Lilies of the Field Lawn

This post is a contribution to the Slapstick Blog-a-Thon hosted by Film of the Year

"Have you ever transcended space and time?" -Vivian Jaffe
"Yes. No. Time, not space --no, I don't know what you're talking about" -Albert Markovski
I Heart Huckabees (2004)

OK. Let's start with space. Cross this lawn.


It's a simple enough action for a filmmaker to choreography and capture: have your actor run across the screen. But for David O' Russell, the writer/director behind the brilliant I Heart Huckabees, there's nothing simple that can't be made hilariously unwieldy. Let's add the zig-zag spray of a sprinkler system for the antagonist. Lily Tomlin in a powder blue suit plays protagonist. She'll begin the scene all spy-like, hiding behind a tree with white gloves gesturing to her husband Bernard to follow close behind. Then she'll make a dash for it...

The camera has to jerk and dart a little to keep up with her awkward spray-dodging techniques. She crouches down. She adjusts her speed. She hops.

She does all of this in stilleto heels.

And she gets hit full spray. It's physical comedy - whaddya want?

One of Huckabees recurring visual motifs is a grid-like collapse of the screen, pieces fall off to reveal another image underneath. It's mostly used as a way to illustrate Bernard and Vivian's theories about everything being connected; everything different is the same. It's also a spot-on visual embodiment of the layering of comedy. Like all jokes in Huckabees this one has an extra layer or four.
Sprinkler. Tomlin. Costuming. Physical Comedy. And for an extra giggle: this extremely verbose character suddenly has a monosyllabic potty mouth.

But we're still not quite finished. The laughs in this blissfully funny smart movie are never simple. Huckabees has an inimitable sense of humor and O'Russell and his game actors add new punchlines every time the jokes seem to have peaked. The gags build on each other, gathering momentum. For instance, Hoffman will now follow Tomlin across the lawn and try to step over the jet sprays instead. Even the purely physical gags get funnier after they're over; punctuated as they are with intellectual and physical exclamation points.

Vivian dives into a garbage can and empties its contents for the existential investigation.


"Look at this: Kafka! He's planting garbage for us" -Vivian
"Kafka. That's so cliché" -Bernard Jaffe

Despite O'Russell's notorious onset tussles with cast members from George Clooney (Three Kings) to Lily Tomlin (previous post), he knows just how to cast actors and make the most of their specific gifts. Huckabees gets tremendous mileage from Wahlberg's man boy sensitivity, Jude Law's golden god status, and Naomi Watts's overemphatic intensity. And I'd argue that he gives Lily Tomlin her best role since Robert Altman immortalized her in Nashville during the "I'm Easy" musical number, presenting her in one of the cinema's greatest closeups. Even the slapstick classic All of Me with Steven Martin didn't make use of all of her gifts (Martin got most of the physical comedy in that one).

Tomlin's physical antics in Huckabees (she also dives into cars, lustfully makes out with her husband, crouches in hallways, and plays peeping tom several times over) are a hoot in and of themselves but they're made sillier because the actress and her character are so entirely... so purposefully conspicuous. Lily with her serious face flirtatiously delivering unsexy absurdities and Vivian's costuming choices (stilletos, cleavage cutaways) --well, this woman couldn't get lost in a crowd.

Why was she trying to cross that lawn with stealth, anyway? For her very next move she dives (loudly) into a garbage can and then she enters the house she's spying on and begins to snap photos of its residents in their full view.

This knowingly absurd film is an extremely rare thing: a comedy with true staying power and after-giggles. It's one of the only comedies that's as funny to think about afterwards as is it to actually screen. I heart Huckabees and Lily Tomlin, too.

*
for more slapstick go to Film of the Year
related: I Heart Huckabees top ten of 2004 (yes, I wish it was higher)