Rocket Science and the Cinema Of Suicidal Suburban Bliss

"Oh, who gives a shit! Who needs a fucken baby anyway, you wanna make your self useful around here, why dont you get that goddamn tv fixed?"
-- Justine Last from The Good Girl

"Idealism is guilty middle-class bullshit."
-- Jeff from Suburbia (1996)

"We have to overcome the idea that everyone is the same."
-- Justin Cobb from Thumbsucker

Last Spring I saw Michael White's Year Of The Dog. The film is not what I expected at all. May I just say that whoever marketed the film should have been fired. Relationship/Date movie my ass. Come on folks, Year Of The Dog may be the best example I have seen of the effects of the suicidal blandness of the suburbs in some time. I am a child of suburbia and I have no problems with that, but I am not going to yank your chain. Diary of Mad Housewife is the real deal. The Ice Storm is a documentary to me. I felt like I was watching a home movie when I dragged Phil Goldberg to go see that in 1997. Little Children was wishful thinking for me. I knew all too well, I wanted to say sure, that is about right. Tell me something I do not know, Todd Field. The Virgin Suicides was like watching a film strip of my youth via trips to the Aspen Hill Shopping Center during the 1970's. Sadly, there were no Libson Sisters for me to be friends with while growing up. In one way or another, all of these films hit a nerve. Good or bad, they just hit nerves. Year Of The Dog was a call to arms. It is not the thinking person's Dog Park, but the antithesis of The Truth About Cats And Dogs. Molly Shannon steps way out of her comfort zone to play Peggy. She loses her beautiful beagle, Pencil. He dies in the first act of the film. Pencil's death sets in a motion one of the potent tales of the birth of an activist. To me, that is really what Michael White's Year Of The Dog is really about in the long run. Peggy's journey from mourning to becoming a full blown animal rights activist. At first, I thought it was merely Michael White playing around Peggy and the characters in her Southern Californian permanent non day sun existence. Peggy's interactions with family, friends and potential mates. At times the film falls into Todd Solondz territory-- is he laughing with or at his characters. That is not a criticism, but a lifelong obsession with White and Solondz. Maybe not lifelong, but at least for the last ten years. For Peggy, the suicidal blandness of the suburbs leads to something else. To honor Pencil's memory and her love of Pencil, she becomes an animal rights activist. It is a startling transformation.

So what does all this have to do with Rocket Science? Plenty because Jeffrey Blitz has dome something remarkable here. Rocket Science is being dismissed as a Napoleon Dynamite clone. I like Napoleon Dynamite and I while I do think Hot Rod is the same in tone, there are still parts of Hot Rod I found entertaining. Bill Hader's character and the virtues of am radio held my interest. I guess a lot of films are going to be compared to Napoleon Dynamite. It is inevitable. Rocket Science belongs more to the same genre of suburban cinema as Spanking The Monkey, Rushmore, Thumbsucker and Garden State. I could give you more, but I think Rocket Science belongs in the same category as those films. Sure, Garden State is over hyped, but I found plenty to like and it is the only thing I have seen Zach Braff in that I like. Blitz made a wonderful documentary called Spellbound back in 2002 that followed the lives of several teenagers involved in 1999 National Spelling Bee. If anything, I felt that Rocket Science is the narrative version of one of those lives. Rocket Science's Hal Hefner seems like the long lost brother of Thumbsucker's Justin Cobb or Spanking The Monkey's Ray Aibelli. I would not say he is that much different from Rushmore's Max Fisher. Wait a second, is anyone really like Max Fisher? Hal Hefner is a very interesting character. Here is teenage boy who stutters his way through life. Yet in order to get more out of life, he takes a risk and accepts an invitation to join the high school debate team in the New Jersey suburbs. An invitation at firs that seems outlandish and will turn out later not to be sincere as one would think. But leave it to Reece Thompson's Hal to make it one of the most interesting performances of year.

If I did not know any better, I would have thought Rocket Science's Ginny Ryerson and Election's Tracy Flick were separated at birth. Although in hindsight, I would rather have Tracy Flick here and send Ginny Ryerson to Baghdad to direct traffic coordination. Whatever one has against Tracy Flick, Ginny Ryerson takes it several steps further. After Ben Wekselbaum walks away from the debating championships, Ginny has to find a new debating partner. Ben Wekselbaum (Nicholas D'Agosto) is a local legend. And then in the middle of his debate, the words stop coming and he just goes silent. he walks away. He is the film's Kurtz. That is right, he is Kurtz and in many ways Hefner is our Willard. The third act of Rocket Science plays like a suburban Apocalypse Now. The Jersey suburbs are like the river leading to Kurtz's compound which in this case is Trenton. Ryerson is played by Anna Kendrick. Sadly she does not have Hal's best interest at heart. She is using him, but for Hal this is the best thing to ever happen to him. The chain of events leads to sudden maturity and a level of courage that was absent before. He comes from a dysfunctional family-- I know that is an oxymoron at this point. His older brother Earl is the perfect example of stupidity and brutality wrapped up in an ugly package. Let us just say, there is enough madness at home that makes him want to leave and explore the surroundings. Not just debate team, but the world of Ginny Ryerson. He befriends a boy and his family who live across the street from her family. Hal Hefner's journey may not be for everyone, but I found plenty to like and admire.

It is really while watching 51 Birch Street last night and watching the latest episode of Weeds tonight on Showtime that I see the best and worst of suburbia.
51 Birch Street is a very powerful documentary that at times plays like a real life version of Diary Of A Mad Housewife. The film shows how filmmaker, Doug Block learns that his parents 54 year marriage may not as been as happy as he thought it was. Block's mother dies unexpectedly and the father remarries three months later to his former secretary. Block finds out that his parents were far more complex than he ever could have imagined. The film is a powerful and riveting look at what goes on behind those doors in the suburbs. He discovers his Mother's diaries and he learns about a whole other side to her. Still that brings me to Weeds, which gets Southern California so right in so may ways. Hal Hefner might feel very at home in the Botwin household. Although, Mary-Louise Parker is a far better mother than the one that Hal has in the film. So Nancy is a drug dealer and a single mother, but she loves her children. Nancy may be the coolest and most loving mother in recent television history. Weeds get suburbia just right. The suburbs drive us to do crazy things, but for those of us who grew up here and still reside here, we know the drill. Some of us recognize the blandness that eats away at the land. The endless horizon of subdivisions and strip malls that make up the landscape. Although, Joe Dante's The 'burbs got all this right back in 1989. I always wanted Bruce Dern for a neighbor. For that matter, maybe Neighbors was not that far off the mark.