Sunshine

I made reference to Little Miss Sunshine a few posts ago. I must confess, at that point I hadn’t actually seen the movie. I knew the basic idea, and had seen the trailers, but I hadn’t seen it. Now I have. It’s great.

Movies do a lot of different things for different people. We tend to like the ones we identify with, which is a nice way of saying “those which reinforce what we believe,” and little else and that's ok. Little Miss Sunshine did that, for sure, but it also solidified a realization I’ve been making over the course of my life: I can’t explain things well without some form of analogy... comparison... metaphor or simile. I just can’t.

I think this stems from a belief I had back when I knew everything that comparisons were the best way to explain something. I apparently fixated on this much like Freud suggests we fixate on pooping or eating. As the powers of language were being revealed to me, I fixated on comparison. Now that I no longer know everything, I’m coming to realize that what I fixated on doesn’t necessarily equate with what is true, righteous, sublime, maybe even real. Rather, what I fixated on is, well, just what I fixated on.

Having provided that disclaimer, let me now explain the beauty of Little Miss Sunshine by comparing it to Volcano, that gem from a few years back starring the lovely Ann Heche and the lovelier Tommy Lee Jones. (I’ll offer my disclaimer, which explains why I watched Volcano, at the end of the post if I remember)

There are a couple of scenes in Volcano in which the stereotypical tendency among teenagers to think only of themselves is depicted rather overtly. (the movie tries too hard to have a point) I notice this kind of crap because I spend a lot of time around teenagers and I know that the stereotype is certainly not without some, ok a lot of supporting examples. (I also notice it because I’m bracing myself for when my own daughters become teenagers) I also know, though it’s sometimes hard to remember, that teenagers are about as mature as, well, teenagers, and that’s why they sometimes forget their actions affect more than just them. Oddly enough, it’s the time I spent working around adults that helped me realize this. Most of the adults I worked with acted the same way. The only problem with that is they weren’t teenagers so they had no excuse for acting like that.

Back to the movie.

These gratuitous “I’m a selfish teenager scenes” were dutifully acted out by TLJ’s character’s daughter. Their last name in the movie was Roark, by the way, stolen from The Fountainhead? as though the FEMA director character played by Jones was some sort of visionary rather than an opportunistic horse trader. (I told you the movie tries too hard) Again, back to the daughter being a selfish teenager. The scenes in which she whines about why something didn’t work her way are an obvious set up for when she later epiphanizes (it’s a word, I’m the coiner) that the world doesn’t actually revolve around her. In Volcano, this epiphany occurs when she happens across a baby whose mother has disappeared in the chaos resulting from a volcano that erupts through the LaBrea Tar Pits... yep, those tar pits in downtown LA. (I told you I’d offer an explanation for why I watched this movie)

So here’s the comparison: Volcano offers this message about teens growing up. To be honest, it offers little else except maybe questions about why Don Cheadle agreed to take the part he took.

Little Miss Sunshine offers a much more realistic (though absurdly exaggerated) look at the same issue in addition to asking all who watch to move closer to the same epiphany as adults. Sunshine’s portrayal of a “dysfunctional” family coming together through a series of completely possible, even likely, but not to the same family in the same three days, events is mind-blowingly effective and, I’d say, necessary. And don't get me started on the themes about the journey over the destination, learning more from what others may call defeat than from victory, and on and on and on. It’s just a cool movie that makes you laugh a little, but makes you think a lot. It makes some of the same mistakes as Volcano... like trying too hard vis-a-vis the older brother’s obsession with Nietzsche and Uncle Frank’s obsession with Proust, but I can easily excuse trying too hard when a movie bites off as much as Sunshine does. Besides, it was just plain fun to watch. Of the last ten movies I’ve seen, it’s in the top three, right up there with Bill Murray in Broken Flowers and, in spite of it’s popularity, The Break Up-darkly hilarious.

Now don’t take my criticism of Volcano too seriously. It was a snow day. It was freezing outside so the girls and I hung out inside all day, and once they decided they were tired of me and disappeared in their room, I surfed channels and found TLJ on AMC while I graded papers. I could have turned the channel. I could have bundled up and gone outside. I chose to watch and I was entertained. That’s all I ask of a movie and on that day, Volcano delivered. But Sunshine delivered on so many more levels I’ll now cease listing the two in the same paragraph.

OK, that’s all for now. I wanted to praise Gov’nor Ahnuld for his recent anti-partisan efforts out in Cali, and in the same post criticize the Dems in congress for their insistence on partisan politics as usual, while at the same time, bashing Bush for wanting to distance himself from Clinton more than he wanted to actually address the terrorist threats we knew of, but I don’t think I’m up to that tonight. I’m too happy. The faith-in-my-fellow-man meter is pegged after watching a good movie with my wife.

Speaking of Grace, I spent one night last weekend with some old college chums. One’s a weather guy in the Air Force these days who’s heading to Korea soon. The other two are teachers... one in college, the other in high school...two of us are Technical Sergeants, the other two are frickin doctors! The four of us were among a handful of people who could sit up all night and solve every single problem in the world through the discussion then and there in that room. We attempted same last weekend. We’re all old, but our discussion on how to fix the world lasted until 4 am. Though my body was tired on my way home, my soul had tapped into a fountain of youth. It was also encouraged by the fact that most of us have offspring (who will undoubtedly rebel against us by becoming corporate execs) and we all seem to have found comfortable places in the world. I know my world’s a better place for their being in it. I hope, in some small way, I have given them a little something in return.

Oh, and the next movie on my list... Flock of Dodos: The Evolution/Intelligent Design Circus, which, as I understand, is as much about the failure of the experts to communicate to us mortals as it is about both sides of the debate.

If only there were some tormented, mid-brained soul out there whose flaw [being mid-brained and thus arguing with himself (or herself) about everything] provided him (or her) with a knack for grasping fairly complex issues and then explaining them, perhaps by analogy, to the common man.

Luth,
Out.