REEL REFLECTIONS

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF MEANING
A Review of "I G Huckabees"

David Greiser

In the brief time I have been writing this column, I have reviewed only those films I thought were technically and artistically excellent. My reasoning, I suppose, is that I write only four reviews per year. Why waste my readers’ time on a seriously flawed film?

But every now and again a movie comes along that tries to do something important enough to warrant a review even if, artistically speaking, it falls wide of the mark.

"I G Huckabees" is, I believe, such a film. It is perhaps the first comedy ever made that is explicitly about existentialism. (Woody Allen’s early comedies joked about the absurdity of life in a godless universe, but they used the Big Questions mostly to set up visual or verbal gags.) "Huckabees" follows some of the conventions of the screwball comedy while seriously exploring the meaning (or non-meaning) of life.

Specifically, "Huckabees" follows the life and travails of one Albert Markovsky, played by Jason Schwartzman. Albert is an environmental activist whose open space coalition is trying to save a marshland from development by the big-box super-chain, Huckabees, "the everything store."

Like many idealists, Albert also carries a lot of anger from having to live his life in a less-than-perfect world. In an opening scene he is shown standing in the marsh he is trying to save, screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs.

Albert is convinced that a series of encounters he has had with a tall African man are not a coincidence. He goes to a husband-and-wife team of "existential detectives," the Jaffes (played by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) for help. The detectives’ method of investigation involves following their client everywhere (even to the bathroom) since, in their thinking, everything in life is connected.

To get Albert in touch with his anger, and to help him appreciate the connectedness of all things, they zip him into a body bag. There he must confront the angry images in his head and learn to coexist with them.

Along the way, Albert learns to know a couple of the detectives’ other clients. There is Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), a fireman so environmentally conscious that he goes to fires on his bicycle; and Brad Stand (Jude Law), a Huckabees PR man Albert suspects may have hired the detectives to help undermine Albert’s work.

We are also introduced to Catarine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a nihilistic philosopher who contends, contra the Jaffes, that nothing in life is connected—that life, in fact, is meaningless. Her business card reads "Cruelty . . . manipulation . . . meaninglessness." Tommy the fireman has been influenced by Catarine’s best-selling book, and he tries to convince Albert of its worth.

If all of this sounds hard to follow, that’s because it is. The plot of "I G Huckabees" is scattered and screwball, because the film is about the dialogue, the characters, and idea of the connectedness of meaning and absurdity.

Unfortunately, much of the dialogue moves at breakneck speed, with the actors more often screaming than speaking their parts. At points I sensed that something of significance was being said here, but I wanted to rewind the film so I could hear it again. "Huckabees" is a verbose film, and while verbosity is not a flaw in-and-of itself, the pace of this dialogue suffers from too many double lattes.

In addition to the flaws in writing and pacing, the dialogue also misrepresents some important philosophical concepts. The connectedness of all things is a concept more associated with Zen thought than with existentialism. Existentialism has always sought to make sense of the life of the individual, and is less concerned with the individual in community.

I read a recent interview with David O. Russell, the film’s director. Russell struck me as a brilliant man with a limited attention span, one who has started reading a great many books but finished only a few.

I suppose I could be accused of being picky. But then, the kinds of people who go to see "I G Huckabees" will tend to be the kinds familiar with the ideas in the film. The film still works if we see it as a clash of worldviews between Eastern connectivity and Western alienation. Will Albert find oneness with people and things, or only emptiness?

It would be misleading to leave too strong an impression that this film is a philosophical exposition. It is not. It is a comedy, and it has enough hilarious and intelligent moments in it to elicit commendation.

"I ª Huckabees" is an occasionally ingenious comedy of ideas and a good deal of fun. It reaches for the stars of its big ideas and lands somewhere just above the smog of Los Angeles.

—Dave Greiser is a pastor, seminary teacher, and wanna-be philosopher who lives in Telford, Pennsylvania. His one regret in life is that he is not Woody Allen.