Elusive Trope's picture

    Falling Sideways Some More

    http://www.movieactors.com/freezeframes-77/Sideways346.jpeg

    Do not drink too much. Do you hear me? I don't want you passing out or going to the dark side. No going to the dark side!

                                 -- Jack Cole, Sideways (2004)


    In the film Sideways, Paul Giamatti plays Miles Raymond, a forty-something unsuccessful writer, wine-aficionado, and  depressed middle school English teacher living in San Diego, who takes his soon-to-be-married actor friend and college roommate, Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church), on a road trip through Santa Ynez Valley wine country. Miles wants to relax and live well. However, Jack wants one last sexual fling; at least that is their expressed agendas for the trip.

    The agenda beneath the surface, however, has something to do with that male ritual of the mid-life crisis during a road trip. There are few thematic vehicles in the movie as hackney as this one, and Sideways is remarkable if only because it is able to rise above the well-worn material.  In a sense, the film is able to demonstrate why so many films (i.e. the (male) writers and film-makers) keep returning to it.  

    Peter Rainer in New York Magazine writes [emphasis mine]:

    Miles and Jack knock about as if they were still late-stage adolescents. They’re still figuring out who they want to be, which gives their strenuous efforts at happiness an added poignancy (and absurdity). We can see that Miles, who according to Jack has been “officially depressed for, like, two years,” is more than just a glum zhlub; he may not be able to get his book sold, but his love of language is as real as his love of the grape. When he talks about literature or his favorite wines, he isn’t showing off. He’s trying to live up to his own best image of himself, and he seems transported. In his own dim way, Jack understands this, which is why their friendship is more complicated than it appears. Jack is always telling the people they meet that Miles’s book is being published, and he isn’t being cruel—he’s trying to inspire Miles to be the guy he was before the two-year tailspin (and also get him some action).

    There is a kind of conventional standard that adolescence is a time to figure who one wants to be, as if our sense of self was a collection of choices from a laundry list of potential facets of a persona.  Things have changed some, and those in their twenties and even their thirties can say they are figuring out who they want to be without getting a puzzled or disapproving look.  But speaking from experience, by the time one reaches the forties, the expectations are that one has all this stuff figured out.

    For a 19-year-old like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the frustration and internal agitation comes from being frustrated in his attempts to get it figured in the first place.  For the forty-something like Miles, it was having believed once that one had it figured out, only to discover that either it has been lost or, worse, one never had figured out. Rainer continues:

    Giamatti is letting us know that Miles’s eloquence about wine may just be a fancy way of tarting up his drinking habit, his sadness. But he isn’t simply replaying his Harvey Pekar from American Splendor—this is a whole other species of depresso: tender, enraged, rueful about what he has lost. At least Pekar was published.

    The character of Miles I believe was raised in a similar fashion as I was: the only real expectation is that one be all you can be, to reach your potential.  In one sense, this approach to life is all fine and dandy, except there is no guarantee one's own understanding of that potential is going to be grounded in reality, or that reality is going to cooperate with achieving that understood potential.  In fact, life may just very well being actively resistant to such an achievement.

    Becoming sensitive to not achieving this vision of a potential self can lead one to be the tender, enraged and rueful depresso.  It can also lead to a feeling of humiliation - that dark side.

    (I tried to find a review of Sideways that specifically used the term humiliation and was unable.  It is as if the stating this particular facet out loud is too discomforting,  a train wreck we can't bring ourselves to look at.  Sadness and rage we can deal with, but not humiliation.)

    I find Rainer's juxtaposition of tender with enraged intriguing.  Rage is not the first description of Miles Raymond that comes to mind, but it is a credit to Giamatti that he is able to authentically capture that rage which comes from a sense of being humiliation by life.  Or is it a rage against one's own self, that all the humiliation is not only of one's own doing, but well-deserved, some kind of justice being served by universe?

    Possibly the thing that separates a Miles Raymond and a William Foster who goes on a violent rampage is that impulse to turn the blame for the humiliation on one's self. 

