departures closes before I get to a theater where it’s playing, I’ll still be able to see it. Because of Netflix and its “cyber-ilk” I spend less time watching movies, and more of my movie watching time watching good movies, since I can just turn films like The Hangover* off when they fail to interest me (whereas I’d never walk out of screening or return a $4 rented video unseen).


*Films I’m only somewhat curious about, I mean. I haven’t seen The Hangover yet, so I don’t know how interesting it is or isn’t.



Edits: 8/12/09 = I changed an embarrassing typo in the title of this post (Netfilx? C’mon, man!).

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Respect Wendy and Lucy

Yarr! There be “spoilers” ahead.

* * *

Shortly after learning that her car has broken down, stranding her in an anonymous small town in Oregon until she can get it repaired, the protagonist of Wendy and Lucy (2008) walks into a grocery store with the intention of shoplifting food for herself and her dog Lucy. This is obvious from the way she walks straight to these bins full of baked goods and, after a quick look around to make sure no one is watching, immediately slips something into her bag:

Upon being stopped after leaving the store, she reacts in a manner that suggests she thinks she has done nothing wrong, protesting that she has merely forgotten to pay and petulantly demanding that the young man who has accosted her “let go.” This young man has a cross hanging rather conspicuously from around his neck:

Right here, eighteen minutes into her eighty-minute-long film, director Kelly Reichardt lost me. Why is Wendy stealing food, I wondered, when it has been established that she has enough money to pay for it? And what’s with the cross? Is this supposed to be some sort of indictment of Christianity? I watched Wendy and Lucy for the first time in February at Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ Regent Square Theater and revisited it in May after it came out on DVD, but even after seeing it twice, I still couldn’t figure out what was up with this scene.

As Michael Sicinski notes in an article on the film in Cineaste Magazine, Wendy’s willingness to risk a potential $50 fine for a $2 can of dog food that she can easily afford is “in no way indicative of the meticulous, even obsessive budgeting that characterizes the lives of real working-poor individuals,” but rather characterizes the behavior of “middle-class university hippies for whom shoplifting is less a necessity than a semiotic event, certainly representing useful and sometimes even necessary savings but also signifying ‘fuck-the-man!’ rebellion and competitive sport” (as does her apparent sense of entitlement). Michelle Williams’ Wendy clearly isn’t supposed to be this latter sort of person, but the film readily supports such a reading through its refusal to provide an alternate explanation for how she came to be in this situation in the first place, and once you start to think of her that way, it’s awfully hard to understand her behavior in any other way than as (in Sicinski’s words) “a fissure within the very conception of the Wendy character, as well as the greater material circumstance she is meant to represent.”

Bad filmmaking, I thought, but that didn’t sit right: this was, after all, the fourth best film of the year. So I went looking for answers in “Train Choir,” the Jon Raymond short story that corresponds to the film (Raymond and Reichardt came up with the story together, and she started working on the screenplay for Wendy and Lucy before “Train Choir” was finished, so it’s not a simple case of one being adapted from the other). It turns out that in Raymond’s version of the story, Wendy (or Verna, as he knows her) is heading to Alaska not for the vague reason that she has heard that “they need people there,” but for the very specific purpose of getting a job as a line worker in a cannery that will allow her to save at least five thousand dollars, “enough to put a good dent in the Visa bills she’d racked up since her apartment had flooded in the winter, and possibly even get the collection agency goons off her back.”

