Garden State
In fact, I don’t know how many years ago, we started watching Garden State at Pochi’s place (what a great pun on Mohiro Kitoh’s best short story, haha), but after half of the movie, I just couldn’t stand watching it anymore. The character of Natalie Portman annoyed the hell out of me, and I didn’t see any good in the relationship or the progress of the storyline either.
Maybe I have become a different person, but yesterday, the characters did not annoy me at all. Maybe it’s because we watched the german version so that I didn’t have to listen to Natalie Portman’s loli voice which I found very annoying back then. But whatever, the main thing is that enjoyed the movie thoroughly this time without finding it depressing at all, especially when they stood in the rain and cried out loud – yay!
The only thing that I found weird was how sometimes, sudden things would happen, like how he says “I like you” totally out of the blue, or that kiss after crying in the rain. Somehow I would have expected things like these to develop slower (yes, even slower!), I guess.
I was listening to the soundtrack again this evening and it made me realize again how much fun it was to watch the movie and recognize all the songs again. Maybe this is the only movie where I have known the soundtrack so well and for so long before actually watching the movie itself.
Besides the horrible placement for “Caring is Creepy”, I was mainly shocked by “Let Go” as ending song. I mean, hey, how can a happy couple kiss at the end to lyrics like “There is beauty in the breakdown”?
It’s weird how I feel like there isn’t much to say about this movie, especially since it was on my “To-do-list” for such a long time, but at least I can say that it met my high expectations for it. I did expect something rather ‘meaningful’ than funny, and that’s what I got: If you take aside the psycho stuff, it’s a portrait of the indieness of our generation.
PS. I see myself changing my opinions quite a lot recently. When I listened to the Iron&Wine version of “Such Great Heights” three months ago, I found it totally boring. Today, it doesn’t sound too bad to me.