It is hard to find the time to actually venture to a movie theater to share movies with a large audience and experience films the way they ought to be experienced. A poor substitute is to wait until movies manage to make it to DVD so they can be enjoyed in a moment of free time. This week I found the time to watch two films from 2004 that could not have been more different: Sideways and National Treasure. The first is a "blue state" movie, while the latter is a "red state" movie. The terms "blue state" and "red state" refer to those states that voted for John Kerry or George Bush for president in 2004, respectively. Here, we use those terms as a metaphor for the cultural elites who primarily dominate the northeast and the west coast, as opposed to middle-Americans with traditional values who dominate the south and the west.
Sideways is a small film about two dysfunctional middle-aged men, Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), embarked on a wine-tasting trip through California wine country. The golf and sexual adventures punctuate the periods between wine consumption. Miles is a moping divorcee, failed novelist, and an unhappy middle school English teacher who doesn't see the nobility of his profession. His only real passion is wine tasting, but even this often serves only to illustrate how skill and knowledge can quickly degenerate into sullenness. A typical wine-focused evening will begin with an erudite assessment of wine from the type of soil it was grown in, through fermentation, and aging. Ultimately, Miles descends into a drunken stupor that reveals his deep and amply justified self-loathing. It is hard to imagine a less interesting character. If possible, Jack is even shallower. He is an aging B-movie actor making up for lost celebrity and fading looks by bedding as many women as possible before his scheduled wedding at the end of the trip. These very different personalities are only linked by a shared history that began as roommates in college.
Of course, Sideways resonates with the New York Liberal angst and received five Oscar nominations. The New York Times review identified with Miles and averred that, "And therein lies the great cosmic joke of this heart-piercing film: without struggle and pain, Miles wouldn't be half the good and decent man he is, though he certainly might complain a little less, venture a little more." How is a middle-aged man who steals money from his mother to finance a wine adventure ``good and decent'' by anyone's moral calculus?
