The burgers were good too...

Rating: 10/10 (4 May 2005)

First of all let me say it's a great movie, although my girlfriend assures me that it's a classic guy flick, nothing more. And it certainly does play on that level. The protagonist goes back to listening to the Who, smoking pot, working in a fast food joint, and lusting after a high school girl. Plus he gets the car that turned him on when he was a teenager. Bonus! Oh, and he dies happy. But more on that later.
This movie also plays (rather shamelessly I thought) to some nicely pointed clichés of the times. Gays are good, the military is bad, stuff like that. Gays are people and so are colonels, and some are good and some are bad, but when making a movie that seeks to draw sharp contrasts between happy and sad it helps to start with good and evil.
There are lots of colors in this movie too. Jim's tie, Jane's room, all those roses. And swirling surrealism. Beautiful.
The colors and the return to hedonism and the joy of plate throwing are what give this movie part of its kick. But here's what it's really about: When the basic physical needs of existence are satisfied, there are basically two ways it can go wrong: Too little love, or too much fear. Family A has too little love. They don't hate each other, the husband wants the best for his wife even when he finds out she's been cheating on him, the wife is horrified to think she has hurt him. But they're alone in the beginning, and the entire course of the movie finds them gaining what they need, some more successfully than others. That's family A. Family B has a different problem: They have too much fear. The wife is catatonic. The husband is at war with the world (hence the military analogy I suppose). The son is finding his way, but that way is filled with manipulation and defense mechanisms.
And then is seen the evolution of those two states. Loneliness joined with beauty breeds fear of the loss of that beauty. Clinging results, beauty cannot flow, and the heart expands to try to hold it all, but it can't expand forever. On the other hand, fear joined with beauty breeds despair, and the heart can be crushed. When Jane takes Ricky's hand she saves him from being crushed. When Lester rediscovers his feelings for Jane and Caroline he is alone no longer.
What is beauty? Beauty is love.