    I am reminded of an essay that I had torn out from a weekly supplement and carried around for a number of years.  In one of the essay's threads, the author discussed the use of humor to cope with misfortune, starting with his upbringing in a Jewish  household. Later in life, he heard someone tell a joke in Ireland that was basically the same joke he had heard around the dinner table, except the characters were Irish and not Jewish.

    The Irish version starts with a man, we'll call him Liam, in Church praying to God, or rather complaining.  "God," Liam says, "I don't understand.  I do everything I can to be a good servant to you and to follow the path you want us all to take.  I work hard everyday, I don't drink or smoke, I don't cheat on my wife, I am a good father to my children, I come to Church every week, I do my confessions.  And I don't have two shillings to rub together.  Yet my brother Seamus, he spends all his days drinking and smoking, he never comes to Church, he uses your name in vain, he cheats on his wife and mistreats his kids, and yet, and yet he is incredibly wealthy.  No matter what he does, he becomes wealthier and wealthier.  Why Lord, why?!" 

    There is a great thundering in the air and suddenly a giant fist comes crashing through the roof of the Church and pins Liam against the pew, and a deep booming voice says "Because I fuckin hate ya, that's why."

    Trying to make sense of the failure that is not reaching one's perceived potential (including trying to decide who is to blame) is probably a task we all must face, yet we rarely engage in a discussion about how it is we understand that potential, the dynamics and forces involved.  Usually we are left with grasping for some metaphor, some analogy that approaches some truth about it. Miles, in his effort to explain to Maya why it is he is so passionate about Pinot, says [emphasis mine]:

    Uh, I don't know, I don't know. Um, it's a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's, you know, it's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet.

    Don't we all, to some degree, like to believe that deep down there is something in us haunting and brilliant, thrilling and subtle, there waiting to be expressed if only there was someone or something that will coax it to the surface. Someday my prince will come....

    Comments

    Jeez ... This is great.  No kidding. 


    Great piece, Trope.  It's not just a guy thing, that humiliation when life takes a turn in an unexpected and unwelcome direction, but I have tender empathy for men who face these things.  I'm going to get in trouble for this, but in this new, unfair world our sights are broadening to include even those men who seemed to have it all.  Life is tough, no matter what kind of body parts.

    Also, I never got that movie before.  I think I get it now.  I may have to watch it again.


    It's definitely not just a guy thing.  I threw the last line in there at the end as a way to say that issue about reaching one's potential is something we all face. Of course, as in any patriarchy, the cultural standard for women has their plot line focused on the right guy.  It is only through the man that the woman is able to find the expression of her self, through being a reflection of the man.  It amazed me at the time how Thelma and Louise was able to culturally unsettled everybody.

    I'm going to get in trouble for this, but in this new, unfair world our sights are broadening to include even those men who seemed to have it all.  Life is tough, no matter what kind of body parts.

    You shouldn't get into trouble, in my opinion.  I went to a lecture by this individual who spent a year living as a homeless person.  He had been providing, as part of his ministry, food and basic needs to the homeless, and wanted to understand life from their point of view.  So he and his friend went to five different cities, living under the overpass, as he would say.

    At one point he talked about spending the evening with a couple and their two children, one who was an infant. As they shot the breeze, he watched the mother pour a little vodka into the infants formula.  The mother explained with complete sincerity that this was a healthy way to soothe the baby and help ensure it got the rest it needed. 

    The speaker related to us the thought running through his head at that moment:  how badly this baby was a victim with so many strikes against him before he has barely begun.  Then the question: at what point in this kid's life on the streets will society stop seeing him as a victim and start seeing him as a victimizer?

    Part of the issue we face is how do we as a community facilitate the emergence of individuals who have healthy sense of self.  Maybe it is a problem of a decadent nation. With 700 brands of shampoo to choose from, existential problems become a luxury of the moment. But I think something like the Boston Marathon bombings highlights that this problem isn't an indulgence of the well-to-do.


    I had a lot to say about this but hit the wrong button.  So, the quick version is that there is something of a rampage in Sideways, it's just emotional.  Jack wants a fling without consequences.  But he lies to get it.  He knows he can't count on finding a woman with the same needs he has, so he takes advantage of an innocent bystander.  Miles goes along with it.