From Raymond we learn that Verna’s comfort zone is “a scream’s length from humanity,” and that she chooses to camp out in the Walgreens parking lot because “the surrounding streets were quiet, but just the right kind of quiet — quiet enough to feel empty and unattended but not so much as to feel outright dangerous.” In the tale he tells, Verna does not go to the grocery store with the intention of stealing food, but instead impulsively decides to take a calculated risk after she discovers that a bag of dog food would cost $42, “significantly more than Verna could justify spending on such a day,” and that three cans, the short-term solution, would cost as much as two gallons of gas, or the equivalent of “almost fifty miles of road.” And we’re also granted a crucial bit of insight into her state of mind upon entering the store: “The store’s volume of inventory was immediately reassuring. Verna wandered among the bins of vegetables, the deep rows of fresh milk cartons and the multicolored boxes of breakfast cereal, feeling that all the fastidiously arranged food implied some well-organized system in place, the idea that someone, somewhere, was taking care that everything found its proper path.”

Given the collaborative nature of Raymond and Reichardt’s project, I don’t want to argue that “Train Choir” is better than Wendy and Lucy, but it did speak to me in a way that the film didn’t. In “Train Choir” Jon Raymond chronicles a few days in the life of a young woman who wants nothing more than “firm ground under her feet” in order to illustrate how brutally difficult it is for those whom our society has left behind to catch up on their own, and how it’s virtually impossible for them to take someone else with them. It’s about the kinds of choices that face a down-on-her-luck rugged individualist in America today. For someone like me who likes to think he doesn’t need any kind of help from anyone else, it’s a sobering tale.

In Wendy and Lucy Kelly Reichardt takes the same basic story and does something different with it, and with the help of “Train Choir” I was finally able to see what this is. I nominate as a “Rosetta Stone” of sorts a shot from the point of view of an employee at the pound where Wendy goes to look for Lucy. It begins like this:

and ends like this:

In both “Train Choir” and Wendy and Lucy, the woman whose perspective this shot shows is a distant, but basically sympathetic presence. In the former Verna starts to tell this woman her story, but finds it can’t make much an impression on someone who “had seen every kind of animal torment imaginable”; this woman is one of many people Verna encounters who has problems and obligations of her own that make it difficult or impossible for her to help Verna, or even see how close she is to the brink, and the point of their interaction is to impress upon Verna the reality of how alone she is.

The shot that ends the corresponding scene in the film is not about what Wendy sees, but how the world sees Wendy. Or, rather, how it doesn’t: this woman is helpful and friendly for the duration of her conversation with Wendy, but starts to forget her as soon as she turns away. By the time Wendy reaches the door, she has walked out completely of focus — she has become a blurry, indistinct presence in this woman’s mind.

See also this second “Lost Dog” sign that adorns the pole to which Wendy has taped one of her own:

and this bit of graffiti:

Both can be construed as traces left behind by others like Wendy who have long since disappeared. Once I began to notice touches like these, Wendy and Lucy started to make sense to me. Reichardt’s film is about someone in pain trying to survive in a world full of people made indifferent by their own problems. It is a plea directed at those who watch it: You who can afford to pay $8 for a movie, Reichardt is saying, it isn’t always enough for you to be kind and sympathetic to the people you encounter. Help them.

Thus, the lack of back story: it’s a way of focusing attention on the immediate cause of Wendy’s pain, the loss of her only companion and her attendant realization that she’s not even fit to care for a dog. This is what is threatening to bring her down, not some unnamed economic or emotional catastrophe in her past. It’s within your power, person in the audience, to help her, this girl who could be your daughter, your neighbor, your niece.

Thus, too, Wendy’s poor decision to shoplift. It is precisely that, a mistake, and as such it serves two functions: first, because there’s no doubt that Wendy is largely at fault, it foregrounds the regret and guilt that she feels upon discovering that Lucy is lost, contributing to our feeling (in the audience) that she is nearing the end of her rope. Second, it highlights the idea that fair (the store’s zero tolerance shoplifting policy, the garage’s flat towing fee) isn’t always fair when the playing field isn’t level; it is, therefore, another call to action: break the rules when the situation calls for it!

