Sideways

Sideways Mirror
by Michael Flanagan

 Super

I didn’t write a review for Garden State, which I consider to be the best film of 2004, because it touched on many personal aspects of my own life.  So I declined writing that review, since this personal connection was really what I loved about the movie, and to fully describe any of this would mean revealing far too much about myself on the Internet, aside from those pictures…hey, I was young, I needed the money.

I found an unusually similar connection in Sideways, an extremely well-constructed buddy road trip movie which is brilliant in both its casting and the choices made by the director.  In this film, though, I connected to each of the characters, situations, and the ending, all for different reasons. 
 

The characters of Sideways are very human, possibly more human than any character on film in a very long time.  They are often painful and embarrassing in their humanity, both humbly extrinsic and tragically comic.  It would be nearly impossible to experience this movie as a human being who truly lives in this world, and not find some kind of understanding or empathy.  My own connections, especially with Thomas Hayden Church and Paul Giamati, were at times sadly too familiar.

The situations these characters find themselves in are both naturally realistic and comically broad, and for whatever reason, it works here.  From the instance of “recent” divorcee Giamati’s painful dinner date/drunk ‘n dial to the naked chase scene, the comedy is as human as the characters, and to fully appreciate it we have to be willing to laugh at ourselves while we laugh at them.
 

The ending, for me, is purely personal.  For a long time I was working on a novel/screenplay/play (take your pick, at some point I will) about men and women and their relationships, specifically at the level of early dating.  I think I only got a few scenes down on paper, leaving most of it in my head for some later day.  The ending, while I never got it on paper, has always been clear for me.  The last 30 seconds of Sideways embodies that ending.  Sometimes Art, on a Jungian level, becomes a violent chase scene for the artists. 

A truly good movie, maybe even a great one, but Sideways lacks some of the precious, beautiful heart that is so powerfully evident in Garden State.

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