At this point my then-boyfriend leaned in apologetically & whispered, "Well, we don't actually drink."
"You don't drink?" hooted my neighbour, "But how do you cope?!"
Life being what it is (ie. curious), shortly thereafter we began drinking. (I guess you could say our unspoken answer to our neighbour's question must've been 'ok, yeah, good point'.) We even went to an adult ed. course on 'wine appreciation'. We drank, went to tastings, asked advice, & learned phrases like 'nosing' & 'wet dog' & 'undernotes'. We learned how to spot if a wine had 'legs', & we even learned to appreciate the sensation of pickling on the inside of your mouth, up against your teeth, that indicates 'strong tannins' & therefore age-potential.
What I like most about my (strictly amateur & still very much under-developed) appreciation of wine is being able to use more than just my sense of sight. Sight, I use everyday, for everything. I read, I write, I design web sites, I watch TV, I walk down the street. But to spend time *smelling* deeply & *tasting* fully ... well, it's just a treat. It's a way to be in the moment, to focus on the 'now'. It's even a form of meditation, if you follow that whole 'mindfulness' school of thought.
And if I sound defensive here, it's because I am. A little. Wine appreciation has a reputation for pretension. But I think the truth is it's just the opposite. I think it's earthy and real. I think it's a way to focus inwards on your body's sensations and to feed those sensations through your brain and turn them into words. It's sensual. Kinda -- dare I say -- sexy.
So it was I approached Sideways with interest. Sideways features wine enthusiast & unpublished novelist* Miles (played by Paul Giamatti -- & if you're thinking this is a character I could relate to then let me just say oh, yeah) and all-round doofus playboy & occasional actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church). By sheer coincidence, I happened to be a fan of both these guys before I'd even heard of this film.
But I was worried, too. You know how sometimes you're looking forward to something, & you've been looking forward to it for so long (waiting for it to arrive in your country, for example) that you figure you can't be anything but disappointed? Yeah. I didn't want to be disappointed. I hate disappointment. I tried to steel myself.
I didn't have to, because I loved Sideways. I loved its richness & depth, I loved Paul Giamatti's face, his rolling eyes & deadpan expression & the one moment where he actually _laughs_. I loved Church's good-humoured goofiness & his weird walk (he walks kinda jerkily, right? I'm not imagining it, am I?) & his undaunted references to sex. I loved that the female characters were interesting & well-rounded & likeable without being at all sappy or shrewish or otherwise cliché.
And I loved Miles' monologue on pinot grapes, & Jack's consistent positiveness about everything he tasted ("I like it" -- said cheerfully & without defensiveness). I loved the friendship of the two men -- Giamatti's begrudging acceptance, Church's cheerful lack of realism. Light & dark. I loved *moments* in this film. Like the moment the two of them career down a hill, the moment Giamatti pulls away from the touch of a woman, the moment ... ah, you sorta have to see them.
There were also some dark times. Miles is battling depression -- sometimes quite dramatically -- & both of them seem to have rather ... er, shall we say ... 'individual' moral codes. They are flawed. You could even say corrupted. Yet they're also redemptively loyal. To each other, at least. Light, I say again, and dark.
I walked out of the cinema wondering if I'd already seen my favourite movie of '05.
The next day, I had a hard time coming up with a reason for liking it so much. The movie stuck in my head almost because it refused to stick in my head.
Unlike most of my favourite movies -- & even some movies I've disliked -- I had nothing to say about it (apart from 'yeah, it's good, go see it'). Where were its themes, I wondered. Where were the ideas & lessons I normally take away with me? It seemed to have such *life* in it, and yet it left me with nothing to talk about.
The only idea I could place initially was that to fall in love requires hope. And that hope is sometimes stupid. (See? Light & dark.)
Perhaps the reason I have nothing much to say is because the movie itself says it all. Though that doesn't feel quite right either.
So, I guess if I am trying to add something to the phrase 'yeah, it's good, go see it', I would have to say that I sorta think of Sideways as a grown-up film. It's not all childish optimism, it's not all teen angst. It's about being older than that, and about making do, & about acceptance -- knowing when to accept & when not to. Knowing when to roll with the punches, knowing when to stop rolling & get back up. Or maybe it's not about knowing, it's about doing anyway, carrying on in the face of personal doubt. Maybe it's about the journey. And knowing that there isn't a 'right' way or time or reaction. There's just life. And you. And what you do with it.**
---
* Some sites refer to Miles as a 'failed writer', but I don't see him as failed at all. Unsold, yes, but not failed. Though Miles (as writer) & Jack (as actor) have decidedly not prospered professionally, they have not -- quite -- given up.
