To "heart" something is an artificial emotion, a cop-out.
Besides not actually being a verb, "hearting" something means avoiding a true personal commitment or expressing real love.
It's why only tourists buy "I 'heart' NY" T-shirts. They're faking it.
One purpose of "I Heart Huckabees," the new film from writer and director David O. Russell, is to break down that element of superficiality people present to the world. It's about taking off our social masks, the costumes that keep us from connecting with one another.
"Most people prefer to remain on the surface of things," says one character in the film. That process of deep self-examination can be a "very painful process," she adds.
It's not easy making a film about existential studies, but "I Heart Huckabees" gives it a quite successful whirl. While trying to examine the meaning of human existence, "Huckabees" offers humor and significance in a highly eccentric story.
Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) is the unsuccessful leader of an environmental preservation coalition. After having several run-ins with a tall, skinny African man, Markovski enlists the service of existentialist Detectives Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to help solve his coincidental meetings.
Markovski pays the detectives to spy on him, hoping they can use his coincidence to solve life's mysteries.
The Jaffes also begin working for Brad Stand (Jude Law), an executive for the retail superstore, Huckabees, who has also usurped Markovski's environmental coalition.
Angry that the Jaffes are now working for his nemesis, Markovski joins up with a disgruntled firefighter (Mark Wahlberg) and his philosophical French counselor, Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert).
It's a complicated plot, seasoned with curious characters, but Russell does well at keeping things comprehensible. Relationships are established quickly, so by the time the story gets really tricky, we're familiar enough to hang on for the ride.
A combination of cinematic techniques and fine performances all-around help to establish "Huckabees'" divine rhythm.
Russell bathes his film in a pale light and uses clean, bare sets. He frequently uses graphic tricks to pixilate images and reconstruct character's faces, thus helping to illustrate existential philosophy.
As "Huckabees'" befuddled hero, Schwartzman displays vocal ease and impeccable comic timing. Wahlberg, as the cynical fireman, is the flick's funniest persona.
Despite the movie's spider web of character connections, the real conflict in this film is between ideologies. There's the Jaffe's interpretation that all life is connected, that everything we do matters somehow. Then there's Vauban's individualistic view that nothing matters and life is a blank void.
Russell obviously has no qualms about making a film infected with idiosyncratic psycho-babble. There's a lot of philosophy here, a plethora of hilarious quotable material, and one viewing of "Huckabees" doesn't really do the film justice.
This is the type of catchy movie whose dialogue will become more meaningful and whose jokes will turn funnier with each screening. It's one you might find on a college student's DVD rack in a few months, right next to "The Big Lebowski" and other "meaning of life" type films.
