Movie Review - I Heart Huckabees

Finally I see the movie... it is not what I expect but I must admit, after I figure out the film (at least partially) it is exceedingly clever! At first the movie strikes me as goofy with exaggerated characters doing half-crazy things all in the name of searching for answers and solutions. I suspect a lot of people will not like this movie. Some people will really like this flick too once they "get it." People who do not mind thinking a lot will probably be among the latter.

I was told that this film was about existentialism. I read a review in Tricycle that opens with a quote, "David O. Russell shows us just how funny Buddhism really is in his new film, I Heart Huckabees. ---Robert Coe." Existentialism and Buddhism I believe are two different concepts however. There may be something there that I do not comprehend that perhaps someone else can explain. The movie does present concepts that I tend to think of as Buddhist, such as, "Being in the Now."

This film has several people who are truly characters even to me... and I am someone who the guy at the local GNC describes as leading a Bugs Bunny lifestyle. (Is it my Mega Men supplement commercial?)

Here are our main players:

Albert Markovski is our environmental activist, poet, and local bleeding heart who looks for help with the coincidences in his life when there is so much more going on. They don't seem like such amazing coincidences to me, but they get him thinking deeply about life. He is a deep thinker... He is also going up against Brad Stand with all he has got. This is someone who seemingly ousts him from his own organization taking over the group.

Brad Stand is a hot shot executive doing the fast, "looking good" climb to the top of the Huckabees kingdom. He is all white teeth and good suits with the perfect life and will tell you he knows Shania Twain if given so much less than even half-a-chance. He is our classic smooth talker and people want to follow him.

Dawn Campbell is part of Brad's perfect life... She is also the lovely blonde, apple pie spokes model of the retail superstore Huckabees who suddenly takes to wearing bonnets and stops feeling the part of all her overtly sexy commercials.

Tommy Corn is a hard core warrior firefighter hero and much more too. Tommy is actually a bit too much for most people. He also has disturbing political issues with petroleum use that leave him pedaling his bicycle like mad to fires and estranging him from his wife and family. They don't seem to understand him at all.

The Jaffes, are what all these people end up having in common. They are a very romantic husband and wife team, together all the way as existential detectives looking for clues to solve these "cases." They use observation and concentration to dissemble people's egos in their many attempts to help them understand to the point of resolution. They will watch their charges in the bathroom, eating cereal and pay attention to what might seem like the most casual events that would otherwise simply go un-noticed. They keep a great blackboard with overlapping cubes mapping out their vision that Mr. Jaffe always leans against ending up with the images on his jacket. I hear he has a watch with no numbers or hands too.

Caterine Vauban is the red hot French radical and a tough opponent of the Jaffe team who also gets involved in the cases looking at the difficulties of life. She is sex, emotion, loss, confrontation, pain and suffering and has great legs. The manure of life that forces us to grow is what she is looking at so very closely that she is willing to put her face is right in it. She also finds seemingly small incidents and instructs how they can often be so much more than what they appear. Her students whack each other in the faces with balloons with a shocking slap and bonking sound shocking themselves into the "NOW."

Amazingly enough the view of the world presented by the Jaffes blanket of interconnectedness and Caterine's seeming opposing charges into chaos all come together. The ripples of the resolutions flow through each of these people like the cubes on the board map may indicate. This solution is including the detectives themselves, resulting in a great shift for everyone, although still in their own places. This is all about our really seeing our own faces as the face of others too even as we attempt to throttle them by their necks. Perhaps it is especially as we want to choke them. Can we see through the faces of others and find ourselves? This movie accomplishes this so very literally, it is actually hysterically funny... but only once you get it.

***

I found this review particularly interesting and different. It also is the best review I have read that really explains the idea in the movie well.

http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=367_0_2_0_M

Excerpt from review at link:

One problem with the word “shaman,” which traces its origins to the Siberian steppe, is that it is popularly employed by people more interested in fantasizing about some alternate reality than squaring their shoulders to bear the mundane burdens of this one. However, in cultures where such an office exists, the job of the shaman is primarily to foster the interrelation of two groups or positions that have hardened into such stubborn opposition that the survival of the society is at risk. For life to go on, the two camps must overcome their polemic, and the shaman acts by throwing himself into the fray—mentally, bodily, and emotionally, sometimes at personal risk. The result of his labors typically constitutes a paradigm shift rather than a compromise: the rules, though not necessarily undone, are re-contextualized and the system changes, including the position of the shaman himself.