I'm Still Here

Somehow, I feel like one of the only people who thinks this movie is absolutely genius and incredibly funny. Many leading critics seem to have missed the fact that this is a ruse. Reading in the NYT yesterday that Casey Affleck admitted it was not "reality" probably aided my ability to view the movie the way I did, but I am surprised that so many people have a negative reaction to what Affleck and Phoenix present and couldn't see the bigger picture even before the revelation was made. I am looking forward to J.P's appearance on Letterman next week, when I believe we will learn a lot more about their motivation in its production. In the meantime, however, I think a few things can be said that will not prove to be altogether ignorant on my part.

First, this a movie made by professional actors. This is not Casey Affleck following a Joaquin Phoenix lacking self-awareness around with a camera because they have nothing better to do. It is a deliberate effort to create, and they are both collaborating. That should give everyone a good starting point. It is a real movie with thoughtful development, not the work of pedestrian journalists. With that in mind, it is easy to see just how much fun it would have been to make.

The primary "conflict" in the movie is Joaquin's discomfort with the pressures on him and the risks he is taking in the face of so many expectations to keep producing the kinds of movies that won him accolades. The viewer who thinks the film is true life will believe he is throwing away a great movie career because he is the typical tragic celebrity who has it all, can't recognize it, is under chemical influence, and has no one around who cares enough to intervene. There are far too many clues to let that impression control throughout the film.

When J.P. delivers monologues about how he's putting it all on the line, what we should understand is that the fake J.P. is talking about his hip-hop dream, while the real J.P. is acknowledging the risk he is taking by staying out of glossy big-budget blockbusters he had at his fingertips after Walk the Line. Keep in mind: he had to be this character for almost two whole years in order to make anyone bother to watch the movie. When you stack this kind of dedication up against a stupid movie about the drama behind Facebook, the farce of Jersey Shore, another crime movie set in Boston, and all the other garbage out there, I'm Still Here stands out as cutting-edge performance.

Comparisons are easily made to works of Sacha Baron Cohen and Christopher Guest. The primary difference is the real-world gambit of Phoenix and the manipulation of the media, expanding the stage of performance beyond the theaters. And the audience isn't spoon-fed the humor. Yeah, they probably ticked off a lot of suited business people who wanted Phoenix to be predictable and stay in bounds, but the very point of the movie was that the Hollywood system is a fenced-in joke of a society and very easy to toy with. Of course, the sad truth is that so many fine performers have indeed self-destructed in similar fashion. Perhaps that is why people are uncomfortable with the movie; because it is plausible. But if J.P. can deceive so many so easily, it is all the more a masterpiece.

This is unlike any other movie ever made. Inventive. Joaquin made a movie, he was in character at all times. Whether or not he broke character or there were flaws or slips in the film, he had to keep in character any time he was in the public eye. He wasn't locked away on a set or in a remote location. He wasn't shielded from scrutiny until every word or action was carefully crafted by editors. He was acting in plan sight, having to flow and improvise anytime he was around the media. These guys are made a film by catching the media off guard, a media hoax, instead of the media paying there rent by displaying or exposing celebrity.

This is the result of a history of celebrity turning the tables on the media. Edgar Allan Poe used the print media to conduct hoaxes for the end goal of entertainment and enlightenment. He manufactured a truth to raise questions, do you believe everything you read or hear in the case of Orson Wells? I commend the efforts and dedication that went into the making of this movie.

Also, I wish no one had let me in on the ruse until I had seen the movie. Being fooled is fun, it's why magicians will always be entertaining despite the fact that we may adamantly dismiss the existence of magic.

This is a very good movie, but it may not be obvious at first. Our present culture is enamored with spectacle over substance, so I can see why its cursory glance would miss a deeper story being told. It is the story of each of us.

On the surface of things, the movie comes across as a bit voyeuristic. The stereotyped perspective of celebrity life is interesting enough (or not). It is both titillating and uncomfortable to peek behind the veil of someone's raw and intimate life, to have such a personal journey on public display.

The long title for the movie reads, "I'm Still Here: The Lost Years of Joaquin Phoenix." Truly, if we are lucky, we are all works in progress. What is the nature of our identity? What individual and shared narratives have we embraced to define our lives? When those stories unravel at the seams, come crumbling down, what remains?

There has never been a line blurring fiction from non-fiction. It is all fiction, always. The stories we tell ourselves, and others, are both real and imagined. They give shape and trajectory to our lives. Yet, we are simply an expression of circumstance and happenstance -- trying to carve meaning out of our fleeting experience, to connect a constellation of moments and memories into some discernible picture.

