crunch

RYAN GOSLING as LARS LINDSTROM

The movie is so.... it's so sincere? So sweet and loving in the most painful way? It's heartbreaking and heartwarming and it's labeled as a comedy?

I'm still not sure what's really supposed to be comedic about the movie. It's a movie about someone struggling with anxiety and connecting to other people. It's about someone struggling to deal with what happened in their childhood. And it's about people loving this struggling person so so so much, about people not understanding but willing to learn and change and do what's needed.

The movie deals with social anxiety, loneliness, delusions, unresolved trauma, touch aversion and so many other small things. It's so well done and so thoughtful for the fact that it was made in 2007

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.

and it's not just that he doesn't want karin to die. he also knows what happens to the man that gets left behind. he was the one who got stuck with dad when gus left home. with a grieving dad who didn't know how to be a father anymore. lars doesn't want gus to become their father. and he doesn't want the baby to go through what lars went through.