None of this is to say that I’ve completely reversed my position on Wendy and Lucy. Once I got a handle on what Reichardt was trying to accomplish, I was able to relax a bit and bask in the film’s more successful moments, such as the shot that follows Wendy’s conversation with her sister when she feels very far away from Wally Dalton’s security guard (he has someone to come pick him up):

and the one that marks the moment she feels closest too him, when she realizes how much help he has given her relative to his meager resources (this is a shot that I actually quite liked the first time around, too):

But for every moment like these two that I admire, there are still a few that feel off to me. Like that cross, or this distracting bit of slow-motion that presumably (and if so, unnecessarily) marks the exact moment Wendy decides to leave Lucy behind:

So I believe that Wendy and Lucy is inconsistent. I’m also not convinced that it’s a “major” film or that Kelly Reichardt is an “important” director. Clearly she has struck a chord with a lot of people, and with a bit of effort I was able to see why. The symbiotic relationship that both this film and Reichardt’s last one, Old Joy (2006), have with short stories by Jon Raymond is interesting, and her decision to give “quiet, but pointed consideration to the cinematically ignored economic anguish and wistful unhappiness of one end of American life” (as Daniel Kasman eloquently put it) is admirable.

As Karina Longworth points out in her review, though, this is a “single tone” film, and while it resonates with people now, I suspect that’s due in large part to the fact that it is currently filling a void in the cinematic landscape, and I wonder how much impact it will have a few years down the road. I also doubt that the particular “minimalist” style that Reichardt employs here will translate very well to other projects. My guess is that if Wendy and Lucy is remembered, it will most likely be for Michelle Williams’ performance.

Still, I definitely have come to respect this film. Earlier this month economist Robin Hanson posted a link to an eye-opening paper on his blog Overcoming Bias that concluded that the more important a trait is to a person’s identity, the less likely it is to be an area in which they want to improve. The target audience of Wendy and Lucy is people who think of themselves as having a lot of empathy — who else would want to see an “independent film” about a girl who loses her dog? Reichardt challenges people to question this self-assessment by confronting them with someone they could help, but probably wouldn’t were they to encounter her on the street. It’s a “feel-bad” movie with a useful purpose: to spur its viewers into action by increasing their awareness of how empathetic they aren’t. Does it succeed? Maybe not, at least not entirely. But I’m glad it makes the effort.

Further reading: in addition to all the articles linked to above, I found Adam Nayman’s review in Reverse Shot and Jonathan Raban’s New York Review of Books article “Metronatural America” to be helpful in thinking through this film. I also strongly recommend Livability, the short story collection that includes “Train Choir,” to anyone who enjoyed either Wendy and Lucy or Old Joy.



Edits: 7/29/09 = I changed the word “third” to “fourth” in the first sentence of paragraph 5.

Yogurt!

With some foods, once you’ve tried the best, it’s awfully hard to go back to the rest. So it goes with yogurt: once you’ve tried Greek yogurt, good luck being satisfied with anything else. And once you’ve found a particular brand that you like, however outrageously expensive it is, good luck settling for something inferior.

Although I resolved to cut back on my food expenses at the beginning of the summer, I never really considered doing anything about my $7.50/week ($5 per container, three of which last me two weeks) Fage Total habit. I don’t have much of an appetite in the morning, but I’ve learned from experience that I do need to eat something. A small bowl of whole milk yogurt is perfect: it’s light enough that I can stomach it, substantial enough to actually provide me with some energy. Me and Fage, it was love at first bite. And breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so if I’m going to indulge myself. . . .

But then I read Harold McGee’s New York Times article about homemade yogurt and I thought, Huh. And then I stumbled across this Slate article by Jennifer Reese, in which she promises that McGee’s recipe makes a yogurt comparable to good Greek yogurt for about 1/4 the price. So I bought a candy thermometer and a one quart thermos and another candy thermometer (in case the first once broke) and resolved to give it a try.

Last week I finally did. And this weekend I used the last two tablespoons of yogurt from that inaugural batch to make another one. Today I breakfasted on a bowl of that yogurt, along with some blueberries and honey from my most recent CSA box. And now I’m here to tell you: believe the hype.