    I think there are all sorts of justifiable reasons for a midlife crisis, but the hardest thing is to indulge the crisis without hurting innocent bystanders, including family, friends and strangers.  Buy the sports car, if you must, but after you've funded the college savings account.  Get laid, but not if you have to lie to do it.

    The two female protagonists in Sideways wind up badly hurt by Miles and Jack.  And, of course, we can't turn the movie off feeling good for Jack's future wife.  Mostly, though, I'm sad for Miles.  The title of his book is terrible.  Just terrible.


    I believe this a visual representation of Miles' emotional rampage.

    https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQY7ZjKfULMTCY2Rn0U1ctMJM-4oJItYjhUhYAfNnv-3bRO_hZ_lA


    There might be some who would say that I am going through a midlife crisis.  I would counter that it is the same freakin crisis that I have been living through since I was teen.  I just don't get on some level the forty-something guy who wakes up one morning and asks 'how did I get here?'  I been asking that question to a point of a melt down all my life.  Maybe it just point to the fact it takes some more than others to face their mortality.  Because really what is any existential crisis than about death and the fact that someday all of us will give up the mortal coil.  And all those questions:  will I be remembered? how will I be remembered? was I good person? did I live a good life?


    I'm with you.  I feel like I've lived with the same issues all my life, though my perspective on them have thankfully changed and will continue to.  I'm easily bored.  If I'm going to keep butting up against the same questions, I am damned sure going to try different answers.


    I don't know much about your situation but I could also say I've faced an existential crisis all my life. But I can get a sense of how that's different from a mid life crisis.

    For about 15 years I worked as a painter/handyman for very rich very liberal lawyers and doctors. I'd come into usually Philadelphia for 2 months and in a van I lived in, parked and lived in their driveway, worked constantly 12 to 14 hour days, make a fat wad of money and left to travel. These rich liberals treated me like a long lost brother and romanticized my life. I didn't just shower and shit in these rich people's bathroom, they invited me to supper often and made me special suppers occasionally.

    I'm educated but I was never able to make it work for me and find a place among the wealthy elite in society. My life style has its rewards but its also been a struggle, not at all like these people imagined.

    As I pondered their reaction to me I wondered what they were like in college. A  bit hippie maybe, even activists in liberal causes. Then they began climbing the ladder to success and wealth. They worked as many hours as I did though for them it was everyday for years while for me it was for a couple of months until I hit the road.

    I could see any one of them looking at their money grubbing life and questioning the difference between their early idealism and facing a mid life crisis. They seemed to see something in me they had lost. That seems different from the existential crisis I've faced all my life.


    Maya: What's the title?

    Miles: The Day After Yesterday.

    Maya: Oh... You mean today?

     

    The thing is this a title I could see myself titling that novel I always imagined myself writing.


    Maybe on a draft.  But your writing is too well crafted.  You'd change it before anyone would see it.


    I was going to ask, AT.  Could this be the time to write that novel? 


    Maybe. It is one of the threads of thought that is in there right now. But one of the things that has seemingly become clear is I can't mesh some professional choices with a life that is conducive to writing a novel (or any other artistic medium). Some people can and that's cool. It requires maybe a particular level of discipline that I don't have.

    There was the most amazing report on Tamerlan Tsarnaev's life in the NYT this weekend: "A Battered Dream, Then A Violent Path" (with like 15 reporters working on it, no less.)

    Believe it or not, turns out there's more than a little of Miles in Tamerlan's story, especially when he's being Mr. Mom in Cambridge while the wife works, after everything else seems to have fallen apart.

    I dare say there's an example of nearly every meme you've touched on in this series of posts in his story.

    His life really does read like a Hollywood script, sometimes akin to Falling Down.

    But he is also definitely Rocky Balboa at times, before Rocky's success.

    Other times he seems like trying and failing at Wladyslaw Szpilman (amazingly concurrent with the Rocky persona,) or a cross between Tony Manero and Dirk Diggler, in his dude duds periods.

    The only meme absent is gang member.  That role may have been added in the visit to Russia, we don't know yet. Or if you consider politico-religious sects to be similar to gangs.

