Sometimes the simple, quieter and thinner films would set
out to touch a deep chord within us. Lenny Abrahamson’s soul-crushing Irish
film Garage (2007) is one such movie. On the surface, its minimalist narrative
deals with the mundane life of a lonely innocuous misfit Josie, a garage
attendant in rural Ireland. But through Josie’s solitude, inarticulability, and awkwardness the film offers a piercing portrayal of a
mentally challenged individual and how the apathetic rural society, which was
itself marginalized or rendered passive by economic depression, tags him with
a pariah label.
Written by Mark O’Halloran, Garage offers a very distressing and
contrary view of modern rural life, unlike the old Ealing studio comedies where
small-towners band together to win over the hopeless stagnation. The crumbling,
shabby man-made structures and the bored, passive inhabitants remain as an
unerasable splotch amidst the vast, breathtaking landscape. The narrative may
not provide a profound commentary on the poverty and class in rural Ireland,
but it perfectly works as a subtle character study, thoroughly invested in
taking us through aspects of human experience we may not have given much
thought or simply ignored.
Josie’s plight deeply resonates with us because we may have
come across a Josie in our life or we may share some of his traits to fully
understand what it means to be treated as an outcast. And, popular Irish comedian
Pat Shortt’s performance in the lead role is pitch-perfect. Josie’s life is
defined by uncomplicated series of chores. He works at a rundown filing station
near a village whose customers are mostly the local ones who either laughs with
him or laughs at him. In the initial scenes, Josie’s unremarkable life is
showcased with tinge of absurd humor.
It may give off feeling that it’s a
one-note joke about a mentally challenged guy. But the great synergy between
writer Halloran and director Abrahamson provides a much deeply textured
character that we aren’t able to categorize with mere societal labels. Josie
lives in a dingy room behind the station and his daily wages pays for the food
and few quids to have cans of beer at the pub. Men in the pub bully him or snigger
behind his back, but Josie brushes it off with an awkward laugh. Afflicted by
pains in the hip, Josie walks in a distinct manner and he often goes for a walk
around the beautiful countryside in the morning. He befriends a horse by giving
it few apples. He fancies a woman at local grocery store, Carmel (Anne-Marie Duff) who rebuffs him with ferocity.
Things change when Josie’s boss (John Keogh) employs a 15 year old
teenager David (Conor Ryan). Josie is visibly happy to train David to cover the
menial tasks of car valet business. David is a quiet, bored guy who has very low
expectations about his job and life in the town. His only best friend now seems
to focus his attention on his new girlfriend. But David soon warms up to Josie’s
genuine and friendly nature. They share a beer after a day of work and for the
first time in his life, Josie feels he’s got some real companionship. Despite
having the will, innocence and hope the trouble is that life doesn’t go our own
way. Ironically, the character’s social isolation and intelligence (or lack
thereof) which projected him as harmless endangers or threatens to further
degrade his societal position after an 'incident' [‘The town looks after its
own’, a truly ironic proclamation]. It all leads to a minimalist, wordless yet
a subtly heart-breaking ending.
Garage might be chronicling the emptiness of life in a
marginalized society, but Abrahamson’s visuals are rich in detail and loaded
with meaning. He observes the prosaic life with an authenticity and
expressiveness that it gradually immerses us in the squalid atmosphere. The
other interesting element of Abrahamson’s direction is conveying deep emotions
through what’s left unsaid or not well-articulated. In fact, the dialogues in
Garage aren’t loaded with what we’d like to call as ‘message’. The writer and
director are much fascinated in zeroing-in on emotions that couldn’t be
verbalized. This choice eschews any of the conventional dramatic elements in
the narrative.
Although Josie’s growing camaraderie with David provides room to turn
it into comedy of misfits, both Halloran and Abrahamson earnestly focus on the
quietude between them (indeed, silence speaks volumes). One particularly
devastating scene towards the end when Josie makes tea for his boss Mr.
Gallagher impeccably conveys woeful emotions through things not articulated. We
know why Gallagher is there and Josie knows too. But on-screen, we only see
Josie fretting over a tea in order to mask the distress deep under the surface.
The director also cuts at moments that are totally unanticipated. Rather than
encountering significant moments in the film with explicit dialogue or openly
emotive manner, the director discards the shot at quietly intense points which
happens to linger long in our memory (even within dialogue and sentiment-heavy
movies like Frank and Room, director Abrahamson maintains this tactic).
The good thing about Halloran’s writing is his balanced
portrayal of small town life which isn’t just delineated by its casual cruelty.
There’s a deep layer of sadness affixed to the town dwellers that we do feel
for their predicament despite the harsh treatment of Josie. Moreover, since the
film is really about humanistic observation of Josie’s unremarkable life,
Halloran doesn’t burden the narrative to deal with cliched scenarios of the
depressed town. Much crucial to the movie’s elegiac tone is the understated
performances of a talented cast. Pat and Conor’s friendship very well developed
with a dry sense of humor. Pat Shortt flawlessly builds up the character of
Josie, right down to the little details of how he walks, speaks and bears
himself around others (uttering ‘Now!’ with a clumsy smile). Both Conor and Pat
provide glimpses of their characters’ inner life without doing any of the usual
‘acting’.
Garage (85 minutes) is a darker and realistic portrayal of life
at the margins of contemporary rural society. It employs obscurity and silence
in a finely-attuned, instinctual manner that it infuses much depth to a
seemingly simple story.
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