I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

9/1/2017

B+
3.17

A woman teams up with her neighbor to track down the thieves who robbed her.

Directed by Macon Blair
Starring Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood
Initial Review by Sean Riley

I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a terrible title. I always hated calling How I Met Your Mother HIMYM but then I typed it two three times so from here on I’ll refer to this movie as IDFAHITWA. Shit, that sucked too - “this movie” - Perfect!

This movie is about Ruth, a nursing assistant played by Melanie Lynskey who embarks on a vigilante mission with neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) to find who broke into her home and stole her computer and grandma’s silverware. Ruth is introduced as a fairly depressing character without much going for her, crappy house, bad neighborhood, lonely, weird neighbors, etc. When she is robbed and police do nothing it is a breaking point for her to seek justice. Ruth describes her brand of justice as not wanting people to be assholes anymore. That’s a big ask but a noble one. Between plaster casting a footprint in the garden and using her find my laptop app she is able to eventually track down the perpetrators with the help of Tony who joined primarily it seemed because he was into the chance to bust out his weaponry towards the aim of moral justice.

I’m not a fan of the review style that breaks down scene by scene and retells the story so I’ll end by summarizing- a string of events featuring multiple laugh worthy gags and a few oh shit moments and one very predictable gun malfunction lead this movie to a satisfying conclusion.
Brilliantly weird, A-.

5 Comments

Bryan

9/2/2017 11:34:43 am

Frances Ha meets Blue Ruin.

When they went into the woods with an injured Elijah Wood I thought Wood would turn into Daniel Radcliffe and Swiss Army Man would pickup where we left off.

The last 3 minutes were a waste. This should have stopped when they're in the boat on their way back to the house.

B, maybe B+ Definitely worth watching.

Jon

9/11/2017 01:08:02 am

The title I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore harkens back to one of the best lines in Futurama. After his anthropological discovery is displayed in orangutan scientist Dr. Banjo's creationist exhibit, Professor Farnsworth says, "I don't want to live on this planet anymore." Billy West performs the line from a base of depression, but there's a certainty that goes with it as well. If these people are going to close their eyes and ears and sing 'la, la, la, I am not listening' in the face of compelling and humbling evidence of primate history, then they can go fuck themselves. Macon Blair's film, which I'm going to henceforth refer to as ...Anymore, has that same ethos, except on a sociological scale instead of a geologic one. Protagonist Ruth just cannot tolerate the rudeness and callousness anymore, but as she lacks the Planet Express ship, there's little she can do about it except ignore it, or force herself to go on a small scale Death Wish and right one wrong in an environment up to its neck in them. Blair, a scion of the gritty films of Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), has a lighter touch than Saulnier, and he makes his film sympathetic to Ruth's growing misanthropy while also showing her reasoning to be blinkered and unsustainable.

There's a good amount of confirmation bias surrounding this film. Like Ruth, I'm also near-certain that existence is devoid of capital-M Meaning, that the planet could be blinked out of existence by some cosmic event and everything would continue on without any earthbound species, that we are insignificant inhabitants of the 'pale blue dot' that Carl Sagan so eloquently spoke of. When characters espouse that point of view, I perk up and appreciate that something that I think about fairly often is being shared by someone else. I'm more optimistic in my beliefs than Ruth is, but the film quickly reels me in by giving me a reflection of my own interiority.

Ruth is experiencing her own version of confirmation bias, as she's locked into thinking that people are irredeemable and cruel and useless and in the early going, the viewer is only shown interactions and news reports that hew to that thinking. We're seeing the world through Ruth, and Ruth only takes in that which pushes her further down her nihilistic hole. These instances are surely irritating (the guy with the truck that pollutes for the lulz bothered me more than the racist old woman, because she immediately got her comeuppance), but Ruth isn't remembering benign interactions with traffic or her patients. Just the state of order and bounty is a good and a daily choice that individuals make, though she can only focus on those that are gently flouting the rules.

At the heart of Ruth's motivation is a constant low-level depression, possibly one brought on by her simmering hatred of her fellows. Another possibility is that the root cause is a twisted form of FOMO, where she's in envy of rule-breakers while she sticks to them like a sap. The robbery serves as her motivation to break out of her funk, as she takes this latest affront as an opportunity to be as rude and asocial as she perceives everyone else to be. Now, she's cutting in the checkout line, stealing from people, and cursing at 911 dispatchers over formalities like warrants. Ruth is an exceptional anti-hero for several reasons, in that the viewer wants her to succeed in spite of her failings and recklessness, that she is the victim of a crime and indifference towards that crime, and that Blair includes people in the film that are far worse than she is. Blair also writers her as wry and real-world charismatic, and Melanie Lynskey brings it home.

9/11/2017 01:08:28 am

Blair casts ...Anymore superbly, eschewing pricier names and faces but still finding the exact right person for each role. This broadly applies to everyone, but I'm thinking specifically of Devon Graye as Chrissy. Introduced taking an upper-decker at a house that he's robbing, Graye has the perfect punchable rat-face but also the unpredictability that suggests said punch would be followed, if not preceded, by a stabbing. Rat-tailed Elijah Wood is also a great choice, as his physique is constantly that of a spindly teen no matter how many ninja stars he keeps in his belt buckle. His earnestness makes it easy to overlook his self-delusion while also making him, by far, the most morally upright character in the film. In searching for a happy ending, Blair undercuts Wood's character by having him stay with Ruth in the end, the one unbelievable choice in a film otherwise stacked with believable decisions and effects.

Film people love Saulnier, but I think Blair out-Saulnier'd him here. I appreciate Blue Ruin and Green Room for their tension, realism, and unsentimentality, but that coldness keeps me at arm's length. Blair's ...Anymore more readily draws me in. Its sense of humor certainly doesn't hurt either. The ending does blow a lot of goodwill with its otherworldly aid and where it leaves Wood's Tony. That's unnecessary from my standpoint, as Ruth's arc doesn't have to be from atheist to churchgoer to be a satisfactory one. Per Sagan, again, life is finding meaning in unmeaning, significance in insignificance, creation in entropy. However, it's hard to deeply dock a film for landing at a different conclusion than the one I would make, and do make, all the time. At a B, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a strong debut from Blair.

Drew

9/24/2017 07:10:06 pm

Good points by Sean, Bryan, and Jon. Because of that, my post will be simple.

Entertaining. Elijah Wood reminded me of Shane. His character is something straight out of Shane directed Musical Madness. Truly made me laugh. Those ninja stars!

It seems the title of the film made the main character feel like the place changed for the worse only to leave her behind. Honestly, that's life. She'll have to do something about it to change the city. In this film, she did but only to her situation. I wonder, though, was the director making a statement about inner city decay. Maybe that's making too much of the film.

All in all, it was an ok film. Not too many complaints.

Grade: B-

Cooker

10/3/2017 02:40:19 pm

IDFAHITWA (I’ll use the acronym, too) was an entertaining film to say the least. I chuckled at the dying woman’s final words at the beginning, and then the movie proceeded to one bizarre incident after another, ending in a chaotic explosion of gunfire and madness. I enjoyed Elijah Wood’s character. It reminded me of Sean Astin in 50 First Dates, not the character itself, but a role out of the norm from what we are accustomed to. A good mix of action and comedy. A month late to the party, so not much more to say. Giving this a solid B.