As I mulled further in my mind what to make of David O. Russel’s film, I spoke to a colleague who mentioned the local critic, Steve Persall, gave the film an F. In no uncertain terms he stated:
I hate ‘I Heart Huckabees.’ Not dislike or dismiss, but detest it to a degree that no movie with this much talent should ever reach.
Ouch. But at least he lays out some reasons why he detests the film. I think he’s wrong, of course… let’s investigate why:
The plot, so to speak, revolves around a self-loathing tree-hugger named Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) hiring Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and Bernard (Dustin Hoffman in a gray Beatle wig), a pair of “existential detectives” who will spy on his miserable life and discover its meaning. The core of Albert’s pain is a rivalry with Brad Stand (Jude Law), pretty-boy representative of the Huckabees department store chain. The friction could be Albert’s environmental activism, wishing to save a marshland from Huckabees development, or it could be Brad’s romance with Dawn Campbell (Naomi Watts), the chain’s sexy advertisement decoration.
Persall has skipped right over the surface of the story, bypassing a key point and expecting to make sense of what’s inside without context. The story begins with Albert hiring the existential detectives to investigate a coincidence. Much is built on Albert’s attachment to his coincidence, to the exclusion of all other facts in his life – at first, Albert denies the connections to Brad or Dawn. He is not exactly self-loathing, but deluded.
So far, so lucid. Russell soon spins out of control with existential double-speak declaring the pointlessness of life in a movie proving the same thing about itself. Nothing major happens, which is reasonably Zen for cinema, but nothing materializes from the nothingness. ‘The Brown Bunny’ made more sense than this. Russell doesn’t establish a premise; then he repeats the themes he didn’t tie together as if he had.
Again, Persall bypasses some of the film’s most important themes and goes right for the deeper material out of context. The theories of nothingness and nihilism in the film are posited as a contrast to the idea of connectedness presented almost immediately at the film’s open. Persall’s review makes clear that he missed Russell’s premise. Without divulging the entire plot, I will point out that Albert’s journey begins when he is introduced to a specific concept. He spends the rest of the film dancing around said concept until, as any plot would dictate, an event occurs which causes Albert to understand that concept. It’s really an amazingly simple approach to a weighty topic, which is what I loved about the film.
It would help if Russell gave us one teeny, tiny clue about which side he’s on in that rivalry, or why any of these characters matters. His refusal will be charitably viewed as bold and uncompromising in some quarters. Those quarters are wrong.
No, sorry Mr. Persall, but you are wrong. There is no refusal here. This is not some David Lynch film that obscures meanings to excess. In fact, the reason for the existence of ‘I Heart Huckabees’ is to present philosophical issues in a narrative form, with the additional help of a creative visual devices. This film seeks to explain ideas, not hide them. And the film is lousy with the clues you seek.
