A Road Less Travelled

I hate the first part of trying to explain Lars and the Real Girl. You have to start with “There was this man who was so lonely and closed off from everyone around him that he goes and orders himself a life-sized doll.” People tend to look at you strangely at this point. But this really was a charming movie because after he orders the doll Lars’s relationship with Bianca, the doll, is totally respectable. He believes that she is a missionary on sabbatical from South America who he’s been corresponding with over the Internet and that she’s come to visit him.

Lars and the Real Girl is a movie about a man who has distanced himself from people and doesn’t know how to go back. He won’t even have dinner with his brother and sister-in-law. The sister-in-law, Karin, is truly trying to connect with Lars because she can see he is not thriving and he keeps avoiding her or coming up with spurious excuses. My favorite part was when she tackled him and held him down until he agreed to come to dinner. He is so far from everyone around him, though, that he can’t even work through his people issues. So he turns to a doll that he believes to be real, though I’m guessing part of him knows she isn’t because he doesn’t have his normal ticks and troubles around her. Through being with Bianca and being able to say anything without fear Lars works his way back to the people who love him.

So that’s Lars and I liked watching him work through his issues, but what made this movie shine is the community around him. Lars needs Bianca to work through what’s bothering him so the town needs to pretend with him or it will all come to naught. So an entire town decides to pretend a life-size doll is real because they love Lars. I thought that was beautiful. And furthermore, one of the groups that makes up the town is the church Lars attends. I was shocked by how well the church was portrayed. Normally, they’re the dopes that break everything they touch, but in this movie for the most part they step up to care for their brother. Not perfectly, of course; that wouldn’t even be close to accurate. But throughout the movie the church shows true love for Lars.

I have decided that I really like indie movies. Lars and the Real Girl was a movie about real people who looked like real people and talked like real people. There were no grand speeches, but there were some very profound things that were said. My favorite not-speech was when Lars goes to his brother Gus and asks him how a man knows when he’s a man and not a boy anymore. Gus fumbles his way towards an answer, gives up, then tries again and actually comes up with something good. The answer sounded like something a normal person would say as opposed to many movies where answers sound like something a screenwriter would write. I think there is a time and place for grand sounding speeches, but I’m glad that there weren’t any in this movie. It was such a small movie with such normal people dealing with each other and movie talk would have ruined that.

Watching Lars and the Real Girl didn’t change how I think about my day-to-day life because I don’t currently know anybody who believes that a doll is a real woman. It did reinforce many of my ideas of life together. Life together as a community is difficult, can feel silly and is truly beautiful when done well.