Though it seems to be largely ignored by critics and audiences alike, this has long been one of my favorite films. The foremost thing I love about it is the way it finds the humor in the serious and vice versa. That’s especially true of its treatment of its characters: it sees the humor in their ridiculous and pitiful natures even as it sympathizes with them (the creators actually talk about that in their DVD commentary). All the characters are tragically comic and comically tragic, and the actors do a superb job of capturing that. In particular, I love the character of Holden. He’s a caricature of the romantic, alienated youth yearning for a love that goes beyond the everyday. That description describes me pretty well too, and one of the reasons I love the film is that it perfectly captures some of my own traits and experiences in this character and then exaggerates them until they become hilarious, while maintaining great sympathy for the character’s real suffering. It does what good comedy should: puts a fun-house mirror up to my own faults and troubles and lets me see the humor in them.
I also think it does a pretty good job of exploring a pretty fundamental existential issue: how human existence consists of the engagement with others and with the concrete facts of life, and the ideal of absolute freedom, the running away into the unknown frontier and making of oneself whatsoever one desires, is a falsehood; absolute freedom is nonexistence, because one is perpetually bound to the facticity of one’s existence. The romantic (or maybe Romantic) ideal of love largely revolves around this issue, because in it, the lovers exist only for one another, free from all other entanglements. The Good Girl captures this issue beautifully near its conclusion, when the protagonist arrives at a crossroads (literally) representing the entanglements of the everyday and the ideal of absolute freedom, and says
How it all came down to this, only the Devil knows. Retail Rodeo is at the corner on my left. The motel is down the road to my right. I close my eyes and try to peer into the future. On my left, I saw days upon days of lipstick and ticking clocks, dirty looks and quiet whisperings. And burning secrets that just won’t ever die away. And on my right, what could I picture? The blue sky, the desert earth, stretching out into the eerie infinity. A beautiful never-ending nothing.
The one choice is ugly and frightening, but it is the real, the fullness of existence; the other option is an alluring emptiness.
Lastly, it has some of the sharpest dialogue around. It’s funny as hell, and it captures the essences of the characters and sets the tone for the film deftly and precisely:
Holden: I’ve never wanted anything so bad, and I have wanted many things. I’d given up long ago on being gotten by someone else, and then you came along. The idea that I could be gotten but because of circumstances never get got is the worst feeling I’ve ever felt, and I have felt many bad feelings.
Jack Field, Your Store Manager: Holden was a thief and a disturbed young man and what happened was a sad thing. Perhaps we can learn a lesson from this tragedy, like don’t steal and don’t be disturbed.
And perhaps my favorite bit of dialogue in any film:
Holden: I’m starting to think…that you don’t get me.
Justine: maybe I don’t get you.
Holden: You do! You do get me! You just don’t wanna get me because I’m too intensified for you!
“Too intensified.” Ha!
existentialism is a film 