Green and pleasant (original) (raw)

American movies rarely deal with the meaning of life; this is best left to the French, the Swedes and occasionally the Danish. When movies on this side of the pond do address the Big Questions, they tend to do so in a whimsical, lighthearted fashion, usually in motion pictures directed by Woody Allen.

I Heart Huckabees, a very sweet, very mischievous motion picture that explores the question of why we are here, and more relevantly, why Shania Twain is here, falls directly into this category. The central character in David O Russell's new film is a sad-sack environmentalist played by Jason Schwartzman. Helming an open space coalition that he founded, Schwartzman is attempting to prevent developers from paving over a local marsh. His tactics range from public recitations of his own inspirational anti-sprawl poetry ("Oh, rock. You rock!") to planting trees in the middle of suburban shopping malls. The poems are very bad, the trees obstruct traffic, his own supporters begin to suspect that he has only gotten into environmentalism as a way of foisting his horrible poetry on the ecologically forlorn.

The man is clearly an idiot, but a very likable one. Bewildered by his own existence, by his tormented relationship with a corporate schmuck (Jude Law) who is trying to usurp his position as head of the open space coalition, by a series of coincidences involving a tall Sudanese refugee, and by the fact that he does not have a girlfriend, Schwartzman hires a pair of "existential detectives" to follow him around and discover what is wrong with him.

The detectives are played with subdued glee by Lily Tomlin, looking as strange as ever, and Dustin Hoffman, looking even stranger beneath a very silly Beatles mop top. They immediately begin to spy on him - bugging phones, ransacking garbage - while simultaneously launching surveillance on everyone else he knows. Hoffman, the more philosophical of the two, believes that everything in the universe is connected to everything else, and that life ultimately makes sense if we can only find the underlying pattern. He practises a form of therapy called "dismantling", which involves shedding destructive habits and cutting through disabling neuroses to penetrate to the core of the infinite. This is done by locking clients inside a body bag and encouraging them to free-associate. But not all of his cases have been successful; Schwartzman is soon introduced to a crazy fireman (Mark Wahlberg) who briefly worked with Tomlin and her partner, but who now believes that rampant misuse of the world's petroleum resources is probably responsible for most of the unhappiness in the world.

Rounding out this rogues' gallery of ding-dongs and knuckleheads is Isabelle Huppert, an enigmatic French theoretician and sexpot who once worked for the upbeat existential detective agency, but now believes that life has no meaning, and that humans should simply grasp all the pleasure they can while they can.

I Heart Huckabees found little favour with the American public, especially in the "red" states that voted for George Bush. Some people found it pretentious, others excessively demanding. Of course, many Americans find anything more profound than Cat Stevens excessively pretentious and demanding, especially denizens of the red states. But it is a delightful little movie filled with superb performances by actors who have not given superb performances in some time.

Jude Law, who has been making too many movies lately, was inert in Cold Mountain, extraneous in Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, and incapable of filling Michael Caine's shoes in Charles Shyer's woeful remake of Alfie. But here he shines as a smarmy, corporate go-getter who is convinced that the best way to save the imperiled marsh is by persuading the famous vegetarian songbird Shania Twain to give a benefit. (Twain, whose assembly-line country-and-western catalogue is anything but quirky, must have a good sense of humour, as she briefly appears in this offbeat film, which seems to go out of its way to ridicule her.)

Law is romantically entangled with a ditsy corporate mascot (Naomi Watts) who also becomes involved with the existential detectives. This triggers her tragic decision to shed her revealing Huckabees Corporation hot pants and provocative bikinis and replace them with roomy overhauls and a ludicrous Amish bonnet. Law is crushed by this change of apparel, as was I.

But Wahlberg is the biggest surprise of all. The former rapper is altogether hilarious as the fireman obsessed with fossil fuels. Particularly enjoyable are the scenes where Wahlberg and Schwartzman smash each other in the face with red rubber balloons in an effort to bring "reality" into closer focus.

Finally, Huppert. In I Heart Huckabees, the veteran French actress, whose business card reads: "Caterine Vauban: Cruelty, Manipulation, Meaninglessness" is as mysteriously seductive as ever in the way that only middle-aged French actresses can be. Like Twain, Huppert is a real trouper, gamely locking lips with Schwartzman after he has jammed her face into a mud puddle to acquaint her more thoroughly with the sheer euphoria of existence. Russell was wise to cast at least one French person in his highly amusing film; anytime the subject gets around to the meaning of life, or what Hoffman calls "the big picture", it's a good idea to recruit somebody from Paris. All in all, this is the best movie about the Infinite Nothingness to come along in years. Jean-Paul Sartre would be tickled pinko.

· I Heart Huckabees is out now