Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Last week I watched the 2023 movie Dumb Money and went on a long rant in my review of the film about how the director, Craig Gillespie, has the reprehensible knack for taking true stories and transforming them into vapid exploitative comedies. To my utter horror I discovered after having watched the Lars and the Real Girl that this too was a film from the same director, however, this movie is an altogether different beast. How could that be?
I lay the blame for this exceptional movie with the screenwriter, Nancy Oliver, who is a frequent collaborator with Alan Ball whom I believe to be one of, if not the best, persons to put pen to paper to screen. With Ball, Oliver has worked on his magnum opus, Six Feet Under, the hit HBO drama series that is the perfect reflection of how absurd life is and how entropic the world in which we live appears such that it seems to get more chaotic the more you come to learn about it. Oliver has also worked on his shows True Blood and Here and Now. Ball has a tendency to treat the ridiculous, and the mundane, as something wholesome no matter how silly, absurd, and sometimes creepy it can seem. Specifically, in watching his movie American Beauty, the 1999 masterpiece staring Kevin Spacey, you get to watch a man have a midlife crisis where not only does he begin to question his decisions in life but he also ponders the seriousness of it such that he starts to treat everything as a joke and act out knowing that the consequence of it, and life in general, is just a coincidence, a happenstance that should not be treated as anything more significant. Ball combines this flippant attitude with a magnified sense of import such that while the characters are disheartened, lost, and feel outcasted by society, they find a certain beauty, pun intended, in the little things and form bonds at the margins of society. That style, which I assume Nancy Oliver honed while working with Ball, is quite evident in the film Lars and the Real Girl.
The movie stars Ryan Gosling, a 27 year old man who prefers to live on his own, isolated not only from the world but also detached from the few people that are involved in his life, including his brother and his wife played by Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer respectively. I had heard of this movie years ago, but was inundated with scenes from it while on the social media platform Instagram, which is an awful platform I must say, from its frequent recommending of reprehensible content to the algorithm which at various points in time wishes to promote clips of depressing quotes and sad music. There is a meme I frequently see on that horrid platform, that being the one where lonely men push the joke that they are Ryan Gosling, in that they identify with him, an absurd notion that has seemed to bring together people through means which I assume are artificially motivated. Still, having seen clips from this film a number of times on there through the propagation of that joke I decided to just watch the movie so as to peel back the curtain behind the mirage of memes and inuendo.
Though the movie has become a vehicle to promote isolation, and feelings of loneliness, the movie is far deeper than that simplistic message. Gosling’s character is one that is not isolated through means which he cannot control, rather, he is someone whom has decided to live a life of solitude despite frequent advances from his colleague Margo, played by Kelli Garner, and the suggestion of Mortimer’s character that he should seek out companionship with a significant other. Having seen the movie, I took away that his decision was motivated by Gosling’s fear of being abandoned, as he had been both by his mother, after she died giving birth to him, to later on when his brother moved out, leaving him to live with their less than welcoming father. The result of this trauma is a man whom refuses to connect to others out of the fear that he will be hurt, mistreated, and eventually left alone once more.
Gosling’s odd demeanor, avoidance of eye contact, and solemn disposition are convincing and reflect a man who does not desire connection and also one whom is simply going through the motions so that he can get through the day so that he can return home to live in peace. However, when he is at home he is not shown to be happy. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely, some people prefer to be on their own and dread social contact in all forms. However, Gosling does not seem to fit that bill in that while he has a revulsion to social interaction, he also seems lost when he is on his own, as if he is surviving, and not living.
To remedy his malady of melancholy Gosling decides to purchase a luxury sex doll from the internet. At first those around him are unsure how to react, from alarm to questioning if even Gosling can believe such a ridiculous fantasy. While the movie could have simply played this up for laughs, as is typical in most of Gillespie’s later work, Oliver’s script ensured that this predicament is treated seriously. Specifically, the movie showcases how the community surrounds Gosling with compassion as they come to understand that anyone willing to go to these extreme lengths to find companionship must be experiencing some serious inner turmoil.
Patricia Clarkson plays Dagmar, the local doctor whom Gosling’s brother and his wife convince him to go to to seek care for his sex doll as a ruse to be able to get Gosling to the doctor so that she might be able to diagnose, and hopefully cure, whatever is plaguing Gosling. Clarkson’s performance is incredible, there is a layer of sadness that blankets each of her interactions in the movie such that her compassion seems to come from a place of understanding since she, like Gosling, lives alone. The only difference being that she once experienced love until her husband died. As the movie goes on, Gosling and Clarkson strike up an unorthodox, but none the less compelling, relationship where they go from talking about the sex doll and the fictitious illness the pair come up with that might be ailing her in order to later allowing dialogue to be a way for Gosling to be able to talk about himself vicariously while Clarkson nudges him toward giving up his delusion such that he will be able to return to normalcy and reintegrate into society. Clarkson is not an actress I particularly like, due in part to what I would describe as her arrogant character that has shone through in interviews with the actress, none the less, her performance here is incredible with the nuance of emotion she conveys such that she both seems vulnerable but also is the main authority figure in the film.
