...well my apologies in advance...here's Rob....
{“I don’t remember why Sophia (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) begin to question their relationship, why they think adopting a sick cat will help, or why I thought it would be a good idea to drink high-gravity beer from 2-10 p.m. and pay $13 to see “The Future” at IFC.”}
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What I remember (presented as a background on the author - and first review - of the column “Rob Vs. Anything,” which Kevin is letting me write whenever I want b/c I used to work for a newspaper and I think he thinks, erroneously, that it’ll lend an air of credibility to the blog):
I remember ditching everyone after the 6th or 7th bar and a couple slices at Joe’s. (Note: Sean and Kevin were there somewhere and will prob. give you the dirt on where we were/what we drank/ate. I’m not here to review beer or bars or food or gush over attractive beer-nerd bartenders who favor low-cut shirts, lambics and the Philadelphia Eagles. I’m here to do this.) Right - at some point, I broke away from the group after pizza and decided it’d be a good idea to go back and get more pizza: I ordered, couldn’t pay, left in an angry huff, realized I still wanted pizza, went back in a humbled huff after taking out $140 from one of those dodgy on-the-street ATMs that look like grey plastic urinals and smell like regular urinals and take forever to spit out the money b/c maybe they’re copying your account information, had another slice of pizza (fresh mozz.), overheard the people standing at the next elevated table-thing talking about “The Interrupters” and how it was playing at IFC, tried to hump my way into the conversation, got weird looks from people with messy hair and perfectly manicured eyebrows, left in a mini-huff missing New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest – or PacNoWe as I call it – where the pizza is so-so but the people are so much fucking friendlier than out here, tried to buy a ticket for a 10:15 p.m. showing, learned it was sold-out, almost left in another huff but was tired of huffing-about and walking and still far too drunk to drive back “Upstate” (where I’ve been staying after giving up my apt. to wander around like a dope in the South&North-West), bought a ticket for a 10:45 p.m. of “The Future,” tried to go into the theatre, was told to come back in 25 minutes, got a diet peach Snapple (which I don’t really like, but for which I retain a nostalgic attachment relating to an ex-girlfriend whom I didn’t like either but occasionally miss, I think, for no other reason than b/c she always had Snapple in her dorm fridge) and spent the following 20 minutes standing outside of the theatre and texting my current-girlfriend to share the thread of non-Snapple-related nostalgia-borne sadness that’s kept creeping up on me in the Village ever since she graduated from NYU and moved to L.A. to follow her dreams of Four-Squaring every so-Cal Korean BBQ restaurant (and making it big in the music business).
Stuff about the actual movie (and me):
So, The Future.
Like I said, I don’t really remember the beginning. I do recall previews for “Black Power Mixtape” and “Shut Up Little Man” [both of which look pretty good and I hope to catch next time I, A) find myself too drunk to drive and walking around downtown with $130 in cash or, B) Google “watch movies online” or “free and illegal movies for people who don’t have shame or a job” and forget, after all that typing, what I originally intended to watch) and didn’t really perk back up, I didn’t, until around the time they get the cat, Paw-Paw, and he/she/it starts serving as the movie’s occasionally-cute/occasionally annoying occasional narrator.
If you’ve seen “You, Me and Everyone We Know,” (which I actually liked quite a bit, in case you were wondering) you can prob. understand why one might mentally glaze over parts of any July feature, new or old, drunk or sober… Like its predecessor, “The Future” is at times quirky and adorable and perfectly awkward and filled-to-its-erect-nips w/ a conflicting pseudo-hipster-ish post-whatever relatability and a sincere real-world (contra-“Real World”) in-the-moment air of memorability which, like this sentence, seems apt and cool at first punch, but in hindsight makes you shake your head and ask, “what the dick does that even mean?” before forgetting most of it.
The characters are unique (though there are less of them than in YM&EWK and the ones who aren’t July aren’t nearly as good), the dialogue isn’t trite, plot-moving nonsense (but, again, there’s less of it and the gaps can drag in their own way) and the film finds wins throughout by beautifully expressing the inexpressibles of relationships, be it re: career ambition, commitment issues or, um, things to do with sick cats (read: thin child-metaphors)… [Also, I want to use the phrase “issues in childless relationships between childish 30-somethings,” but couldn’t squeeze it into the previous sentence.] ...but the movie fails more often by trying to be too vague, too subtle, too meek – aloof in ways – and, largely, by trying to stretch one prevalent battle of weirdo external vs. weirdo internal (LOVE vs. “who the fuck am I?” and all that) into a long-form interpretive character study in which the characters are all too aware of the folks with clipboards in the observation loft to act like real fucking people. (Remember in “Away We Go,” when the guy-from-The-Office’s character asks that-lady-from-SNL’s character, “Are we fuck-ups?” I like that line/moment, but despite its humor and sadness and apt hyper-self-awareness, I don’t really want to see it pulled like too-thin taffy into a 91-minute film that only mirrors a real relationship accidentally in that it somehow simultaneously tries too hard and not hard enough.)
You want to feel for Sophia and Jason, but it’s like they’re not even trying (and maybe you could say the same for July as a director – and of course me as an audience, but fuck you.) Maybe they’d/we’d get somewhere if we could all just go out to drinks at a coffee shop that also serves alcohol (Think! Coffee?) and buzz on shots of espresso and glasses of wine until we let go of the cutesy vulnerable act and just say what’s weighing on the parts of our minds that script these little scenes of ours.
To figure Sophia out, Jason shouldn’t have to stop time/talk to the moon/walk around all glum and goofy and reactionary. And Sophia shouldn’t have to fuck a sign-maker or dance around trapped in a magically over-sized shirt. July, if she wants to actually say something, shouldn’t have to play it so safe by playing it so indie… (and, I know, I shouldn’t have to drink my ass off to enjoy a night in the city or a movie, but this isn’t about me.) This is about us as art and audience – and can’t we just set up the damn camera up and talk to each other anymore? – not adopt cats, not wink and dance our way around the knots of self-strung alienation, not leave the theatre w/ nothing to relate to but characters who can’t relate to anything/one?
Or maybe this is about me – who I am and what’s in my bloodstream and I want in a beer, a girlfriend, a diet beverage, a movie from a director that I thought I liked – and that brings us back to the whole credibility thing. So let’s close here with a last thought on the movie before this becomes all about me, my lack of confidence, my childhood, some grand-scale criticism of this criticism, etc…:
Yeah, I was drunk (and hoping to see a powerful doc. about gang violence – not something that loaded up on hidden-heart and winks in place of power) – and I was rather disappointed by the pieces of the movie I remember, because, really, if I wanted to volley awkward palaver and watch people dance in some co-veiled denial of their unsatisfactory footings in an increasingly pointless/increasingly mid-life existence, I wouldn’t have ditched my friends in the first place.
One more beer.
One more slice of pizza.
“I’m gonna pretend to go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror… Anyone want to adopt a cat?”
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