Written by Zoe Kazan
Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris
**** (four stars)
Dear readers, I was not prepared for this one. And happily so.
In a year filled with one cinematic surprise and example of filmmaking excellence arriving rapidly after another, "Ruby Sparks" is an especially exceptional marvel. It is the type of film that truly seems as if it just appeared out of thin air, fully formed, untainted by hackneyed screenwriting and storytelling rules and exhaustingly well worn movie cliches. It is a film that soars on its own unabashed sense of creativity while also plunging deeply into darker thematic waters as it wrestles with not only with hard fought relationship issues, but also with the dangers of the crumbling male ego, the devastating effects of writer's block, and the intense pressures of living up to past successes, whose grand shadow grows only more powerful the longer one does not create something new.
In regards to creating that elusive second work of art, "Ruby Sparks" marks the return of Directors Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, former music video directors (they created The Smashing Pumpkins' iconic "Tonight, Tonight" video among others), who are just now arriving with their second film, six years after their hugely successful debut with "Little Miss Sunshine" (2006). And even beyond that, "Ruby Sparks" also presents itself as existing as one of the year's best written films as Zoe Kazan, who also gives a tremendous performance as the titular Ruby Sparks, announces herself as a creative force to be reckoned with. As I often say, when it comes to the overall quality, originality and diversity of what films are being made, we truly owe it to ourselves to head out and support those films that would otherwise be swept aside over the major, big budget releases. It has truly saddened me that Writer/Director Lorene Scafaria's boldly haunting, darkly comic and intimately romantic "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World" sank like a stone at the box office, as I strongly feel that film is one of the best releases of 2012. "Ruby Sparks" is another film in that company and I URGE YOU to go see it immediately.
As with some of the very best films I have seen this year so far, the less I inform you about the film, the better. "Ruby Sparks" stars Paul Dano as Calvin Weir-Fields, a lonely, depressed, profoundly introverted 29-year-old novelist struggling heavily with not only producing that difficult second novel but also living up to his ever growing reputation as a literary genius as his first novel, published at the age of 19, was a resounding success. He is friendless, aside from his coarser, more pragmatic brother Harry (an excellent Chris Messina), has not dated since a painful breakup, gains continuous counsel from his therapist Dr. Rosenthal (Elliot Gould) and struggles with caring for Scotty, his small, skittish little dog.
Calvin miraculously finds inspiration after waking from a dream in which he meets a girl in the park. He begins to write feverishly and constantly, bringing to literary life the girl from his dreams, an act that only serves to confound him further as he feels himself falling in love with his creation.
And then, the girl named Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan), suddenly appears in his apartment, very much in the flesh.
Everything that I have described to you essentially appears in the film's trailer and believe me, I strongly feel that this is as far as I can go with any sort of plot description. But, if you do check out the film's trailer on-line, also believe me, "Ruby Sparks" may seem to be a sweet, literary based romantic fantasy but the film as a whole is a much broader, deeper, painful, perceptive, wrenching experience than it seems to be. "Ruby Sparks" is the very kind of sumptuous experience that you want to race out of the theater and tell your friends about immediately but you also don't want to say anything terribly revealing about it either. If it assists you, I feel that "Ruby Sparks" belongs confidently within a small class of films that are as creatively confident as they are also precisely existential. I am thinking of films like Peter Weir's "The Truman Show" (1998), Marc Forster's "Stranger Than Fiction" (2006), and essentially every film written by Charlie Kaufmann (which includes 1999's "Being John Malkovich," 2002's "Adaptation," 2004's "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind," and 2008's "Synecdoche, New York," which he also directed).This is the company with which "Ruby Sparks" keeps and it is without any sense of hyperbolie when I say that it has magically earned its right to be joined with those incredible films.