** And now I find I actually had quite a bit to say.
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
deborahb- Deborah Biancotti
- deborahbiancotti.net
Comments
I feel like I want to go to see Sideways now, and not just because it's about wine.
I agree with your approach to wine tasting - huge potential for utter wank (Mmm old leather, cigar boxes, dusty gravel, liniment and a faint almost imperceptible aroma of wine), but it really is about using your senses, thinking about why you like what you do. Very sensual. And something everyone can do, it's not just about wine. Thinking about what you eat and drink, not just putting fuel into your body.
Seriously? You mean, you don't get enough film reviews in your life ... ?
>Thinking about what you eat and drink, not just putting fuel into your body.
Absolutely! It's why I mentioned 'mindfulness'. There's that meditation practice where you practice awareness as you're eating (or as you're walking, or anything, I suppose). You sit & focus on what you're doing, the movement of your hand, the taste & texture of the food in your mouth.
Focus is different to concentration, too, where concentration implies more mental processing. Focus is about being, in my unlearned opinion.
And you should see Sideways, yes. :)
And yes, I know it can be pretentious, but I also find it such a very real and sensual activity that its not. Pretension implies you do it to impress others, but in the end its all about your sensual experience, which is the opposite.
That's a really good point. I like that distinction a lot.
Like you I love wine. I love thinking about it, talking about it, and most of all--drinking it. And, well, I got none of what you were talking about out of this film. I didn't believe in their love of wine. Nor of food. Nor of anything. The film did not fill me with longing to drink fine wine. (As say Babette's Feast and Tampopo made me want to gorge myself on good food.) It had me close to switching to beer for life.
The speech about pinot noir was nice but it was *so* writerly. I didn't for a second believe it as words coming out of anyone's mouth. And Maya's monologue in response: again so so writerly. No one ever talks like that.
I found the two central characters utterly repellent. Particularly Miles: stealing from his mother (and worse sneaking out when she'd organised a birthday bruch to bring the whole family together--you just know his mother's going to be really upset, but does the movie ever return to that? No.), trampling all over everyone's feelings but his own. The level of unreflexive narcisism (how do you spell that?) made it close to unwatchable for me.
And I totally disagree about the two female characters who seemed only to exist--particularly Maya--to make the men feel good about themselves. Sandra Oh is a damned fine actor but she was working with bugger all in the script. And poor Maya got the worst of the bad dialogue. And to top it all off the ending is that she gets to play muse to this self-indulgent, thieving, unreliable, abusive, manipulative, self-obsessed drunk. He may not be a failed writer, but he is a failed human being.
I am fascinated that you saw such a completely different movie to the one I saw. Wow! Say, did we disagree about American Beauty too? But I really enjoyed your post about it.
Justine
No, me either, it was just my impetus to see it.
I think both women had a lot of humanity, though the film really belonged to those 2 self-obsessed men, yes. For me, the movie effectively straddled the divide between showing how marginal women were to that particular friendship, without showing women (the group) as merely marginal. The divide, then, between the perceptions of Miles & Jack, & a wider reality.
That is, those women had lives and they had senses of themselves as individuals -- something they could NOT have pulled off with lesser casting, admittedly (no wonder the creators worked so hard to keep those actors in the face of studio reticence). There may not have been much on paper for them to do (just as the men had closed their worlds to better connections with women), but I think both women actors managed to save their characters from irrelevance -- as was the story's intention, I would argue. 'You don't want me here, but I am here and I am strong' is what I read in their performances.
Overall, then, trying to find the foundation to our different perceptions, perhaps it is that I enjoyed the corruption of that movie. Perhaps it is my own cynical, pessimistic view of human nature that allowed me to accept this film. Miles treatment of his mother was awful. Jack's treatment of his missing fiance -- awful. But here's the thing: life is awful. I'm not excusing them, & I take your point of them being failed human beings. They made their decisions & their decisions were pretty lousy. But what I'm saying is that to be human is to live with failure. The final moment of the film is about Miles attempting to begin building a better self, IMHO. And thank god!
Here's a moment I found very telling: the bike helmet scene. When Stephanie starts to beat Jack, I laughed. I even thought, 'good, come-uppance time'. When she continued to beat Jack, I pressed my hand to my mouth & stared. It had gone from comedy to tragedy. It had slipped sideways (yes, intentional word there) from where I thought we were. Like life. Like life in your thirties, when you think you're someplace & then something happens to you or nothing happens to you, & nothing keeps happening *for* you & you realise you're not where you thought you were.
