How does garden state end

And in , we hate, or at least love to hate, sad somethings. If not, is this your first time on the internet? There are a lot of smart opinions about Girls here. Garden State came out in a time of peak male sadness, when a band like My Chemical Romance could go platinum.

Over the last half-decade or so, however, culture has turned its back on dudes that just want to feel something. Garden State represents a male whininess that the culture decided should once again be banned. It might have gone out of style, but earnest, emotional, nerdy men exist and have problems, and are often the types who write films. And it is a good movie — not a great movie, but a good movie. I watched it for the first time since it came out for this piece. I was taken aback.

I was never a fan per se, but on rewatch, it was much better-looking and more sharply plotted than I remembered. If you only saw Zach in the TV show Scrubs you might feel weird seeing him in this.

And if you also knew that he directed it, you might feel prior to watching that he is way over his head. I don't know if or how much help he got making this movie, but I do know that this comes off as a very assured effort. This drama lives also with the other cast members.

You can never go wrong with Natalie Portman, but also any of the other actors. Their ability to go through the motions and sell the slow pacing of the movie is elevating the movie. Of course you have to be able to watch Dramas and have patience, but if you don't than this isn't for you anyway. I don't know which is the better way to say it - this wasn't a very good movie but it had some humorous moments, OR, this film had some humorous moments but it wasn't very good.

I guess it works both ways, my second option at least starts off with sort of a compliment. This is the kind of film I would have related to a lot better when I was around the same age as the principals, but a lifetime of living and watching thousands of movies has offered a somewhat different perspective.

I really don't have anything against the picture per se, it's just that the characters and situations are fundamentally shallow and made quirky for the sake of being quirky.

Where else for example would you find an armor wearing Renaissance actor, a silent-Velcro inventor guy or a guardian of the infinite abyss? All a bit too pretentious to be taken seriously, not to mention Natalie Portman's invisible epilepsy and inability to speak the truth. Then there's the entire question I have about the ethics of a father prescribing medication for an immediate family member.

Seems to me like there could be some kind of grounds there for medical malfeasance there, in fact I was bothered enough by that to look it up. To keep it simple, the A.

Anyway, without scorching the picture, I'd give Zach Braff some credit for coming up with a relatively decent first time writing and directorial effort. He probably knows better by now. A quietly troubled young man Zach Braff returns home for his mother's funeral after being estranged from his family for a decade.

This film hit a generation hard and was in no small way responsible for popularizing indie music, with the Shins in particular. Soundtracks with Shins, the Bravery and more started floating around. Thanks, Zach Braff, you single-handedly changed the music industry. Interestingly, this film features Jim Parsons before his big break. Not that his role is huge, but it is big enough that anyone watching today will recognize him as Sheldon and probably not much else.

And this was back before Natalie Portman switched from fun films to critically acclaimed work. She does both very well. I had absolutely no idea what the film was about or what to expect, I just hoped that it was as good as the critics make it to be. Directed by, written by and starring Scrubs' Zach Braff, he plays semi-successful TV actor Andrew 'Large' Largeman, who have shuffled through life in a lithium-induced coma, until the death of his mother, which he decides to stop taking his pills.

Even without being home for 9 years, Large still can't escape his domineering father Gideon Sir Ian Holm and his effect from life afar. Stunned to be in his hometown after such a long absence, he is finds old acquaintances many places he goes, he does his best to keep away from his father, and by a twist of fate, Large meets Sam Natalie Portman , everything he isn't, and becoming his sidekick as such.

She gives Large the courage to really open up about his joy and pain in the abyss that is life, and thank goodness he decides not to go away in the end like he intended. Also starring Ron Leibman as Dr. I can certainly see that Braff proves himself a good director as well as quite a good actor, it may not be the funniest film ever, but it is certainly worth a look.

Tweekums 12 December Aspiring actor Andrew 'Large' Largeman hasn't been home in nine years but he returns for his mother's funeral. Here he sees his father, who is also his psychiatrist, and it is clear their relationship is frosty. He also meets up with old friends and makes one new friend, Sam.

Sam is a girl he got chatting to in a doctor's waiting room. Having left his medication at home he decides not to get more and starts feeling emotions that had been numbed for some time. This isn't the easiest film to categorise; it has plenty of funny moments without forced gags; it has emotional moments and it has romance, even that doesn't develop too quickly.

Instead it looks like a glimpse into Andrew's life at a point where things are likely to change. The main characters are interesting without feeling exaggerated. The cast is impressive; Zach Braff, who also wrote and directed, does a fine job as Andrew and Natalie Portman is very likeable as Sam. Overall I'd recommend this to people not requiring action and obvious gags but wanting a gentler, 'real' film. When a struggling twentysomething actor from Los Angeles returns to his hometown for his mother's funeral, he finds a vintage motorcycle out in his parents' garage it was willed to him by his deceased uncle, but left forgotten under a tarp for no specific reason.

