Day 2: Favorite Movie

To be honest, it was a hard choice between "500 Days of Summer" and this movie which both have the same kind of plot premise and deeply thought out soundtrack that reinforces the main themes. In the end, my heart remained tied to the same state that held Braff...so I guess it really wasn't a hard choice after all.

Garden State is a double meaning based off the nickname for New Jersey where the director (Zach Braff) grew up as well as the poem by Andrew Marvell "The Garden" [Such was that happy garden-state / While man there walked without a mate]. It is a deeply involved awkward story in which Braff  explains is about "love, for lack of a better term. And it's a movie about awakening. It's a movie about taking action. It's a movie about how life is short, go for it now. My character says, 'I'm 26 years old, and I've spent my whole life waiting for something else to start. Now I realize that this is all there is, and I'm going to try to live my life like that'".

Even the soundtrack itself points in the direction of a person that is just now taking a risk in awakening themselves and reacting to the world around them which causes them to really outwardly live for the first time:

"And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree
And i'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well. "
- The Shins - New Slang

I find that I am more engaged with the theme of love in this particular film because it is not perfect and depicts finding that one person is also like finding a piece of yourself that you never knew that you had.

There is a scene in the movie where the three main characters are standing in the middle of a rock quarry in the pouring rain. They are perched on top of a large yellow crane and drenched to the bone facing the top of the world. In an effort to relinquish Braff's character from his year's of unwilling numbing inner silence they all start screaming at the top of their lungs into the echoing depths of the bottomless quarry. This moment defines the main character's rebirth into the world. He is screaming as if to say "I am here world, I am here. Hear me". This is also the first time Braff's and Portman's characters let go of themselves together and embrace each other in a kiss.

The message that this is it my friends, nothing else, so start living life because life will not happen until you step out into it and love and let go of yourself for love to truly see yourself beyond yourself is a message I think we can all find our minds crawling in at some point during our lives.