Not since he discovered the proper order in which to fry vegetables has this home cook’s world been rocked so much by a single discovery. This yogurt is a revelation. It really is just about as good as the best Greek yogurts I’ve tried. It’s incredibly easy to make: just follow the temperature guidelines recommended by McGee, and stir the milk fairly often when you’re heating it (so it doesn’t scorch) and when it’s cooling down (so a skim doesn’t form). After the yogurt has cooled, let it drain for at least three or four hours to get that thick texture. Foolproof.

And the bonus: there’s a whiff of alchemy about the yogurt-making process. You pour warm milk into a thermos. You come back four hours later, and the thermos is filled with yogurt. The same yogurt that you made six months ago if you use your own starter. But different. Like the way the texture of tofu changes when you freeze it or the way an emulsion comes together, this is something that I understand, but still can’t quite wrap my head around. Very cool.

So give it a try! The recipe, again, is here. I used my favorite whole milk from Turner Dairy Farms the first time, much cheaper milk from Giant Eagle the second, and honestly I didn’t notice much of a difference in the resulting product. A quart of milk translates into about four servings of yogurt if you’re me.

Aww, Yeah

Two days ago I arrived home to find that at long last, after years of waiting, I had finally become the proud owner of The State: The Complete Series. Never have I looked forward to a DVD release this much.

For those who don’t know, The State was a sketch comedy television series that aired on MTV between 1993 and 1995, when I was a very impressionable 12- and then 13-year-old. I saw only a few episodes at the time, but these were, by chance, some of the best, and they imprinted themselves on my mind as shining examples of comedic brilliance. In high school memorable sketches like “Prison Break” and “Porcupine Racetrack” provided my peer group with fodder for increasingly obscure inside jokes. In college phrases like “monkey torture” and “I’m outta here” functioned as shibboleths by which those of us in the University of Pittsburgh’s very smartest set recognized each other. Some of my new friends and I even tried to start a State-inspired sketch comedy troupe of our own, but the venture was sunk by our laziness and general lack of talent.

After more than a decade of discussing the show, debating its merits relative to other sketch comedy programs, and studying the Skits and Stickers VHS tape that was, as recently as last week, the only official home video version of any of the show’s sketches, I’ve come to the conclusion that The State (the name of the troupe as well as the program) is responsible for some of the best individual comedy sketches in television history.

But is The State a good show? Or does it consist, like The Critic, of a few tasty morsels suspended in a bland pudding of nothing much of interest? Is it something I’m going to be able watch over and over again, like The Simpsons? Or something I’ll eventually tire of, like Seinfeld? Is it structurally or visually interesting? How does it evolve over the course of its four seasons?

In a few months I’ll check in with answers to these questions. But in the meantime, I’d just like to publicly say to Barry, Levon, Doug, and all the rest: it’s nice to see you guys again. You all look swell. Now who’s got something for me? Aww, yeah.

Why I Watch Movies #2

I watch movies to expand my knowledge of what is possible in life. Each film I see is about what could happen to me, about what has happened is happening will happen to everyone else. Each film I see makes it easier to cheer myself up on bad days (“It could be worse”) and enjoy myself on good ones without giving in to senseless euphoria (“This will not last”). Movies help me to see myself as part of a human race: we are the people to whom things happen . . .

First Pass: The Limits of Control

If it weren’t summer I might love Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control (2009) or hate it. But it is summer, and my standards are different this time of year.

A winter movie, you see, is a movie trudged to through icy winds and over snow-covered sidewalks. It is a movie watched in damp socks and fiercely debated afterwards over multiple cups of coffee or pints of beer in a coffee shop, diner, or bar only reluctantly abandoned at closing time or last call for the long walk home. A fall movie is a movie chosen over football games and autumn leaves and bonfires and pumpkin patches and all of the other wonderful things that go along with my favorite season. It is a movie that has been singled out from the crowd of prestige pics, foreign films, and Oscar contenders that pack theaters in the weeks and months leading up to awards season. It is, like a winter movie, a film that has to be worth it.

