Interspersing vividly surreal moments with achingly real ones, Garden State composes a lyric poem about the nature of home.

At the beginning of the movie, we see Andrew Largeman (played by
writer/director Zach Braff) in his Los Angeles environment. Plain
nondescript room, plain nondescript job. The plethora of chemicals in
his medicine cabinet allows us to understand the stupor in which he
moves, both through his job as a waiter and his life.

With a phone call from his father (played by Ian Holm), Andrew learns
that his mother has died. After a nine-year absence, he goes back to
New Jersey to attend her funeral and see his old home. Once there, he
doesn’t experience the loss or the nostalgia one might expect. Both
Andrew and his childhood home appear cold and impervious to change,
impervious to emotion, and he walks around with unblinking eyes and no
tears to shed.

Andrew meets some of his old friends and they prove mostly unchanged.
We see through his eyes the difficulty of leaving home, this small
town. Former buddy Jesse, now worth millions, lives as he always did,
though now in a large mansion. Andrew’s friend Mark (played by Peter
Sarsgaard) buries people in the Jewish cemetery for a living and still
lives with his mother. Mark takes Andrew to a party where Andrew
stays unaffected by events, including being kissed by a pretty girl.
The ethereal Natalie Portman plays Sam, a girl that Andrew meets in a
doctor’s waiting room. She captivates him with her intensity, vitality
and also her inability to tell the truth. Sam joins Andrew’s journey
as muse and co-conspirator, catalyst and love interest. She guides
him on his journey to find his way back to life and home after his
long absence.

From their first meeting to Andrew’s visit to Sam’s house we see the
differences between them. The contrast between the Largeman home and
that of Sam’s strikes to the heart of the problem. Sam lives in the
moment, with life all around her as Andrew and his father do not. Each
of the men waits for the time when something will happen, and their
environment proclaims this state of suspension: Andrew for his life
to start, his father for happiness to start. Neither realizes the
true extent of their isolation from the very things they seek.
When Andrew fully begins to feel after the years of emptiness and lack
of emotion, we are right there with him. We scream into the abyss as
he does, and laugh as well. Andrew rediscovers home, almost, but not
quite where he left it.

Zach Braff has done a wonderful job here. From the perfect casting to
the imagery, the unexpected humor to the staggering sadness, the parts
of this movie combine to form a superlative experience, one that I
recommend to everyone.

One minor complaint. The ending could have been more. Or, rather
less. Still, as one who hated the story of the Lady or the Tiger, the
ending does not disappoint, it merely shows a conclusion where some
might have expected a path revealed. Rather than call this a
“Hollywood Ending,” call it one kind of completion. The conclusion
that we all secretly wish for, but know doesn’t happen in real life.
But then, if we wanted real life, why go to the movies in the first
place?