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April 30, 2008

Lars and the Real Girl

By Michael

I hesitated and procrastinated about seeing Lars and the Real Girl for a very long time. The premise sounded utterly cringeworthy. A comedy about a man who orders a Real Doll (a life-size, anatomically-correct, silicone, mannequin sex-toy), falls in love with her and expects everyone he knows to treat her like a normal human being? It just sounds like a Tom Green prank or a Saturday Night Live sketch that would air at the end of the show. In fact, I wouldn't be remotely surprised to see a movie exactly like that get widely released in this day and age.

Lars and the Real Girl is nothing like that. In fact, it's barely even a comedy. There are many, many funny parts but this movie is far too touching and sad at times to be labelled a comedy. Yes, it's very unusual to see a grown man treat a doll like a real human being, but the movie derives almost no humor explicitly from this odd situation. It's thankfully too mature, smart and purposeful for that. Instead, the humor comes from the colorful people in Lars' life and from what their reactions to Lars says about them. In fact, there are so many safe cliches this movie could have resorted to using. I kept expecting them to show up, only to be pleasantly surprised in the end.

Ryan Gosling, as Lars, had to walk a very fine line in this performance. He somehow finds the right pitch in a very complex role. One might expect this character to be very sad or very angry or too naive or just plain impossible to read. Perhaps he could have played Lars like Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love and gotten away with it. But Gosling is a little more nuanced. It's clear that he's troubled mentally, but he doesn't try too hard to sell it or play a caricature. It's more challenging than it seems and I can think of almost no one who could have pulled it off this well.

While Gosling is great, the heart of the movie and, really, what makes us really care about this film is the supporting cast. Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer play Gus and Karin, Lars' older brother and sister-in-law who obviously care about Lars a great deal, but can't seem to communicate that to him. Karin is very welcoming by nature and one of the first to accept Lars' "girlfriend," but Gus doesn't know what to make of it. He has some unresolved feelings of guilt from events in their childhood, but I won't spoil because his maturation as the film plays also creates a satisfying payoff. Patricia Clarkson also has a key role as Dagmar, a therapist who gets to know Lars and his girlfriend. She is a very intense character and her conversations with Lars in this movie are the most interesting parts because of what they reveal to each other and the things that don't explicitly say. Patricia Clarkson has been the most underrated actress in Hollywood for a decade now and it's because she can play such understated roles so well.

There's a great scene toward the end of the film. Lars and Gus are having a heart-to-heart, in a way but both are quite awkward. Lars by nature and Gus by virtue of the unusual situation. Neither are great finding the words for their thoughts. Lars wants to know how Gus knew when he was an adult. Gus' opinion is that you grow up when "you decide to do right. Not just what's right for you but what's right for everybody even when it hurts...it sounds like it's easy and for some reason it's not." I keep thinking how true that idea rings. In many ways, this is the thesis of the movie. It's about growing up, even though you're already an adult. Figuring out what's right even though everything is complex and difficult. Lars is not the only one in the film who has to learn this. Most people I know still have to learn this.

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