A summer movie, though, is more often than not just an excuse to sit in the air conditioning, away from the sweltering heat, or a way to pass the hour or two between the end of the work day and sunset. It is fodder for a meandering discussion over cocktails or iced lattes sipped beneath an umbrella on the patio of a favorite café, one topic among many in a conversation that will inevitably play second fiddle to the pleasures of sitting outside in the shade.

The Limits of Control works for me as a summer movie, as an alternative to the “superspy” movies that usually number among the season’s major studio releases. The film’s Lone Man (Isaach De Bankolé) is, like James Bond or Jason Bourne, an attractive, well-dressed man on a mission who knows what he wants (to drink, for instance) and what he’s doing. He does it in a series of exotic, enticing locales populated by alluring women and interesting men.

The Lone Man is a slightly different kind of hero, though. Where Bond and Bourne are fit and ready for physical combat, he is “centered” and at peace, prepared to do battle with his wits, will, and imagination. Where B&B are in demand, the targets or prizes of evil geniuses, government agencies, and world leaders, he is off the grid (“No mobiles”). They are digital, he is analog. They are constantly in motion, he is still. They dictate the rules of the game, he merely follows orders.

What we have here, I think, is a James Bond movie for people who don’t want to be 007. Or, rather, a James Bond-type movie that has been adapted to a different set of sensibilities: it works on about the same level, but not in the same way. It is an escapist fantasy that acknowledges itself as such by offering a “real-world” source (the paintings in the museum) for everything that happens in the film and a “moment of awakening” at the end. The bad guy is not one who opposes Anglo-American cultural and political hegemony, but a stand-in for those who propagate it. It offers us a beautiful woman to look at, but it does not condone womanizing. The emphasis is not on action or movement, but on architecture and landscape.

The Limits of Control is a movie that cries out for discussion: is it just a James Bond movie that it’s “okay” to like, or is that selling it short? Which one of the many different interpretations that it supports (as S.T. VanAirsdale notes, “the beauty of Jarmusch, of course, is that the clues are almost certainly there”) do you favor and why? Do the monologues about movies in which people sit and say nothing and molecules spinning in ecstasy add anything to the film? If so, what, exactly? And would we rather talk about those subjects? And what does that mean if we do?

Maybe there’s more to the film than this: I will eventually see it again and decide. For now, though, it’s enough for me that I loved Spain, loved the suits, loved discussing the film and reading the debates held by others. Because it’s summer, and I don’t typically ask for much more from a movie until at least September.

The Limits of Control is currently playing in Pittsburgh at the CineMagic Manor Theater in Squirrel Hill. Recommendations for further reading: I basically agree with Karina Longworth’s assessment of the film, I like Dennis Lim’s profile of Jarmusch in the New York Times for its insights into the director’s intent, and Michael J. Anderson and Lisa Broad at Tativille make a compelling case for the film as one of the year’s best so far.

Simpsons Image of the Day

(Inside the “Ayn Rand School for Tots.”)

Why I Watch Movies #1

I value movies first and foremost as a source of images that give form to the inchoate sentiments fluttering around inside my mind, allowing me to gain mastery over them, to capture and then study them, to banish the harmful ones forever and put the others to work. The screengrab above, for instance, is taken from a scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) in which Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) uses a device called a “pensieve” to share his memories with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe). Although it wasn’t (presumably) intended to, this scene is a perfect representation of what the writing process feels like to me.

I didn’t realize this immediately; instead, this image sort of got stuck in my head, and my brain reacted to it like a pearl oyster to a microscopic intruder, adding layers, shape, substance. But that’s not right: it might have taken awhile, but I recognized this image, so maybe it acted more like a seed crystal suspended in a saturated sugar solution and attracted those thoughts that had an affinity for it and slowly grew into something big enough to be visible to my mind’s eye.

