Adam’s Place

Intro: Thesis and main idea

Paragraph 1: Synopsis of the film

Paragraph 2: How college students can relate

Paragraph 3: Significance of the soundtrack

Conclusion: Wrapping up the main idea

If you’ve been sleeping, this is your wake up call. You are twenty- something, with the safety of college behind you, and now you must make the choice of what you want to do with your life, and how you’re going to make a living; a conundrum, indeed if you have no idea how to complete such a requirement. For many, this is a very familiar task in this time in our lives, and it doesn’t make things any easier when there’s extra baggage at our doorstep; baggage so heavy we don’t know what to do with it. This is one of the main themes in Scrubs star Zach Braff’s debutmovie
Garden
State, which he not only starred in but also wrote, directed and picked the musical score for. The movie was about looking at your life, and not being afraid to leap forward and take a risk, even if you don’t have all your shit together. Its cinematic value is great because for audiences who are going through this period of their life Garden State will undoubtedly be speaking to them directly, and even for those who have already been through such similar experiences will return a nod to the film with a great deal of knowledge and understanding.

            The film opens up with a Coldplay song entitled “Don’t panic.” With these repeating lyrics : We live in a beautiful world,  Bones sinking like stones, All that we fought for Homes, places we’ve grow, All of us are done for. Then, enters the character Andrew Largeman, a twenty-something struggling actor living in Los Angeles who has been medicated most of his life, (due to his father/psychiatrist’s request) and who recently has discovered that he may not even have a problem. Being away from home for nine years, his father calls with the news of his paraplegic mother’s untimely death, he flies back to his home town of
New Jersey.  Here, being off his meds for the first time in almost twenty years, he is seeing the world around him for the first time with a new form of clarity. While attending his mother’s funeral, Andrew is reacquainted with old friends from high school who are still caught up in their haze of life, most of them heavily into the drug scene. Then, while sitting in the waiting room at the hospital one day, Andrew meets a young woman named Sam. This proves to be a key point in the film because Sam becomes Andrew’s inspiration to better his search towards self realization.Metaphorically, she puts a mirror to his face and shows him that he’s alive. Ultimately, Sam leaves Andrew standing between two crossroads which will decipher the direction his life will take from this moment on.            As a college student, watching this film allowed me to relate my life to the plot in several different ways. I was able to connect with most of the characters a great deal more then a lot of other movies I have seen in the past. For instance, unlike other college films I have seen,Garden
State has a unique quality about it. It seems more real and believable to its audience. Instead of the usual scenes like any other college film with constant binging and un-planned hook-ups, you get a darker, yet refreshing look into the lives of people our age who are dealing with problems just like you and me. We might not all be dealing with the same exact problems as the characters in the film, but every college student has many decisions to make every day. Even though Andrew isn’t a typical student, he still has to carry the weight of his decisions on his shoulders just like the rest of us. The entire movie is both very personal and emotional among other things. Partially because it deals with so many life-changing issues: life, death, relationships, taking risks, etc. It falls right in there with The Graduate or even so The Catcher in the Rye because of its great deal of vague interpretations and quotes in the film. One of my favorites was when one of Andrew’s old high school friends Mark says as he exhales marijuana from his lungs, “I’m okay with being un-impressive, I sleep better.” I thought that it was very believable how that line fit the scene so well. Honestly, I could pause it on any part in the film and find a connection to my own life, and that is why I think it is a great film for college students and people my age.The film’s soundtrack and music selection was another reason why I thought it was totally appropriate to a twenty-something audience. On one of the movie’s web pages, writer/director Braff stated, “Essentially, I made a mix CD with all of the music that I felt was scoring my life at the time I was writing the screenplay.” I thought the music fit the film like a glove. The music selection in the film relates to the plot and its audience directly right down until the credits, when the song “Let Go” by Imogen Heap is playing. I thought it was a great song to end the film with because it was not only a current indie artist of our time and age, but the lyrics of the song fit the film to a T. “Let go, cuz there’s beauty in the breakdown.” Change takes courage, and change can be bittersweet, so like in the song…let go.            In conclusion,Garden
State symbolizes a message. That there is a difference from what we see and what we expect. Because of the tone of the film, with its grasp on deep-sealed wounds, past regrets and journey towards self discovery after years of confusion, you find yourself standing in shoes of one of the characters in this film. They’re all so realistic that you could relate to any one of them. The movie was amazingly refreshing and beautiful because of how Braff did so much with so little. To name a few: dead hamsters, skating alligators, and an arc standing at the peek of an infinite abyss. You find yourself shouting along with the characters in the rain, and wondering where you’ll end up at the end. It’s a refreshing and unique taste of reality and seizing the day. For any college students or people my age who haven’t seen