films friday

films friday is back.

I've decided to drop the "fabulous" from the title because, well, it just seemed a little silly to me and also I think I am going to make it a bi-monthly post instead of weekly. I mean, it's my blog so I can do that, right?

Today's addition is another one of my top ten favorites: 

GARDEN STATE

I'm gonna be honest and say that for a while I did not like this film.

The first time I saw it was because someone else told me they thought I would love it and I did, but then after that and for a couple of years after it was released, I refused to watch it and even told myself (as well as others) that I did not like it.

And here's why:

The soundtrack. 

The soundtrack is AMAZING. I realized this. 

But the problem with the soundtrack, for me, was how everyone reacted to it. It is filled with songs and artists that I had already grown to love and count as some of my favorites, but when this film came out everyone and their mother could not stop talking about how much they loved those particular songs/artists.

Not because they had previously fell in love with them, oh no. Most of the people (one person in particular) who went on and on about it had never even heard those songs or the artists before Mr. Zach Braff helped them "discover" it, but all of a sudden because of this film they were "in the know" and for some reason that really got under my skin. Maybe it was because I felt they didn't love it because they loved it, but because Zach Braff and his fantastic film was telling them to love it.

There were a few films that were released during the time of my college years that were talked about so much that I just couldn't handle it anymore. They were quoted to death and just totally beaten down until everything I loved about them was gone and the only thing I could do was to declare that I hated it.

Mature right? 

Well I was irritated at my peers, so that's how I reacted... and I was all of 22, so that explains it.

Now part of the reason why I felt this way is because there is a particular scene that blew my mind. I had had an experience a couple of years prior to seeing this film with the song "New Slang" by The Shins. That experience honestly changed my life. It was nothing that a normal person would deem as life-altering. It wasn't a rite of passage type moment or even a "first". It was just a moment on a rainy September day and something just shifted in my life and it just so happens that "New Slang" was playing on the stereo.

The scene that blows my mind goes as such:

For some reason or another I found it so crazy that Natalie Portman's character actually tells Zach Braff's character that "New Slang" by The Shins will change his life... because it changed mine. 

I don't know why that scene got to me, but even to this day I find it fascinating. Don't you think it's so weird when something you think is so particular and special for you is replicated in a film? I guess I do.

I'm not going to go into details about the possible meaning of the film or what I think is so great about it, because honestly, I'm not 100% sure. Pretty much all that I am going to say is that this film accurately captures a time in a person's life when they are going through a huge shift or change, namely the time in a young adult's life. I think part of the reason why this film was so popular amongst people my age is because it spoke (and still speaks) to us in a way that most books, films, tv shows or scripts do. Zach Braff really hit the nail on the head with this one.

I highly recommend that if you have not seen this film, you need to.