    "Loser"  is definitely the main overarching theme. And I still think Uncle Reslan is an especially perceptive man about the human condition.

    (BTW, Mom is starting to look like a real piece of work. She appears to have once been a Jackie Stallone type, still is in some ways, worked at a spa as a licensed beauty technician. And it seems to be her more than Tamerlan who was influenced by the mysterious Mischa. It's also not clear yet who the Russian FSB was looking at with more suspicion, Tamerlan or Mom. So you could drag a Ma Barker type into the mix if you wanted....)


    This paragraph really jumped out at me from the Foreign Policy article about mom:

    According to the regional news site Caucasian Knot, 1,089 people were killed by violence in Dagestan between January 2010 and March 2013. A senior officer from the local branch of the Interior Ministry told me that there are dozens of distinct insurgencies in Dagestan with differing goals and ideologies. Many young religious men yearn for the "forest," the euphemism for the guerrilla lifestyle in the forested hills, romanticizing the war as righteous resistance against the corrupt, unfair, and often violent authorities. Do mothers justify their sons' actions? "Not a single mother of a suspected terrorist would ever admit that her son had done something bad," Serazhudin Datsiyev, human rights activist with the NGO Memorial, says.

    If Miles were a Chechen immigrant loser, he coulda planned a stint in the forest rather than a tour of wine country?

    (Interesting that Dad, as regards Tamerlan's visit to Russia, early on described a depressed loser type, sleeping in all day. And Mom still dreams of her beautiful eldest-son creation achieving greatness....)

    Edit to add: should have included in the comments on the NYT piece on Tamerlan that  another striking thing about his story towards the end is statelessness--he doesn't wait to get the Russian passport--he is "homeless," belongs nowhere, except for the embrace of Islam. The existential thing rearing it's head...


    There are still a number of threads I wanted to touch on which I haven't yet. One of these is the lack of ritual passage for males (and females) in this culture.  When some men decided to go bang drums in the woods and howl at the moon, they were generally considered "out there," and probably a number of them were.  But ritualizing the transitions, it would seem, are a crucial facet of navigating the process of living in this mad, mad world.

    These days we not only lack the rituals, but often do not even acknowledge the existence of these transitions.  It is bad enough that one moment, we're a kid, then an young adult, then an adult.  But we can't even agree as to when that moment arrives.  (watching the recent NFL draft, the twenty-something athletes (and future millionaires) are generally referred to as "kids," immature behavior and comments are dismissed as the result of "still being young.")  Maybe why over the years there have been frats that have gone over the line in their hazings is they lack any experience with ritual forms that facilitate healthy and sustainable unity.  (There also seems to be a long history of frats using methods such as humiliation to forge bonds of unity--i.e. we can only trust one another if we each have some knowledge of the skeletons in each others' closets).

    A key reason why so many young men (and older ones, too) romanticize things going off to the woods to become a guerilla warrior is because it appears to be clear path toward becoming a 'real' man. 


    Once again, I am impressed by the comprehensiveness of your thought on this.

    Myself, I am grasping around the edges of there being some important difference in the alientaed loner thing vs. the gang thing.


    Wonderful read.  So glad I breezed through today and caught it.  And, yes, it's not just guys who figure in here. 


    Now they have found female DNA on one of the Boston bombs. Earlier today, saw on CNN they were running a story on "black widow" terrorists in Russia.

    That said, the female DNA on that bomb (AKA a crock pot) could just be from the clerk who sold it, or a store assistant who stocked it.


    In this particular legal case, this is true.  But looking at things through a broader context, would it "surprise" or "shock" you to learn a woman had been as much a mastermind or the mastermind for such an heinous act as the Boston Marathon bombings.  When we stop to ask "how could she commit such an act?" is the answer a variation of the same dynamics that drive men, or is  there some other qualitatively different dynamic in the "radicalization" of females?  What role does gender politics and identity play in this process? 


    I can certainly see the bombers' mother being a black widow, all in the name of Allah.  In fact she seems to have been a catalyst for Tamerlan, at least.


    I won't hold my breath, but maybe her role in this will at least get a few of the pundits to look beyond the simple singular explanation for the bombings and terrorist actions.

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