Huckabees: nihilism and nausea

I Heart Huckabees is one of several films I have seen twice this year. Unlike some of the other films that occupy a place in the double category I knew instantly that this was a film to which I would be returning. For the record here are the films I have felt compelled to view a second time on the big screen in the time frame of this year. I Heart heads the list, along with Bon Voyage, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Baadasssss!, SuperSize Me, Napoleon Dynamite, Finding Neverland, Garden State, Tarnation, and, now my moment of truth to more suspicious readers, Van Helsing.
Huckabees shows astute marketing with a web campaign that includes several mock web site related to characters in the film. Kind of like what a real web site would be like that promoted, say, an existential detective agency similar to the one in the movie run by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin.
The distributor of Huckabees, Fox Searchlight has a monster 2004 line-up that rivals the quality that Miramax displayed in years like 1992, 1993, or 1994. FS has taken the berth once dominated by Miramax now that Miramax focuses on big event pictures like The Aviator and whose future is in doubt anyway with their Disney deal about to expire. Major studio boutiques like Warner Independent, Focus or Paramount Classics, while capable of some awesome films, have yet to completely dominate a season like FS. Likewise smaller indie distributors like Newmarket and Lion’s Gate hit occasional home runs but fail to rule to roost all year. Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite have their fans and Huckabees is one of the year’s best as far as I’m concerned. The year’s not over and Fox Searchlight will also release Alexander Payne’s Sideways and Bill Condon’s biopic Kinsey. The latter concerns sexologist Alfred Kinsey and is set in the 50s. Imagine A Beautiful Mind with the emphasis on the other human organ of note. One style point that distinguishes a typical Fox Searchlight trailer from a typical Miramax trailer is the use (or not) of voice-over narration versus dialogue from the respective movie.
Meanwhile Huckabees burst on the scene with a screwball comedy template that proffers a wide range of interpretation. Some see Huckabees proposing a Buddhist tract that explores desire and reality, consumption and discipline. Other might find a level of profanity to rival Team America for nihilism.
For instance, the protagonist of Huckabees, the idealistic Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) mixes eloquent poetry about the environment with a potty mouth spewing scatological rage at the world. “Fuck shit,” is one Albert modes of expression. In Huckabees profane other, Team America, the lead puppet explains his actions thus: “But I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're gonna have our dicks and our pussies all covered in shit.”
One local theater manager told me that his company was experiencing Huckabees walk-outs across the nation. No one walked at either of the screenings I attended. If you don’t think we live in a flip-flop topsy turvy time you will in December when Adam Sandler stars in the high-brow comedy (Spanglish) and Streisand, Hoffman and De Niro meet cute in the low-brow comedy (Meet the Fockers).
A world where nothing is sacred is the world we currently inhabit, and Huckabees only mentions 9/11 once, in context to the plight of fireman Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), but the theme of accepting loss seems to be the spine of Huckabees. For Huckabees’ director David O. Russell nausea sits on a tree limb next to altruism.
“Everything is the same” intones Hoffman’s character Bernard Jaffe. Even Jude Law (who shines in Huckabees in a way that makes his Alfie perf look like Acting 101) confirms to the nausea doctrine, actually throwing up in his hand (it’s a movie) in one pivotal scene. Natch, Team America explores nausea in what could be called the greatest vomiting scene every filmed (mind you, propelled by a puppet).
Russell takes apart the screwball premise with a sort of surgical precision. I interviewed Russell back when he made Flirting With Disaster, another screwball comedy with different stripes. He concurred that he had read books on screwball comedy technique. He knows what he’s doing, and the dialogue and editing bounces along with the kind of tempo that would not be out of place in older classics like Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday. Directors like The Coen Brothers and Francois Truffaut have been admired for the way they deconstructed genres with film comedies like Fargo and Shoot the Piano Player. Now David O. Russell has made a film that sits on that same shelf.