We want to believe, in our hearts, that we are special: the mountaintop waterdrop. Rather, we are part of a greater ocean of being, the depths of which we cannot even dimly fathom. Some people go their entire lives without wondering who they are, or how they are called to contribute to the world. Many people are happy enough with the surface show, oblivious to the mystery and reality of their authentic selves. It takes effort to reveal the treasures within. Why bother.

We want our lives to have the benefit of a movie. We want everything somehow to come together, to make sense, to have resolution, a happy ending, triumph, victory! In short: to affirm our desires and imaginings. But life is not like that. It is a messy, desultory business. In the person, in the example, of Joaquin Phoenix, we witness the everyday phenomenon of going to pieces, without falling apart.

As Joaquin says at the top of the movie, he wants to be seen for whom he is, just that. All of it, the good and the not-so-good. From this place, there is the genuine possibility to grow and to become. Truthfulness is the foundation of all virtues. Everything is built on this honest open humanity.

After the fiction of one's self- and culturally imposed identity is obliterated, we can pick our way among the ruins and begin again. The inner and outer forces that have come together to define us -- in a very real sense, to imprison us -- no longer hold their narrative sway. The movie ends on this baptismal note, with a new beginning, a rebirth. Each, in our own way, is reminded: Free thyself from the fetters of the world, loose thy soul from the prison of self. Seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more.

With a wink and a nod, the movie is complete with cast and writing credits, made under the banner of They Are Going to Kill Us Productions. As self-involved as the movie may first appear, we can be forgiving of its conceit or deceit. This is cinema verite (no accents), as the camera is pointing to truth, without the story itself having to be true. "I'm Still Here" carries the double meaning for this universal and particular process of sacrifice, discovery and spiritual maturation.

In life, when all is said and done, we don't know quite what we have lived through, or what we have wrought. The curtain falls. Someone else takes the stage. A new story begins. Round and round it goes. If we could see the end in the beginning, perhaps we would not lament, but rejoice, in the journey.

Society wants us in our place, whether we're big stars or the common worker. This is proof that even those on top of the world can fall if they try to do something original, unique and personally rewarding. With that said, I highly enjoyed this piece, although I can't say I expected to. I thought it would be a joke, something to laugh at and yes, while there were parts that were funny I couldn't help but to be taken aback by a message, whether intended or accidental: we are a mean society. our expectations are for us and not those around us. We are greedy. We laugh at others when maybe we're not supposed. We criticize when we shouldn't.

This isn't a film about the actor/rapper in question - it's a film about us and the consensus: we're really bad people.

-E

This has to be one of the most weird and surreal movies that I've ever seen. Watching Joaquin Phoenix bouncing around like a gibbering idiot and rapping in front of Edward James Olmos (rap name: EJO), while a nonsensical voice-over of Olmos rambles about raindrops and mountains and inner light...it's just insane. And the entire mockumentary is like that, to varying degrees. 

Joaquin plays a deranged, drug-using, prostitute-frequenting, delusional, destructive, bizzaro-version of himself, and I just can't look away. Every time he steps up onto a stage to rap, it's a hilarious train wreck. Even though you can't help but feel painfully embarrassed for the character. The way he berates his assistants, tries to get a friend in recovery to take drugs, constantly surrenders to his own paranoia and delusions, and takes narcissism and selfishness to the furthest excesses, it's all just unbelievably compelling. It's like watching the worst person in the world and wondering what insanity they're going to race towards next.

I thought that the performance by Phoenix was great. This is my absolute favorite movie by him, and my favorite "character" that he's played. It's not by accident that so many people thought this movie was a genuine documentary about Phoenix's spiraling life. He genuinely makes the character seem crazy enough to believe that his music is actually good and that the absurd things that he's saying have meaning. It feels real, even when you know it's not. Every uncomfortable, embarrassed and incredulous reaction of his friends and the people he meets just drew me deeper into the world of this bizarre man.

I was beyond impressed by what Phoenix and Casey Affleck did with this. When I first heard about it, it sounded like a vanity project that would be an amusing oddity, at best. What I got instead was one of the best movies I've seen this year. It is NOT for everyone. But how can I not rate a movie highly that made me laugh so much, while also making me feel sadness, disgust, pity, incredulity, anger, hope, embarrassment, and ten other things? 

This experiment was a smashing success, in my opinion, and something truly unique that I'll be thinking about for a long time. I'm Still Here is audacious, ridiculous, and certainly divisive. I can honestly see why some people would hate this movie, and the entire idea behind it. But, long before that perfect ending left my screen, I knew which side of that divide I would fall on.