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Be Holden To Nobody
FILM: Igby Goes Down (R)
DIRECTOR: Burr Steers
STARRING: Kieran Culkin, Jeff Goldblum
WHERE: Canal Place
GRADE: B-
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Needing a good smack: Heroin addict Rachel (Amanda Peet) is curiously drawn to Igby (Kieran Culkin) in Igby Goes Down.
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I grew up in the lower reaches of the New Orleans
middle class, and as a teen I always found myself a lot intimidated by kids from
more prosperous families. They not only had things I did not; they also seemed
to know things I did not. And though perhaps most didn't, many seemed to consider
themselves superior, seemed to snicker together at inside jokes they knew I didn't
get. Given that experience, I think I'm not the ideal audience for writer-director
Burr Steers' Igby Goes Down, a self-satisfied black comedy about a poor
little rich boy who feels a lot sorrier for himself than I do.
Igby Goes Down is the story of 17-year-old
Igby Slocumb (Kieran Culkin), a child of wealth who'd be a true rebel without
a cause except that he wouldn't want to stir himself to an actual act of rebellion.
Igby's parents Mimi (Susan Sarandon) and Jason (Bill Pullman) are rich, and
his godfather and especial benefactor D.H. Baines (Jeff Goldblum) is richer
still. Unfortunately, Mimi is a narcissistic bitch, and Jason is a pusillanimous
nut. Igby's rebuke is one of inaction rather than action. By doing nothing,
he flunks out of a series of private schools. As desired, this gets his mother's
goat, but in her determination to see her son graduate from high school, Mimi
earns rather more sympathy from the viewer than the film itself seems to anticipate.
In hopes of instilling discipline, Mimi places
Igby in a Midwestern military school, and for a time we think that experience
will become the film's focus. But Igby's military days are few, and soon he's
on the lam in Manhattan, sharing a pad with D.H.'s smack-shooting girlfriend
Rachel (Amanda Peet). And, that quickly, Igby Goes Down seems to careen
off track. A series of only barely connected episodes follow, none of which
achieve necessary narrative depth or result in satisfying emotional revelation.
I need quickly concede that this film delivers
a fair share of laughs, and for that reason it will attract defenders from those
who enjoy the offbeat. Normally, I would count myself in that group. With its
quirky characters and situations, this was definitely a picture I expected to
like. I did enjoy a scene in which Igby goes to an irritable shrink who belts
him instead of mildly tolerating Igby's insolent insults. And at first I chuckled
at a development that leads Igby to peddle marijuana to his former art teacher
(Cynthia Nixon). But the dope-dealing scene curdles the way the picture as whole
ultimately does when we recognize the casual cruelty Igby practices as a kind
of birthright. In the end, we just don't laugh often or hard enough to make
up for this flick's bad aftertaste.
In addition, much of Igby Goes Down
is immaturely made. It is careless about its details in the way that its main
character is careless about his behavior. Older women keep throwing themselves
at Igby sexually, but we haven't a clue why. He's nice enough looking, but he's
no stud muffin, his body soft, his aspect mopey, his clothes slovenly, his personal
hygiene suspect. Why would Rachel want to risk her sugar-daddy relationship
with D.H. for a roll in the hay with the likes of Igby? (Of course, we haven't
a clue what a man like D.H. is doing with a skank like Rachel in the first place.)
More important, what does Bennington undergraduate Sookie Sapperstein (Claire
Danes) see in Igby? And more important still, in the development that's supposed
to be a heartbreaker, what does Sookie see in Igby's traitorous older brother
Ollie (Ryan Phillippe)? Igby is an embittered cipher. But Ollie exudes all the
evil of Satan while managing none of the charm.
This film seems to count on our sympathy for
Igby solely because he's our focal character. We're expected to see his underachievement
as an act of suffering. And we're supposed to know he's really contemplative
and intelligent because he makes references to works of literature and philosophy
that we never see him read. In fact, Igby's grasp of and prospective influence
by the works he references remain as unconvincing as his right to so much self-pity.
He is perhaps supposed to skewer Christianity when he invokes Jesus' belief
in Heaven in order to sneer at the sacrifice of the Crucifixion, but instead
reveals himself merely a theological cretin.
Igby Goes Down will inevitably invite
comparison to The Catcher in the Rye, but J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield
is a character who irritates us initially and ultimately wins our sympathy.
Igby Slocumb is the opposite. The more we're around him, the more we agree with
Ollie that if Mahatma Gandhi spent enough time with Igby, even he would want
to give Igby a good slapping.
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