Last night, I was home, feeling slightly dyspeptic, and decided to take advantage of the fact that I pay Netfilx every month. After getting caught in the maze of "Top Ten for James," which I always seem to drop into when I log onto the sight (my partner swears that I'm very easily distracted by bright, shiny things), I got down to business and took a look at my "Instant Queue."
Now, I'm not a frequent Netfilx user, and I'm relatively new to the service. I found that several of the films I had in my list of films I want to see, someday, were scheduled to drop off that list, at specific dates, very near in the future. That, of course, led me to feel a sense of failure. I mean, I was about to miss deadlines, which I simply do not allow myself to do!!!!
I then scanned those films which are about to drop off my list (within the next three weeks!!!!), and decided that I would spend my Saturday night with "The Shape of Things." Now, I admit that I chose that film, knowing full well that Neil Labute's work generally makes me uncomfortable. I mean the titles, "In the Company of Men," "Fat Pig," "The Shape of Things," are slightly sexual to me, and the thought of his oddly arch style of writing is discomfiting for me. I do not feel comfortable with self-consciously ironic dialog, for the most part. I like to stick to interactions in which people are generally "nice" to one another, and then periodically move into conflict, and then move out of it.
Don't get me wrong. I understand very clearly that our lives and our personal realities force us to recognize those with whom we engage for who they are. I understand that to survive, I have to choose my intimates very carefully, and I know well what it feels like to cut people out of my life, as if they were cancers, invading my sense of self and threatening to obliterate me. For those of you who have never experienced that reality, for those of you who live your lives with the same people in your life from childhood to death, I do not understand you and I do not judge you. I ask that you accept me in the same manner. My ability to "move on" in my relationships is "healthy" for me, and not a subject on which I want to dwell here.
Yes, I understand Mr. Labute's worlds, where people spend time with one another, and then because of horribly destructive acts of meanness and cruelty, those people no longer spend time with one another as true enemies. I also understand Mr. Labute's sense that relationships are kinds of experiments, in which we work through problems and through which we learn about ourselves and form ourselves over time.
I just cannot get through the surface intellectualism of Mr. Labute's dialog. His characters always seem to speak "at" one another, rather than "to" one another. Mr. Labute's dialog always seems to me to depend on a very good actor's putting it across. I will admit that I have never read any of Mr. Labute's work, but every time I see one of his plays, in a theater, or on the screen (and in my estimation, Mr. Labute's films are always more "filmed plays" rather than "films"), I am made excruciatingly uncomfortable by the interchanges between his characters, which I am forced to experience. I am not easily embarrassed, but I am discomfited by Mr. Labute's interactions between his characters. For me, it seems that his characters are constantly sneering at one another, and I just find that a toxic way of interacting with one another.
Having recently been forced to drop a very important person in my life, absolutely due to the fact that her special talent is in being able to cut swiftly and deeply with her words, showing one how little she values one, even as one is performing some service for her; I am still sensitive to situations which recall my interaction with that woman. I loved her dearly, and cutting her out of my life was an extremely difficult thing for me to do; but I had to move away from her meanness and expectations, her sense of entitlement, and her overly inflated sense of self-importance. I also remember the delightful adventures we shared over the years. I miss her, just as I miss all the people, from whom I have been forced to remove myself over the years.
I appreciate that Mr. Labute explores the way that we are all manipulating one another, each of using the other towards our own ends. It is very much my experience, that we all are constantly using one another in exactly those ways. I honor and respect that we humans seem to need to work our way this life, through our relationships with other humans. I just wish Mr. Labute's plays showed me more of what motivates his characters to hurt one another so deeply. I wish I understood his characters motives better. I wish Mr. Labute was able to show us, humans, to be slightly more altruistic than we are in reality. Mr. Labute's mirrors, which I think his plays truly are, tell truths about most of us humans that deflate my hopes for the human race. I need to see a good production of "Cyrano" after having toiled my way through a piece by Mr. Labute. Mr. Labute is a moralist at heart, but his parables never seem to have happy endings, for anyone involved in his dramas. I need to see that humans are capable of kindness and willing to care for one another, even if I do not believe it to be the case. In the end, I think we are not all as narcissistic as Mr. Labute would tell us we are. Still, Mr. Labute does tell us truths about ourselves, which no matter how discomfiting, we should hear. Mr. Labute writes the truth about how horribly we damage one another, for the sake of future generations, for the sake of our species. For that, he deserves my praise.
Oddly, the scenes in "The Shape of Things" to which I can relate, and which I find engaging, are the revelation and final confrontation scenes which occur at the very end of the film. That's the way it seems to work for me with Mr. LaBute's work. For me, I would prefer a brief synopsis of the events leading up to the final scenes of his plays, with much more character motivation explained, and then I would like to see those final scenes. I really do not want to spend much time with Mr. Labute's characters, I think. In the end, Mr. Labute creates characters, which, up to now, I find repugnant. I just don't like any of them, really. I find large numbers of of Mr. Labute's characters personalities brought to life by the people with whom I am forced to interact. I guess I just find Mr. Labute's plays much too lifelike than I want to experience in the theater. I will probably continue to follow his work closely, uncomfortably, precisely because Mr. Labute mirrrors so much of my life so accurately. Neil Labute's work really bothers me!
