How I Discovered Raymond Carver
I often see Raymond Carver and his works as hidden treasure. Despite being an ardent reader myself, I discovered him in 2012. I was introduced to him by this Indie movie called Everything Must Go. The movie itself is a hidden treasure which not many have seen. The movie had a certain charm when I first watched it, that I have always kept going back to it at different phases of my life. So, far it sure is one of my most, if not the most, watched movies, and I watch lots of movies multiple times. Personally, my love for this movie speaks volumes on how Art can change your understanding of the world.
First, a big shout out to Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell gives a performance which I am yet to see again from him. Sure, Stranger than Fiction is his second best after Everything Must Go. I have long been a fan of Will’s comedy but seeing his range in acting, he is one of those actors whom I would want to cast in serious roles. His face illuminates the screen with a certain sorrow that he himself isn’t able to explain but only express emotionally. Very touching.
The direction and writing of Everything must Go is so simple and delightful, that it may even give you enough courage to shoot something similar on your own. Dan Rush the auteur here, is himself an interesting figure in his own Salinger-esque way. Everything Must Go hit the screens in 2010. It’s been 9 years and an auteur like him deserves to share more with his audience. Right away, I can tell, I will watch his next movie without any question asked.
The film is adapted very loosely from Raymond Carver’s story “Why Don’t You Dance?” I watched the movie first. Read the story immediately after my viewing. And then started exploring Raymond Carver and his writings. This combination of adaptation reminded me of the ideals and principles of Tarkovsky and Jodorowsky – the piece of literature has to be torn apart to make a movie out of it. The experience of reading Carver’s short story is so profound in its own way which may take away the charm of the movie itself or vice versa. Yet this is not the case here. Both Art Pieces work as two separate entities in their own magical way. As a study of what it means to be auteur, I felt many things after repeated viewings of the movie. It informed me the about how emotions can spring inside the viewer despite not knowing anything about our character. All we have is a mere hint of what led them to the present circumstances that they are facing. It’s a meditation of sorrow, grief, blunders, loneliness, alcoholism, melancholy, and finally hope. If I were to tell you about the back story of each character in a single line, you would not care. And that’s where the lesson is. The auteur must take the onus onto himself to transcend the narrow condensing of character studies into universal emotions. What makes our characters feel, should also make the audience and the viewers feel.
The title itself is philosophical debate of our times – Everything Must Go. The title not only demands the Let Go of material world which Ferrell’s Nick Halsey inhabits, but also Letting Go of your own self, your own fears, inhibitions, and insecurities. If you were to be told that today you have to let everything go from your life, possessions both material and emotional. Your house, your car, your job, your wife, your drink, your golf clubs, your sound system, your TV, your clothes even – Everything Must Go today. If you were compelled to act on it this very day, what would be your response to your life. You would fight for yourself and at most you will be granted a couple of days. This movie is about that.
The only similarity in Dan Rush’s screenplay and Carver’s short story is that they both are about lonely people and the audience never gets to feel what they have been through in the past. What we get to know as an audience is that how they are feeling right now in the present moment. And for any artist to make his audience feel so deeply about the present of the characters without dwelling deep into their past is an accomplishment worth taking notice.
Like Carver’s oeuvre, no character in the movie is happy. None of them are leading a life they once imagined. None of them know what they want from their life or where their life will go. None of them have anyone to reply upon. And yet the movie leaves you with a certain hope. That hope I would accredit to Laura Dern’s smile and screen presence. She barely has two scenes in the whole movie and yet in all her melancholy she makes us want to believe in letting everything go and wake up for a new tomorrow. Personally, I feel, a role like that was a female part. The context of rebirth is essential for this movie. Each character goes through being re-born. Even Rebecca Hall’s character Samantha herself is going through a re-birth during her pregnancy. I, myself felt re-born after watching this movie. What is in this movie – I have never been able to pinpoint. It is filled with certain sorrow, without a definitive conclusion, and yet it has always left me willing to look forward and give life a chance by realizing Everything Must Go.
A lot of people through Art, seek catharsis. Everything Must Go makes a case for a movie which is not about catharsis, it is about the process which may lead to catharsis. To have or to not have a catharsis is as always primarily up to us.
