I Heart Huckabees

Okay, so I have lost my privilege of picking out movies for awhile. Debby banished me from my movie selection throne after we watched this movie last night - I Heart Huckabees. Let me first of all preface this by saying that it was very, very weird. And the DVD box said that a reviewer said it was "laugh-out-loud funny", but I only did that maybe twice. There is a scene that really shouldn't have been in the movie, a weird sex scene, but other than that (and some out-loud swearing by the main character venting his anger towards his nemesis played by Jude Law), it was a decently clean movie.

However, I kind of liked this movie. It presented several different viewpoints that people have when it comes to approaching the meaning of life. The main character, Albert, hires two "existential detectives" (played by LIly Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) to try to understand the meaning of a series of coincidences involving chance encounters with a tall Sudanese refugee. Tomlin and Hoffman's view to life is that everything is connected - everything is under "one blanket" - you, me, the Eiffel Tower, a hammer, etc.; and only by realizing this can Albert deal with his seemingly senseless life, which consists of him trying to protect open spaces from suburban sprawl by chaining himself to rocks and reading bad poetry.

However, later on in the movie, he meets up with Tommy (played by Marky Mark, I mean Mark Wahlberg), who has latched on to a different person's view on life (he read it in a book written by this person, a French woman). This view on life says that nothing is connected, nothing is meaningful, that we should just realize this and accept this grim fact. Tommy believes this, yet struggles with it because his heart is big (he preaches against petroleum and sweatshops) and he wants there to be a happy reason to his existence.

A further view on life is found when Albert and Tommy decide to take matters into their own hands with Albert's question concerning his coincidences, and find out where the Sudanese refugee lives and eats with his "adopted family", a family of American Christians. This scene interested me the most, because each character in this Christian family spouts off religious jargon and mumbo-jumbo that we probably have believed for a long time. Tommy plays the role of devil's advocate and shows how hypocritical these Christians are - by taking in a Sudanese refugee into their family, they believe that they have done the "good deed" that is requred of them in their lives, and can thus ignore the other things that take place in their lives, in the lives of people around them, and in the world at large.

Eventually, every major character in the movie examines his/her life and questions the things that they have always believed about life. Some make major changes (a supermodel character, played by Naomi Watts, decides that her life revolves around her looks, and changes how she looks to see if there's any othe rmeaning to her life besides that.)

Anyway, this movie caused me to think a lot about what my views on the meaning of life are and where they come from.

This morning, when I was of course still thinking about this movie, I came across an interesting interview with the director of I Heart Huckabees. It helped explain even more why he did this movie.

Interview With David Russell