That's what I liked about this film. Someone was commenting on the ugliness of life (& also its prospective beauty). Someone was saying 'yeah, it gets corrupted, what're you gonna do about it?!'. Someone was saying 'decision time, buddy boy, life is what you make it'. And as we can see from Miles' response, no decision is also a decision, & will put you someplace you may not want to be. Life is what you make it, & what're you gonna make it now, eh, now when you think it's all gone to hell (Miles) or when you think maybe it's all going to hell (Jack)?
I don't think the movie makes prospective answers easy. Even the idea of the romance between Miles & Maya was not cut & dried. I looked at Miles' fear, at his level of hurt, & I didn't blame him one bit for not leaping into another prospective relationship. A simpler film would have made fun of him for his phobias, would've made the idea of a new romance all fairy floss & roses & inevitability. But there was nothing inevitable about the lives of these guys. They were trying & they were failing & they were making do.
I think I liked the fact it opened up a bunch of questions for me, & gave me no real answers.
Hey, I'm not sure! Which one of us will start the ball rolling on that discussion? ;)
Loved your post, btw, & loved your Musing: http://www.justinelarbalestier.com/Musi
Deb
And, yeah, it does largely boil down to how you respond to the two men. I just didn't like 'em. Not for a second. It's incredibly hard to like a film or a book if you don't like the protag. Not impossible, but hard. I couldn't help feeling for Ray Charles in the new biopic about him, but I'm not sure if I ended up liking him. (The film is by no means a hagiography.) I'm all for films that are full of complex people who are neither good nor bad.
Now that I'm over my initial rush of hatred, I'm realising there were a few things I liked about it. For most of the film I really didn't know where it was going. That's incredibly rare in a studio film. Hell, that's rare in US independent cinema. Sideways did surprise me several times. And the acting is fabbie. I have no bones to pick with any of the performances. (Okay, I lie. I'm a bit sick of Thomas Haden Church endlessly playing Thomas Haden Church--I'm harsh. What can I say?)
I still think the female roles were very thin on. Yes, the actors did what they could with them (I adore Sandra Oh), but I'm really tired of films where the women are there solely in relationship to the men. Sure their backgrounds were better sketched in than is usually the case, but for me rather than speaking well of Sideways, it says a lot about how crap most mainstream US movies are. I'm sick of it. Again I compare Sideways to Ray where all the female roles were secondary, and yet every one of those women has stayed with me, fully-dimensional, complex, powerful. And none of their lives were happy, happy, joy, joy.
Oh, yeah, I switch off fast if I don't like the protags. Nothing puts me in a rage as quickly as characters I can't stand. I'm funny that way.
God, yes, and fair enough. I guess I saw the women in Sideways as 'real' -- but you didn't, & that's cool, too.
I haven't seen the Ray Charles flick. Something about the previews sets my hackles rising, & experience has taught me to go with my instinct in those cases.
I have, however, just this minute finished watching Closer, & I think it makes an interesting counter-point to Sideways. I haven't yet processed what I think of Closer, but I already know I'm angry with it. I'll get back to you when I've spent some more time musing...
To get another stoush going: I hated American Beauty. Another film about a tedious middle-aged white guy. Just the thought of that shot of the plastic bag caught in the wind can send me into an apoplexy. Aaaarggh!
So what are your fave films? Let's see if we can find some common ground.
Justine
I'm not entirely sure.
Ha! American Beauty both irritated & delighted me, & I love it for that.
Hated:
1. the whole plastic bag thing, oh, please, how pretentious;
2. the hypocritical modern prudishness, best expresssed -- or most lazily expressed -- on the topic of virgins (it's OK to fantasise about sex with teenage girls, until you find out they're virgins).
Loved:
1. Spacey, he was great;
2. the modern fantasy about ditching your meaningless, middle-class job for a meaningless, servile job (eg. in a fast food joint) where at least you're not expected to present a facade of caring about said job;
3. the torment of Chris Carter's character, which was, indeed, self-imposed -- why not accept his homosexual desires? Why not? Well, because he was a white, middle-class male in the burbs, with a family. No, I don't think that's a good reason. That's the tragedy of it.
4. memorable dialogue. eg. Spacey telling the fast food manager 'I think it's unfair of you to assume I can't learn'. Or Carter's son screaming, 'Don't give up on me, Dad' when his dad beats him for presumed sexual transgressions.
5. the Nietzschian assertions re. our desire to fuck -- & fuck over -- beauty
6. the ending, the sense of 'no, no, no' I had waiting & watching for it, thinking we'd all almost gotten away with our rotten behaviour, we were almost there, Spacey had just realised he couldn't go on like that, that his view of the world was wrong, he was just about to change, just about to ... bang!
Oh, man, great question...
Justine (she signed off redundantly)