Lars And The Real Girl vs Down In The Valley

What an unexpectedly sweet movie. What a relief. I love a dark indie film, but I’m exhausted from grieving at the end of each one. Seriously, are unsigned artists so jaded and bitter that they can’t conjure a happy ending? Or at least one with a tinge of hope? And don’t bring up Little Miss Sunshine or Garden State. If your actors are from NBC Super-sized Thursdays, or whatever, we aren’t really dealing with underground film here, even if Steve Carrell is pretty awesome in Little Miss Sunshine.

Lars and the Real Girl plays, for thirty minutes or so, like a cross between Edward Scissorhands and something more sinister, like maybe Boys Don’t Cry. The latter part is probably my fault. Lars and the Real Girl is set and shot in a tiny town, in small homes that need painting, in rusty cars, sweaters that don’t fit, pants that won’t zip. The sky’s always grey, and the locals, especially the guys, look like the types that appear in other movies leading lynch crowds.

Lars is a lonely, lonesome, loner of a guy. As in, his sister-in-law has to tackle him to the ground before he’ll agree to come to dinner, even though he lives in a garage behind her house. Lars barely speaks, shuffles around, and even though he appears to have a job that requires skill, displays no talent or expertise at any task beyond splitting wood. But he’s got an annoying coworker who shows him one of those ultra-realistic love-em-up dolls on the internet, and six to eight weeks later, Lars gets a huge crate delivered to his garage.

Her name is Bianca, and Lars believes she is real. He brings her to his brother’s for dinner, where he introduces Bianca and her elaborate backstory (She’s a missionary, she’s very religious, she can’t blink). Lars speaks softy to Bianca, and, we’re led to believe, hears her speaking back to him. It’s upsetting at first, especially to his brother (Paul Schneider, in one of my favorite supporting performances this year), but Lars has become so much more warm and social since meeting Bianca, that his family just sort of goes with it.

Okay, so here’s how this plays out in another movie. There’s a scene in which Lars is bowling, and the local tough-guys show up and horn in on his game. Those guys fight him in the parking lot, right? Maybe Lars snaps and kills one of them, and he has to bury the guy in Bianca’s crate. In another scene, Lars brings Bianca to a party; when they enter, everyone stares. So, Lars is going to get taken out back and beaten up, isn’t he? Someone’s going rape that doll, I just know it. Nope. Something special is happening in Lars and the Real Girl. For all his weirdness (he can’t bear to be touched, for example), Lars is absolutely beloved by his community. And so, at the coaxing of his sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) and Bianca’s doctor (Patricia Clarkson; what a joy when she shows up in movies unexpectedly), the tiny Minnesota town Lars calls home…accepts him and his new girlfriend. Completely. Bianca is welcome at church and parties. She gets a job. People talk to Bianca when Lars isn’t around. And those guys at bowling? They just want to be friends with Lars.

And it would all be too sweet and gooey for me, if not for that doll. Like the people in the town, Bianca brought me closer to Lars. In my case, it was because as long as Bianca is a factor in the story, Lars and the Real Girl carries with it a perverse sense of glee. Like Edward Scissorhands, Lars and the Real Girl is about acceptance, and kindness, and embracing our uniqueness as well as that of others. But also like Edward Scissorhands, there’s an unidentifiable wrongness to the proceedings that makes it more fun for the pervs in the audience like me.

Ryan Gosling plays Lars. It’s yet another side of this great, young actor. Gosling plays Lars as friendly and frustrated. Lars is so quiet, I assumed he was hiding something terrible, but mainly he’s just a nice, sad boy. Gosling reminds me of Edward Norton in that there’s always a mix of light and dark in his performances. It’s not so much that he’s disappearing into his roles, it’s that he’s showing us the complete character, when what we’re used to from other actors is more monochromatic. Every actor takes a turn at a role as a simpleton, or someone with some sort of floating movie retardation. The great thing about Lars, despite the dimestore psychology he receives from his doctor, is that he seems fairly real. We’ve all encountered this shy, quiet guy, and we’ve all wondered who his friends are, and what he’s like at home. And if he has a plastic girlfriend.

Edward Norton also has a movie in which he’s a character lost in a fantasy world and unable to truly connect with another person. Also, he dresses up like a cowboy, and may or may not think it’s the sixties, or even a hundred years ago. Down in the Valley, like Lars and the Real Girl, has moments of light and whimsy. And like so many independent movies, it goes down a dark road and never comes back. That’s more like it.

Down in the Valley is a seriously flawed movie, but it’s never boring, and there’s not much you can compare it to. I’ll take not boring over good but forgettable any day.  Edward Norton is Harlan, a cowboy rancher/gas station attendant living in Los Angeles. He meets Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood), a young girl who is in love with Harlan, in much the same way girls in movies used to be in love with guys on motorcycles and leather jackets.

I really liked the first half of Down in the Valley. Harlan is obviously too old, and too crazy, for Tobe, but the flush of their attraction is contagious, and I wanted to see what kind of trouble they’d get into. Tobe’s dad is played by David Morse, so you know that Harlan will be in trouble soon. Have I mentioned that Harlan wears a gun? He’s a cowboy after all. By the end of Down in the Valley, things have gotten so weird and overly-serious, I wasn’t sure how to take it. Is Down in the Valley disturbing? Amusing? Silly? Yes. Hey, sometimes that’s why an actor takes a role: because it’s so much fun to go off the rails. By the end of Down in the Valley, though, I wishing Harlan’s friends would just accept him as a cowboy already, and let him be happy on his own terms. Maybe with toy guns.

Lars and the Real Girl: A-

Down in the Valley: C+