Elizabethtown

Grinding gears last night was the soon to be released "Elizabethtown" starring two dramatically handicapped specimens of face-driven Hollywood casting. There is hardly a need to point out that this movie is bankrupt--musically, emotionally, romantically--but I want to explore exactly why it is so weak.

With high fidelity to its genre, the movie exploits a natural tendency to confuse emotion and experience. Emotions, raw human responses to exoteric events, can simply not be trapped between two pieces of celluloid. The experiences that contain emotional life can. "Elizabethtown" seeks to shortcut (and only short circuits) the path from event to emotion. It actually depicts the emotions and tries to pass them off as authentic. In so doing, it blasphemes the genuine warmth and kindness that characterize relationships, bereavement, career failure; instead of successful parody or subtle satire we get a swizzle of pop tracks, extreme close-ups, and saccharine speech acts.

Might there remain escapist entertainment value? Impossible. Movies like this one promote evacuation, not escapism. They empty out, purging life of legitimacy, excusing individuals of accountability, and suggesting that a thickly applied melodic varnish will get us through to the end. Escapist film, aside from being entertaining, induces a departure to an ideal place and typically drags a trace of ideality back to reality. Evacuation leaves only a hollow, anti-experiential, and deceitful sense of satisfaction.

Elizabethtown