Garden State DVD Movie Zach Braff Natalie Portman

This listing is for Garden State DVD Movie Zach Braff Natalie Portman.

Actors: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Amy Ferguson, Jill Flint, Gary Gilbert
Format: Multiple Formats, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Surround), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Dubbed: Spanish
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: R (Restricted)
Studio: Fox Searchlight
DVD Release Date: December 28, 2004
Run Time: 102 minutes

After ten years of being away from home, a young man returns to his hometown for his mother's funeral. A young woman from his past helps him to reconnect with his family and his roots. I'll have to admit that for the first ten minutes or so of the film, the casual coarse language used by Largeman (Zach Braff)'s high school buddies seemed like a gratuitous and slightly strained reach toward "hipness," in effort to appeal to a younger generation of moviegoers. Blame this in part on my being on the other side of the generation gap. But as I began to know the characters better, it dawned on me that this WAS the younger generation (at least a real part of its disenfranchised subculture, one of which I know very little) and offers an honest representation of the way they speak.

There is a tremendous heart to this film, characterized when Braff, Natalie Portman, and Peter Sarsgaard's characters both literally and metaphorically unleash a scream into the "eternal abyss." Their pent-up frustration stems from the recognized irony that each of us is trapped in a world not of his own making with all of its seemingly irrational expectations and demands. Though we may anesthetize ourselves from the sad truths behind our sustaining myth of self-determination, we risk blinding ourselves to the great redeeming aspect of our existance: the love of the people around us.

Natalie Portman as Largeman's girlfriend, Sam, is utterly luminous here. Not to mention she made me fall in love. I am embarassed to say I had to wait for the end credits to discover who this wonderful actress was (I have religiously avoided the obscenely over-merchandised Star Wars films of late and knew little of her adult work since her childhood debut in "The Professional.") Meryl Streep -- your spiritual daughter and future heir is growing up quite nicely.

The film's great heroic act belongs to Sarsgaard's character who leads Largeman and Sam on a bizarre odyssey through the small town's seamy underbelly in quest of an equally bizarre "gift" for Largeman. His gift becomes an understated but moving act of redemption. Redemption is what the film is about. The fact that each of us posesses the power to in some way redeem one another is the movie's great hope.

I understand the squeamish who might balk at the R-rated language. But the lesson here is that there can be redeeming qualities (and even shared values) among those who don't quite view the world through the same eyes. Before you close yourself off from someone else's world that you don't understand, just stand there for a moment -- as on Boo Radley's porch -- and view the world from their shoes. The universe soon begins to look a little different. And a whole lot larger. Don't miss this one.

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