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The Great New Wonderful: Review
By Christian De Matteo
SUPER
I rented this film with great
trepidation. I’d never heard of it, a distinct
rarity as I consider myself among the higher ranks
of movie geekdom. The box caught my attention as
Maggie Gyllenhaal was in it, and I think she is
stunningly beautiful and had been forever won over
by her in Secretary. I even watched all of
Sherrybaby, a good but ultimately underwhelming
movie because of her excellent acting. The front of
the box claimed The Great New Wonderful to be A
Brilliant Comedy, but the statement was not only not
in quotes, but not attributed to anyone but the
people who’d put the cover art together to move the
film off video sto re shelves. Something, however, made me rent it. No
mystical, gut feeling was at play here though, no
internal alarm that I’d stumbled on some misplaced
jewel or that I was about discover the next great
independent film. My main reasons for taking a shot
on it were the intriguing cast (including Stephen
Colbert, Olympia Dukakis, Jim Gaffigan, and the
always fun to watch Tony Shaloub), the fact that it
had been directed by Danny Leiner, the man
responsible for Dude, Where’s My Car and Harold and
Kumar who now seemed to be attempting to pioneer
grown-up comedy, and, again, my inherent trust of
Maggie Gyllenhaal, and the fact that thanks to my
Blockbuster.com account, it would be a free rental.
I still didn’t put it in the player for almost two
weeks, sure I’d rented some astounding piece of
junk.
I have just finished watching
it and am floored. Not in the way that you know
you’ve just seen a movie that will unquestionably be
a classic or really have discovered some wonderful
thing no one else knows about, but in the way that
I’ve just watched an excellent movie. Truly
excellent. My other main concern with
the movie was that it was a “September 11th
inspired comedy.” That felt really difficult to me
and I wasn’t sure those were waters I wished to
explore. The event is still deeply engrained in the
saddest parts of my being, and I know I am far from
alone, and I wasn’t sure I could even enjoy the
movie for an individual piece of art. I’d also
checked and seen some pretty cold reviews about it
from people like A.O. Scott at the Times. I don’t
often agree with him, but this time he seemed to be
backing up my fears and nodding that I was right to
not really want to watch it.
Thank goodness I can’t rent a
movie without watching it, no matter how much I
regret picking it up. The Great New Wonderful is a
film I wish I’d seen in theaters in Manhattan to
enjoy with a hundred other people like me who
weren’t sure they wanted to be there. I know then,
that instead of sitting frozen on my couch as the
credits rolled, awed by what I’d seen, the
simplicity of it, the reality of it, the honesty and
wonder of it, I could have been part of a frozen
mass in the sanctuary of a movie house, feeling the
awe of all those around me.
The Great New Wonderful tells
five or six almost completely disconnected tales of
New Yorkers going about their daily lives in the
days immediately leading up to September 11th,
2002 and ends on just that day.
I know exactly where I was
that day, having worked my Managerial shift at the
Cold Spring Depot in Cold Spring, New York where I
also bartended and had met the girl I am only more
than a month from marrying. I was barely aware of
her yet, still embroiled in the heartbreak of my
life, a four year long ordeal of relationship and
not-relationship coming to a close with my first
love, a girl I’d met in college who I knew was on
the cusp of becoming only a previous chapter in my
life. I was distraut, torn between this sadness and
the sadness of my also failing relationship with my
mother who I love very much, confused by both
failures, attributing them both solely to myself and
drinking, as I had been for two years to extreme
excess on a practically daily basis. I had only
recently quit my job as Assistant Director of
Admissions for the college I’d graduated from upon
receiving my MFA from Columbia to take up managing a
restaurant, bartending and teaching one class for a
semester as a lowly adjunct at the same college.
My life was coming together
and falling apart at the same time, as near I could
tell, and what was impossible to tell was which part
was heading me in which direction. Nothing seemed
right and I was sure failure was to be my lot. I
was scared.
None of this had anything to
do with September 11th, and yet so much
of it did. Profound sadness had become what I
functioned out of, a choice of sorts shared by so
many of us so close to that day in so many different
ways. I can lay claim to no great personal loss of
family or friends that day, only a number of near
misses, at least from where I was standing, but that
didn’t seem to matter. The planes had flown into
our souls that day and deadedened something
essential.
I sat at the bar that night
when my shift was over and drank so many gin and
tonics I lost count. I then drove home, drunk and
aware, a terrifying combination, down the Bear
Mountain extention, windy in a way few roads I’ve
traveled are, sure at each turn I was going to lose
control, crying as I drove, unclear but crystal
names running through my head that I’d heard that
morning on the television at the memorial reading.
Names of the dead. I’d sat drinking in the bar
watching some tribute, watching the Towers fall
again and again and only God knows how I got home.
Very little of what I’ve just
written seems to be about September 11th
until the end, however, and this is the point the
movie drove home to me and also forgave me for as I
watched it. September 11th, 2001 is
really never mentioned in the movie, and yet that is
truly what it is all about. A day when all our
fears about ourselves, our futures, our decisions
became completely irrelevant and totally supreme at
the same moment. The day we realized how little
life was worth to how many, how quickly it could be
taken and how little effort it took. This made them
all the more important. Made every decision seem
monumental, and made me, I can say for surety, feel
guilty for thinking so much of my life in light of
those who’d lost theirs.
Everything was in the air, is
in the air. And we were lost. And so many of us
are still lost.
The movie has been criticized,
I’ve seen for not mentioning September 11th,
for making individual lives seem so important
despite the more important backdrop of the film, but
that seems like more self-imposed guilt and
Terrorist-imposed loss to me. We are important, our
lives are important, the movie seems to tell us by
seeming to tell us nothing at all. Danny Leiner has
directed a phenomenal film here, written so well by
Sam Catlan.
Do yourself a favor and rent
this excellent movie. The Great New Wonderful
should not be overlooked.
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