"Ruby Sparks" succeeds so wonderfully on a variety of thematic levels, which makes the storytelling efforts of Kazan's screenplay and Dayton and Faris' direction and presentation even more impressive. As a story about writer's block and creative pressures to return to former glories and fulfill everyone's expectations, most notably your own, the film felt note perfect to me. I have to say that even as I produce a mountain of words on Savage Cinema, I do hold deep creative writing aspirations as well, aspirations I have barely shown to anyone else out of nothing more than fear. I will tell you that I have been writing my own book for many years now, off and on, and the creative dance I have with my own sense of inspiration is a tenuous one at that. When I find myself able to create, I can often find myself in a world of amazement that so many words could arrive out of me, or through me at all. When the writing is moving along at its best, it sometimes feels as if the characters themselves are nearby, guiding me along, whispering in my ears, informing me of what feels true to their behavior and inner lives or not. And then, life responsibilities arrive, forcing me to put things aside for a bit and then, doubts, intimidation and that ever present sense of fear arrives again to make me feel as if that creative window, once so beautifully open, has now closed for good. I have even questioned if writing these reviews are actually a source of distraction from forcing myself to write more creatively instead of focusing my attention upon art created by others. So, my inner voice asks me, why bother?
That sense of crippling self-confidence rests at the core of Calvin, even moreso as with each person who continues to tell him how much they loved the novel he wrote 10 years prior, those words do not fill him with energy and confidence. They leave him horribly stagnated. And that level creative stagnation leads to an emotional stagnation when it comes to the relationships he shares with others, especially when Ruby magically appears out of his dreams and from his written pages. His creative impotence fuels his emotional impotence and the ways his relationship with Ruby rises and descends through levels of control or even Calvin's lack of control definitely packed a most powerful punch. I have also often said that I am usually not very affected by movie love stories and that I tend to gravitate to love stories that are more hard fought. The love story of "Ruby Sparks" is not only emotionally honest, it is at times, uncomfortably brutal as it depicts the ebb and flow of an affair at its most floating as well as despairing. For all of us who have ever asked of their romantic partner, "Why can't you just be what I want for you to be?," Dayton, Faris and Kazan have fashioned an even more provocative question: "What happens when your partner is exactly what you wish for them to be?" This question is what transports "Ruby Sparks" brilliantly from sweet fantasy into a very real cautionary tale.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciated this sense of emotional reality that grounded this fantastical story so skillfully. This is a quality that just eluded me in "Little Miss Sunshine," a film I have seen several times but have never found an appreciation for as the film itself and all of the characters within it, felt to exist inside a set of quotation marks, hipster irony and dangerously copious amounts of the dreaded self-conscious, self-congratulatory quirk that derails so many independent films. This time, and with extreme thanks to Zoe Kazan's screenplay, Dayton and Faris strike a tremendously impressive sense of tonality which is then further assisted through a propulsive score by Composer Nick Urata and including classical pieces from Mozart that at times, makes "Ruby Sparks" function as a psychological thriller in which we just might have a front row seat to a not-so-young writer's mental breakdown.
Paul Dano, to me, has never been more impressive as he holds the screen with quiet power as he is a person we root for and simultaneously condemn the further the film moves ahead and all the while, he is completely understandable. Zoe Kazan's performance is one that I wish is rememebred during awards season as she just nails the emotional truth, and wild, creatively driven mood swings of Ruby Sparks as if they are spun and ceased on a dime. One furious sequence near the end of the film is an astonshing display of inner and outer emotional physicality. You cannot take your eyes off of her and still, the soft spoken Dano more than holds his own. Kazan and Dano's relationship dance is one of the year most compelling on screen duets for certain.
Look...let me explain my feelings to you this way. When I entered the theater this afternoon and was asked by one of my young friends which film I was seeing, I told him and he responded with only a sly smile, as if he knew the priceless secret to which I would soon find out for myself. After walking out of the movie, I strode over to my friend and said to him with a goofy smile plastered upon my own face, "Man...you weren't playin'!"
Allow this review to serve as that sly smile, dear readers, for I wish you to also bask in the glowing greatness that is "Ruby Sparks" as it truly deserves to be fully embraced and not remain as any sort of cinematic secret.
"Ruby Sparks" is one of 2012's very best films.
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