Honest and intelligent

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2005)

The Russian philosopher George Gurdjieff believed that most people sleepwalk through life, only aware enough to do their jobs, have children, and then die without leaving much of an impact. Coming to oneself, according to Gurdjieff, means inhabiting your body, coming out of your daydreams, desires, and anxieties, allowing yourself to be touched by the world of color, air, sound, light, and feelings. This kind of transformation is suggested in Garden State a somewhat precious but highly entertaining comedy in which the main character comes alive after a lifetime of drug-induced somnolence.
While this debut film by Zach Braff who directed, authored, and starred in it, has moments where self-indulgence and cleverness run amok, it is saved by its beautiful look, the naturalness and intelligence of the dialog, and the honest performances of Natalie Portman, Ian Holm, Peter Saarsgard, and Braff himself. It is the kind of journey of self-discovery in which people can find some moment that has touched their lives.
In the film, a young Hollywood actor comes back to his New Jersey hometown for his mother's funeral and finds that four days can be life changing. Like the very best of its genre, it can make you laugh one minute and come close to tears the next. Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) is very passive and withdrawn, his emotions dulled by years of ingesting Lithium and other psychoactive medications.
Heavily sedated, he cannot even muster an emotional reaction when learning that his wheelchair-confined mother drowned in her bathtub. His psychiatrist father Gideon (Ian Holm) prescribed these to suppress his guilt resulting from a childhood incident. Unfortunately, Large avoids makes a point of avoiding his father during the film and we see very little of him except for brief interludes and a final conversation when he reaches out to him in a heartfelt and touching sequence. As one would expect, some pretty strange characters surround Andrew. Losers-in-training Mark (Peter Saarsgard), a gravedigger who robs jewelry from the dead and bilks department stores, a former cocaine addict turned policeman (Michael Weston), and a knight (Geoffrey Arend) who works at a fast food restaurant and wears his knight costume around the house.
Another friend Albert (Denis O'Hare) has become wealthy by inventing noiseless Velcro but his world seems empty. Braff does not look down on his characters, however, and they have a redeeming touch of humanity that makes them likable. When Andrew meets Samantha (Natalie Portman), her energy and enthusiasm give Large the courage to get in touch with his aliveness. Their relationship develops in an emotionally honest way without them having to first jump into bed and then ask each other's name the next morning. The things they talk about are real and involve their emotions. Though it happens rather suddenly, watching Andrew open up to life is a rare satisfaction and Braff can be forgiven for an ending that is as contrived as it is derivative.