More on the Movie 'Garden State' 18 years, 2 months ago by Martey Dodoo

When I wrote my previous post on the movie "Garden State," I had not yet seen the film. About a month later, I did buy the soundtrack and rocked out to it for a couple of weeks. Then I forgot about it.

Fast forward a year or so. Having neither gone to see it in the theater nor spent the money to buy it on DVD, I was mildly excited to see that it was on cable. I was a bit annoyed that I had not seen the beginning, though. I was even more annoyed by the movie's attempts to be quirky and cool. I turned it off after about 20 minutes.

A few months later, I actually managed to see the beginning. The movie made a bit more sense, but it seemed sort of annoying. By the time I had come to the point where I had stopped watching before (about 2/3 of the way through), I was bored enough to stop watching again. I complained to a friend, who noted that the movie was like Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - it seems very pertinent and relevant after you have a particularly bad experience in your life.

Fast forward to last week. Over a friend's apartment, she gave her guests a choice: we could either watch Garden State or some other worse movie whose name I cannot even remember. I hoped that seeing the entire movie in its entirety would change my opinion of it.

Surprisingly, it did. Despite the fact that the film had a ridiculously sappy ending, I liked its message of hope in the face of despair and mediocrity. Not that anyone had died recently or anything, but hope seems to be a successful counter to the high levels of anxiety in my life.