dual personalities

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the experience of watching The Thomas Crown Affair, a movie that was so purely of its time (the sixties) that it actually managed to take me out of the current moment. Well, I continue to think there’s something to that. The other night, some odd flare of nostalgia inspired me to select Garden State for our night’s movie viewing.

Is there a movie more 2000s than Garden State? It showcases the manic-pixie-dream-girl love interest, an indie soundtrack, and a painfully-earnest script ready to be excerpted in quotation compilations published to Thought Catalog.

So it didn’t change our lives — it’s really pretty bad — but it was mildly captivating for a Sunday evening in quarantine. (“Mildly captivating” is my new bar for entertainment.)

Watching Garden State reminded me of another angsty early-aughts indie film, Donnie Darko, which I similarly remember primarily for its soundtrack. I might have to watch it next.

My apologies if I’ve forced you to you listen to this song and now you feel like this:

“Mad world,” indeed. Any other ideas for comfortingly era-specific films to add to our list?

*”Outlier” by Spoon