Movie Review: Garden State

GARDEN STATE
FOX Searchlight Pictures presents a film written & directed by Zach Braff; Starring Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard and Ian Holm

Everyone's been mentioning to me that 2004 is shaping up like a weak year in film. Films that looked strong at first glamce like Troy have proven to be weaker than they should've been. I was a bit disappointed with the year thus far, but along came this little film from the star of NBC's Scrubs, Zach Braff. Garden State began as an idea Braff had, so he wrote a script and eventually decided to direct and star in it as well. The resulting film made like gangbusters at this year's Sundance Film Festival and got picked up for distribution by FOX Searchlight (20th Century Fox's semi-independent film branch).

I'd heard about Garden State in passing in film magazines. I've watched Scrubs since the very first episode, so I was curious as to what the film would be about. I sat down and was blown back by how professional the film was. Braff's first film is better than a lot of directors' fourth, fifth or even tenth outings behind the camera. He has an eye for detail, but allows scenes to develop without zooming in on wacky stuff and pointing it out. An example of this is a scene where Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) is brought home by his newfound friend Sam (Natalie Portman). Sam's room has a lot of cool imagery around. A novice director could get away with spending time gawking at all of it as a roundabout way of developing Sam's character. Instead Braff lets the actors tell the story and develop the characters, and it works wonders.

The film's strongest asset is the script. Braff's able to concoct a variety of memorable characters without making them characatures. Braff's character comes home for the first time in 9 years after the death of his mother and encounters all the people he left behind when his father sent him away those years ago. The character interactions never seem forced, and the smaller moments between the characters emerge as the most resonent part of the film.

The casting is all perfect. Braff plays Andrew as a guy just waking up from a long sleep and getting used to the surroundings. Portman is great in this film. She takes her character and makes her instantly memorable with wonderful quirks. Peter Sarsgaard is laid back cool as Andrew's old high school friend who's now digging graves. Ian Holm is solid in a very small role as Andrew's father.

Very few independent films are this strong, especially with first-time directors at the helm. We're lucky that in such an uncharacteristically weak year from Hollywood, the independent community is picking up the slack with great films like this.