Somehow David O. Russell’s new film I Huckabees manages to take every issue facing our contemporary world (well, read: North America) and render it into a focused narrative arc. This is no small feat, as the film seems to present the fractured psyche of our society along with all its fears and yet somehow renders it comprehensible.
When Albert (Rushmore’s Jason Schwartzman, looking oddly like a skinnier, hairier version of Tom Cruise) faces a reoccurring coincidence during a personal and professional crisis, he decides it’s time to investigate the questions that plague his life. Specifically, he needs to know whether or not his job as an idealistic environmentalist is a worthwhile enterprise, and explain to himself what his overt hostility towards the handsome corporate executive Brad Stand (Jude Law) means.
Enter Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman. As ‘existential detectives’, they offer Albert a way of deciphering his life by investigating every aspect of it, and they hook him up with his existential sponsor in the tragic figure of post-9/11 firefighter Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), who rails against the petroleum industry and rides a bicycle to fires to practice what he preaches.
If Albert is the mind of the film, Tommy is its heart. Here, Wahlberg gives the performance of his career as he focuses the earnestness that he brings to all his characters, but layers it with violence, guilt and genuine pain. Russell’s casting, in every case, is sublime, as the characters all undergo profound transformations and move through the questions of their existence that were unexplored beforehand.
It takes a deft touch to be able to raise issues such as genocide in the Sudan during a family dinner or talk about the actual ramifications of suburban sprawl without coming off as overly didactic, but Russell injects the film with ridiculous and extremely funny scenes at every step, so that the viewer has no choice but to forgive him for trying to educate us as well. Because the arguments of the film (and the world) are embodied in characters as they work out their problems, nothing is ever given too much credence and no morality is ever hammered over the viewer’s head.
While I Huckabees doesn’t claim to have all the answers, the film is significant because it indicates and shares the fact that now more than ever, we are lost and there are stakes in finding our way out. Incredibly sophisticated, yet intimately accessible, the film is a sharp, funny, heartbreaking and truly enjoyable experience. It features a brilliant and eclectic cast with great range and depth (the fact that I haven’t even gotten to Naomi Watts’ bravura performance should be some indication of the depth of talent here) and boasts an incredibly tight script, particularly considering the complicated subject matter.
A frontrunner in the race for the year’s best, and considering the wealth of good films this year, this is high praise indeed.
