Sideways: A Review

If Steel Magnolias is the quintessence of the "chick flick" movie genre, Sideways is the perfect embodiment of what I call the "redemption of the jerk" movie. While the former genre attracts women and makes men yawn, the latter entices men but makes women enraged. The essential feature of the "redemption of the jerk" movie is that every male, regardless of how crass, hypocritical, self-loathing and clueless he is about life will eventually be rescued by a loving, rich or loving and rich woman. Guys love this stuff; women can't stand it. Yet, it is a movie about "relationshps," and women are suckers for that kind of movie. Thus, when all is said and done, the women will patiently watch this movie with their men; the men will guffaw, the women will cringe. The moralists of both genders will be offended, since the "f" word is used so frequently and there are a few scenes of graphic sex and one of full male frontal nudity. Yet if you listen to the dialogue, get "into" the idea of a journey of exploration and frivolity, and take notice of the luminescent beauty of the Santa Barbara wine country, the movie will grow on you, like the 1961 bottle of Cheval Blanc owned by lead character Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti).

The "Action"

On one level the film is a travel or journey film. Travel in movies is usually a metaphor for discovery and freedom, and these "Easy Rider" themes are hauntingly present as 40 year-old Miles and his former freshman roomate from San Diego State, Jack (Thomas Hayden Church), take a trip from LA north 100 miles to the Santa Barbara wine country for Jack to celebrate his last week of bachelorhood. On Saturday he will marry into a wealthy Armenian family in Los Angeles. Neither man has aged very well, even though Jack still has the body of a 20 year-old stud, which we see on a few occasions. Miles is stuck in the early mid-career rut as a middle school English teacher, but he derives little joy in his job and he still smarts over the dissolution of his marriage two years previously. In addition, his 750-page manuscript, with the ponderous title of The Day After Yesterday, has been making the rounds of publishers, with little success to date.

Jack, on the other hand, is an aging actor, whose credits over the years were in few episodes of a soap opera and, more recently, as a voice-over for finance commercials. While Miles is fussy and unable to get beyond the pain of his past, Jack is so solipsistically self-centered that he can scarcely conceive that the universe exists apart from his libidinous desires. They seem to be on such different wave-lengths that it is amazing that they bond at all. For example, when Miles quizzes Jack on the revised version of his massive novel, Jack volunteers that he likes the new ending better than the first version, to which Miles replies that the ending is precisely the same as the first version. Jack takes the rebuke in stride, claiming confidently that it just seemed so different because everything else had changed in the book.

Despite this lack of early communication, each of them has strikingly cogent insights into the struggles of the other. Miles see that Jack is foolishly looking at this week-long pre-wedding trip as a "last chance to get laid" before marriage, while Jack sagely observes that Miles has a painfully crippling habit of going over to "the dark side" and self-destructing when he is around women or has imbibed too much.

The trip is about wine, women, and self-discovery. While Miles thinks that the purpose of the journey is to "kick back," play golf and drink wine, Jack takes every opportunity to get into the ahem.....good graces of the women he meets. The action of the film picks up when they meet the stunningly attractive and engaging Maya at a bar called the Hitching Post, and then meet a "pour woman," Stephanie, at a nearby wine-tasting room. Miles knew Maya from previous visits to the area, and Maya was acquainted with Stephanie. So the foursome have dinner, after which they retreat to Stephanie's place, with Jack and Stephanie immediately indulging in intense and noisy sex while Miles and Maya engage in one of the most revealing conversations of the movie--where they both discuss their love of Pinot in terms revealing their own flaws, fragilities and fears.

As the week develops, both Miles and Jack get themselves into difficulty. Jack becomes seriously "in lust" with Stephanie, while Miles inadvertently tells Maya that they have to return to LA by Friday for the "rehearsal dinner." A few quick probes reveals that Jack has been strumming Stephanie like a harp, and Maya quickly concludes that Miles is as sleazy as his friend. Before parting, however, she agrees to take a copy (two boxes) of Miles' manuscript. We think at that moment that it will probably keep her fire well stoked through the cool Santa Barbara winter. The parting between Stephanie and Jack isn't as peaceful; she takes after him with her motorcycle helmet, breaking his nose and generally reducing him to a whimpering, whining, sniveling little adolescent who has just been told that he can't have the car for the evening. Our two male leads are portrayed as middle-aged klutzes and losers, as failures at work, at relationships, at living.

Conclusion

But this isn't the last word. The last word is presented skillfully by director Alexander Payne through two scenes of exquisite, even if embarrassing, humor. Even while sporting a white bandage on his broken nose, Jack can't help seducing women--and the scene by which Miles has to bail him out of his encounter with a waitress is worth the price of the movie. Again, in order to simulate an accident, so that his fiance will not probe into the real story behind Jack's broken nose, Jack engineers an accident with Miles' car--by running into a tree--that gives some verisimilitude to the story that he (Jack) was injured in a car wreck. Miles reveals himself, in these scenes, as a weak-willed wimp, which nicley complements his self-loathing tendency. We see him as one who really couldn't stand up to an invasion of butterflies.

But then, the movie ends on an upbeat note--of redemption. Jack is saved by his marriage, and Miles is brought back to life by a surprise call from Maya. Maya had actually read his (rejected by publishers) manuscript, and had loved it. They get together at her place, and the last scene is of Miles climbing the steps to her apartment, steps that are festooned with a colorful array of plants (she has just received her master's degree in horticultural studies from Cal Poly). A new beginning awaits both of them.

As I say, guys love this film. Though we may not fully love Jack, we tend to admire his seeming carefreeness. Though we don't fully love Miles, we sympathize with his middle-aged despair. And, we go to bed smiling because we realize that if these two losers can fall into the arms of such beautiful or rich women, well, maybe there is hope for us--poor slobs that we are...

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