Racing the bike up and down the street, the protagonist is immediately pulled over by a police car Braff's sensibilities all stem from a TV mentality. It turns out the actor is suffering from momentary migraines, which no doubt come from being medicated his entire young adult life.

This guy is aching to FEEL something! It's quite possible the scene with the bike, or a following bit with a seeing-eye dog humping Braff's leg in the doctor's waiting room, will strike some viewers as fresh and funny, but the fake-cynicism bubbling underneath the movie's lo-fi tone is intolerable.

Quirky conversations are struck up simply to reveal another layer of our hero's personality and makeup his inner-struggle, his independence, etc. Braff may indeed have some talent, but first he needs to acquire a sense of himself as an actor and a filmmaker, and stop channeling personalities and situations gleaned from the tube.

This feels like a set of steak knives in need of being returned--it just isn't sharp enough. Small movie with a very nice story and interesting dialog. TxMike 5 January This is a fine story of a young man and a young woman helping each other to find themselves.

Largeman is an actor and waiter in LA, had one role playing a retarded quarterback, has been under voluntary sedation for years on prescription medicine that his psychiatrist dad Ian Holm has prescribed for him, when he gets a message that his mom drowned in the bath tub. After a flight to New Jersey for the funeral, and having left his medicine in LA, he begins to meet all his former friends again, the most interesting Peter Sarsgaard as Mark, the grave digger who incidentally takes the jewelry off women corpses after the burial services to supplement his income.

He spends most of his spare time doing some sort of recreational drugs. Seeing his dad's doctor for one-second headaches he gets occasionally, Largeman meets Sam Natalie Portman who, it turns out, has had some epileptic seizures and has to wear a soft helmet to avoid being dropped from her employer's health insurance.

She recognizes him for his 'retarded quarterback' role. Largeman and Sam find they are soul mates, each has never found someone before that they connected with. Largeman explains that he has to fly back to LA and straighten some things back, Sam cries as he heads up the escalator, then a few minutes later he comes back and finds her in a phone booth, they embrace, he has decided staying there with Sam was more important.

Important character observation. Largeman's mom had become paralyzed when he was 9, he had an argument, pushed mom, who tripped over the open dishwasher door which had a broken latch. That episode was what caused his dad to prescribe drugs, and later sent off to school. He remarked that the one little piece of broken plastic is what caused all the misery in his life so far.

The idea that sometimes some little random thing at a particular moment can have such a big impact on our lives. In fact, his script uses the word "random" in a number of situations. Zach Braff stars in "Garden State," a film he also wrote and directed -those are some accomplishments. Braff plays a heavily medicated young man, Andrew Largeman, who comes back to his home town upon the death of his mother.

He's on complete disconnect from his father Ian Holm who also is his psychiatrist. While in a doctor's office for headaches, he meets the beautiful Sam Natalie Portman who claims she's at the doctor's because she's a robot who needs to get charged. It's this kind of off-the-cuff humor that makes "Garden State" a truly unique, touching and wonderful film. Large and Sam are as opposite as can be - she talks incessantly; he's quiet; she cries at card tricks; he claims he never cries, including at his mother's funeral.

Yet they connect, and she opens up a world of feeling to him that he's never known. As he tells his father, he's been numb for years. I was a freshman in high school, and I was on the cusp of discovering my passion for cinema. Andrew intends to visit for a few a days, and in the process reconnects with old friends, struggles to resolve issues with his distant father Ian Holm , and forms a romantic relationship with Sam Portman , a local young woman with problems of her own.

This was pre-film school days, and while I was vaguely aware of shot composition and plot structure, I tended to overlook lazy filmmaking as long as I connected with the characters and cared about the story. As a result, I gravitated toward the relationship between Andrew and Sam at a time when I had yet to experience the wonders of first love. Critic Nathan Rabin of The A. I was especially impressed by Natalie Portman, who showed a pretty good acting range and nack for humor that I had not seen before in any of her other movies.

But here's my question: as the movie opened, the Zack Braff character, Andrew Largeman, was sitting, almost catatonic in an airliner which appeared to be crashing with all the other passengers around him screaming and crying as they seemed to be headed for their doom.

Did Largeman die in a plan crash or not? The scene then changes to Largeman in bed staring at the ceiling with his father talking to him on his telephone answering machine. At the end of the movie, when Largeman decides to go back to California to resume his film career, he gets on a plane again. The next scene shows his girlfriend, Natalie Portman Sam crying her eyes out in a telephone booth. My first thought was that Largeman had died in a plane crash and Sam had just got the news from a phone call in the booth where she was crying.

Suddenly, Largeman appears and in an almost surreal scene, which I though was a dream , he decides to get off the plane and return to Sam.

I'm wondering if there might have been an alternate ending in which Largeman actually does die in a plane crash. The reunion scene at the end of the movie seemed so unreal to me, that it really could have been a dream Largeman was having just before the plane crashed.