Emily Mortimer is likewise great in this movie where she experiences a range of emotions from concern for Gosling, to alarm when he begins to date a sex doll, to later on when she grows angry with Gosling when he begins to feel altogether abandoned by the world despite the welcoming attitude they have greeted his unusual relationship with. The plot of this movie is absurd, yet, the human touch in the film whereby each scene feels authentic, and not contrived to be ridiculous, allowed the movie to maintain the suspension of disbelief such that I never felt detached from the story since it always felt convincing. Seeing the townspeople go from mocking Gosling behind his back, to hesitantly playing into his fantasy, to later embracing the doll was an incredible story arc and one that helped to make the film feel dynamic and never dull since the story is constantly evolving.
Paul Schneider, who plays Gosling’s brother, also gave a great performance which ranged from having him be the one most at odds with playing into Gosling’s fantasy as compared to later on when he pretends to believe that the doll is alive. Schneider’s performance is made compelling by this change in his disposition since his actions are given added meaning as one comes to see that they come from a place of discomfort, given how ridiculous he finds the whole situation, but one that he puts up with given that he is trying to reassure his brother in the hope that through acting out his delusion he will be able to put it behind him. In addition, the frequent scenes of Schneider researching what might be wrong with his brother on the internet again speak to the real concern he has for his brother and too added depth to the interactions he has with Gosling as one can see the extreme effort he is putting into trying to help his brother as best he can.
There are two key scenes in the film which I think speak to the true nature of Gosling’s character. One occurs when he is leaving church with his doll where they are gifted a bouquet of artificial flowers which he responds to by ensuring his “girlfriend” that since they are fake they will never die. Gosling making a point to tell his doll that the flowers will never die speaks to Gosling’s fear of being abandoned in death, as occurred when his mother died, which reveals why he prefers a life with his doll, over a human connection, since the doll will never leave him, nor will he be able to outlive something that never was alive in the first place. The second key moment in the film occurs when Gosling is at the doctor and Clarkson encourages him to get over his fear of being touched by another person through allowing her to simply touch his arm. As the session continues and she reaches to mundanely brush his cheek with her hand Gosling loses his composure, as something in him appears to break. Every scene after this moment is coloured differently in that Gosling no longer seems to be content, but rather, is constantly looking at others and begrudgingly putting up with his ruse which seems to be losing its luster of believability. To me, I took this moment to mean that once Gosling felt the connection of another person he came to realize what he was missing, and what the doll could never offer him, that being a true connection with another human being.
Many of the scenes with Gosling and his doll are one sided, which is not surprising given that she is a sex doll. However, Gosling is not shown to go on “dates” with her or have dinner with her in a way that gives her any sense of agency or real perspective, rather, he seems to be covering for her just enough to make it convincing, in his mind, so that he can act out his “ideal” of a relationship where he does all the talking and decides everything they do. As the one sidedness of their partnership breaks down, and members of the community encourage Gosling to allow the doll to do things on her own, as absurd as that is, it is a demonstration of their compassion and subtle nudging of him to remove himself from her so that the wool can be pulled back from his eyes. Furthermore, after he connects with Clarkson you can see that he begins to detach himself from his idealized relationship as he comes to see that it is a fantasy and as such it will never be encompassing enough to fulfill that part of himself which was shown to be absent in the early moments of the film such that he looked unsettled even when on his own, which he claimed to prefer.
As Gosling becomes disillusioned with his own “relationship” he grows envious of the partnership his work colleague Margo acquires. Gosling’s sense of longing conveyed in these scenes further breaks down his connection to the doll such that as the movie goes on, after the doll has been largely accepted by the town, Gosling is now presented with a new challenge, that being trying to discern a way to end his relationship with the doll.
Eventually Gosling is able to put an end to his own fantasy, a decision he comes to after kissing the doll by a lake which seemed to allow Gosling to realize how artificial and simplistic their connection is in comparison to the physical connection he felt with Clarkson and the fun he had with his work colleague Margo while bowling. Once more the town comes to his side to lend him comfort. The “Hollywood” ending here is fitting, where Gosling and his colleague Margo seem to be forging a budding relationship, in my opinion given how morose the plot of the film was which had Gosling be so despondent and lacking companionship that he sought the company of a thing. My point is that the movie was depressing enough, to have it end in any other way would have made the experience of watching the movie altogether unenjoyable. Again, I think this speaks to the incredible scriptwriting ability of Nancy Oliver who took this off the wall idea for a film and utilized it to showcase a man overcoming grief, learning to trust that people will not abandon him, and accepting what it means to be in a relationship rather than in a one sided partnership which only serves one member.
Lars and the Real Girl is an exceptional movie, that feels similar to a Coen Brothers film especially in terms of how it is expertly shot, and the incredible costumes, which all seem reflective of the 1990s and the western genre. I encourage people to watch this film since I think it is a compelling movie and one that has a good message that will leave the viewer satisfied.
Here is the trailer for Lars and the Real Girl:
To end this review I have decided to include a song from Jomie and Powfu which I think speaks to that feeling of isolation, loneliness, and the unending suspicion that things are doomed to fail which I think reflect how Gosling felt, at least at the start of the film.