Whatever. The point is that this image helped me to transform the generalized anxiety that I used to feel whenever I sat down to write into a specific set of concerns that I’m able to cope with and work around. I can hold this image in my mind, consider it: rooting around in one’s head with a stick and extracting memories from it is, judging from Dumbledore’s expression, painful. It presumably entails a certain amount of risk: isn’t it possible that something could be lost in transit between mind and pensieve and become lost forever? And once a memory is shared it no longer belongs exclusively to its original owner: he has in giving up this part of himself surrendered control over it. But it’s worth it, yeah? The risks are far outweighed by the rewards? So why don’t I shut up and write? Or go do something else?

How I Watch Movies #1

Watching a movie for the first time is for me a lot like going on a first date. The main thing is just to have fun and get to know the film a bit, so that I can decide whether or not I want to see it again. There will be plenty of time to figure out what makes it tick later.

Diary of a Moviegoer #2: Dan in Real Life

Yarr! There be “spoilers” ahead.

* * *

Dan in Real Life (2007) is about an advice columnist named Dan Burns (Steve Carell) whose column is, like the movie, called “Dan in Real Life.” I expected this film to be comprised largely of scenes in which Dan behaves in a manner inconsistent with the kind of advice he dispenses to his readers to comic effect, and had I watched only the first twenty and last thirty minutes of it, that’s basically what I would have gotten. I would have been impressed by the pains the filmmakers took to flesh out Dan’s character and by their willingness to let us extrapolate from this what kind of advice he must give, instead of, say, just beginning the movie with him reading one of his columns in voiceover or something. It might also have struck me that the film seemed a bit weighty for a Steve Carell comedy vehicle, although I might have just assumed that I’d missed all the wacky bits or that it simply wasn’t very funny; at any rate, I’d have seen little to challenge my assumption that Dan in Real Life was, in fact, a Steve Carrel comedy vehicle.

The middle fifty minutes, though . . . whew! But let me back up a bit: the film begins with a carefully observed depiction of a single father first bundling his three daughters off to school, then picking them up afterwards and heading off (from New Jersey) to a family gathering in Rhode Island. Although this sequence (intentionally) isn’t especially humorous, it does fulfill all of the functions of the first act of a comedy: it establishes what kind of man Dan is (sober, conscientious, responsible) and sets the stage for the film’s primary conflict (Dan in real life vs. “Dan in Real Life”) with Dan’s emphatic statement to his 15 year-old daughter that “you can’t know in three days” that you’re in love.

As expected, the next fifty minutes of the film develop this conflict further. Dan meets cute a woman named Marie (Juliette Binoche) in a bookstore who turns out to be the woman his brother Mitch (Dane Cook) is bringing home to meet the family. Dan wants to woo her anyway, but this would be contrary to what he himself would counsel and would thus discredit him as both an advice columnist and a father, so he tries to suppress this desire. The problem is that he’s unable to control himself around her, and since the filmmakers have conspired to repeatedly place them in close proximity with one another, wacky high jinks ensue.

Except that they don’t, really. Yes, there is one scene in which Dan and Marie end up in the shower together, and another one in which he’s “forced” to stare at her ass during an aerobics session, and these are as contrived and, frankly, stupid as you’d think they would be. But the rest of this middle portion of the film is different. There is, first of all, the fact that throughout it Steve Carell plays Dan not as a hypocrite who cluelessly can’t or selfishly won’t follow his own advice, but as an earnest, well-intentioned man torn between two “right” courses of action. Check out his anguished expression in this scene, his response to hearing a line from his own book being stolen by Mitch:

This is the beaten down visage of a man who has just realized that he’s forgoing the pursuit of true love, which he believes is as rare as “winning the lottery,” for someone who is insincere and undeserving. Dan knows that he should pursue Marie because he’s the one who has “the only key to her heart,” because they are soul mates; he knows he shouldn’t because it isn’t permitted by his position within either the family or society in general. Carell is utterly convincing as a man who can’t decide what to do and is heading for a nervous breakdown as a result.

