Communication. Forgive the following cliché: we live in the greatest era of communication known to man, and yet, in most ironic fashion, the more our attention is drawn to the boxes instead of the beings in our physical space, the more divided we become. Few films understand that quite like Men, Women & Children, a FastTimes@RidgemontHigh.edu for the current generation.
Peripherally a great deal like Disconnect, Men, Women & Children laces together vaguely connected stories of modern technology slaves. These two films show the inherent danger in technology – alienation, misunderstanding, the penalties of oversharing. Unlike Disconnect, however, the MW&C focus seems confined to “if you jerks would just talk to one another, you’d bypass the misunderstanding part.”
MW&C also has fun with the subject. There’s a new depth to cheerleader gossip with a mild telepathic angle – the phone allows two betas to share a mocking side conversation while talking directly to the alpha. I gotta try that. Like so many Texan high schools, this one revolves around football and cheerleading. This high school is down its superstar tailback, Tim Mooney (Ansel Elgort). Anybody who has been to Texas, seen “Friday Night Lights,” or knows how to find the United States on a map of North America knows this is a big deal. Is Tim injured? Not physically. He’s a nihilist. If nothing else, I applaud the idea that nihilists have a place in Texas somewhere. Of course, this is a horrible miscast; I’m fond of Ansel’s acting, but he’s much closer to a guy who gets stuffed in a locker than a guy capable of rushing for 200 yds. on any given Friday.
Anyhoo, Ansel has apparently gotten over the dying of cancer thing and is ready to love again. And, as nobody else in school will talk to him, he may as well set his sights on the introvert (Kaitlyn Dever) whose mother (Jennifer Garner) is the type who checks her exact computer and phone usage to the minute every.single.day. I wish this were not a type.
Nazi mom is strict contrast to peer Donna (Judy Greer), who has not only created a website for her prize progeny (Olivia Crocicchia); she photographs her daughter in ways that were Donna of a different sex, you’d call the police. It’s all about the ways we choose to communicate, or not as the case may be. This leads to the lost couple (Rosemarie DeWitt & a subdued Adam Sandler). Theirs is an all too common a story as well – they simply forgot how to exist as a couple.
I suspect the DeWitt/Sandler relationship is where most people lose this movie; both use the internet to explore sex outside the home. That raises all sorts of red flags in the Puritanical corners of these states. I see them
as two adults solving adult problems in modern adult ways. The right, wrong, or danger of the solution is irrelevant; the problem exists because the couple forgot life is about communication. And there we are again.
Men, Women & Children is narrated by Emma Thompson using some occasionally rather colorful language and often speaking from the POV of the Voyager Satellite. It seems confusing until you realize it’s part of the bigger metaphor – the technology to communicate is beyond the wildest dreams of the greatest communicators in human history, and still nothing yet beats eye-to-eye understanding. The generation behind ours is so in-tune with handheld electronic devices, I foresee a day when politicians text while giving speeches and none in the audience thinks anything of it. Is this our future? Will the problems involving lack of communication get worse the easier it gets to communicate? They might.
I am a parent. I’d like to say I have all the parenting answers. I don’t. Not even close. I wish I could be horrified by certain solutions teens and parents in this film arrive at to solve problems. I’m not. Not even close. I will say this – if you can figure out how to talk to your child, how to keep those lines of communication open, well, it’s not that you or I or anybody will not have parenting problems, you’ll just have … fewer.
Introducing the 21st century protocol:
Everyone at every time is in touch with all
Are you done with roam?
You wanna phone home?
Just hang back, E.T.; I gotta take this call
Rated R, 119 Minutes
D: Jason Reitman
W: Jason Reitman and Erin Cressida Wilson
Genre: Communication
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: 21st Century denizens
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The Greatest Generation