And then there’s the family dynamic:

Throughout the film the Burns family is presented as a monolithic, undifferentiated mass that is frequently arrayed against Dan and Mitch, the only two single adults in the family, as it is here. The Burns family is quirky, kind, and non-judgmental — almost oppressively so, in fact. During family time, which is pretty much all the time, one is always cheerful. Serious criticism is not permitted, but no other subject is taboo. The family cannot help Dan work through his problem, because the family is his problem: he can’t spend time with the adults, as that would involve prolonged exposure to Marie and Mitch; he can’t spend excessive amounts of time with the children, because they will reject him at some point for behaving unlike an adult, for acting “weird”; he can’t tell any one family member what’s bothering him, because to tell one of them would be to tell all of them, including Mitch; he can’t lash out at Mitch, because that isn’t allowed; he can’t spend time alone, because once it’s known that something is troubling Dan, the family will not rest until they “make it better”; he can’t leave, because he can’t abandon his daughters.

The middle fifty minutes of Dan in Real Life constitute a dead-on portrait of a man in an impossible social situation who’s slowly but surely splitting apart at the seams. Unable to either surrender Marie to Mitch or steal her away from him, Dan begins behaving in an increasingly erratic manner in a desperate attempt to provoke some sort of showdown that will resolve the matter for him. What’s interesting is that this would seemingly have to result in some sort of family crisis: if Dan steals Marie away or behaves unpleasantly enough that she either ceases to like him or leaves altogether, the family would have to either condemn his actions or effectively side with him against Mitch; alternatively, Dan might suffer a not very comedy-like emotional collapse.

None of these things happen, of course. Instead, Marie realizes that she loves Dan back, in part through her discovery — in a book inexplicably given to her by Mitch — that the sweet nothings that her boyfriend has been whispering in her ears are Dan’s. There is a brief dust-up when the family discovers them together, but it blows over quickly: Mitch has another woman waiting in the wings, so he doesn’t stay upset for long, and the family tells Dan to go see about the girl who is now unproblematically his. Dan learns that it is possible to fall in love in less than three days, which according to Hollywood movie logic means that his fifteen year-old daughter must be in love with her boyfriend, too, and that Mitch must be in love with Ruthie Draper (Emily Blunt) as well, and the movie ends with all of these singles happily coupled and those others who were already married staying as they are.

So what then to do with Dan in Real Life? It contains an accurate representation of something I recognize from my own life but not from the movies, the obligatory social situation that cannot be escaped without causing possibly irreparable harm to oneself and/or others; it does not, however, provide any insight into how such a situation can be dealt with (using as it does blatantly artificial means to resolve the conflict in the film). It contains a terrific performance by Steve Carell, but one that may be in the service of a movie that in the final analysis I don’t think is very good. It contains an interesting critique of a “perfect family” ideal, but I don’t know how intentional this is. So maybe I:

1. Being a child of the DVD age, ignore the parts of the movie I don’t like or that I’m not interested in: I basically regard chapters 4-10 of the Dan in Real Life DVD as their own film.

2. Look at the rest of director Peter Hedges’ oeuvre and see how “family” figures into his other films: Gareth McFeely says there’s something there, and maybe he’s right.

3. File Dan in Real Life away as being a “somewhat intriguing film that features a good performance by Steve Carell” and move on to take another look at Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale (2008), which contains a superficially similar, but much more interesting family.

I’d be going with #3 all the way, but A Christmas Tale isn’t out on DVD yet. If I see Pieces of April (2003) at the library in the near future, I might have to choose door #2 . . .