Review of I'm Still Here (2010) by Jason W — 26 Nov 2011

I watched this movie earlier today on a cross country flight, and I'm glad. I think. As someone who is wildly interested in celebrity breakdowns, and people behaving badly overall, I've been extremely interested in seeing this, and when I saw it was one iTunes last night, I didn't even question renting it. That said, it has been a few hours since the credits rolled, and I'm not totally sure where I stand.

I don't normally do this, but I can't talk about this movie without spoiling a few things. This is your warning. Stop reading now, if you don't want me to ruin it for you.

So, the movie is revolting. I mean, at times, this movie is plainly more revolting than Jackass. I honestly don't actually know this movie managed to come away with an "R" rating. I mean, let's be clear... in this movie you watch Joaquin do a variety of drugs, projectile vomit, and even get shit on. Literally. If that isn't enough to deter the common movie-watcher, I don't honestly know what is.

The idea of the movie is brilliant... and, to be fair, as a prolonged experiment in what it would be like for an actor to play a character non-stop for several months, or even years, Joaquin is to be commended. Throughout the entire film, you never question whether or not he's acting. He seems entirely committed to being completely out of his head, and it never seems like you're watching anything more than a biopic. That said, there are times in the movie I found myself feeling bad for the character, and times that I felt he was over-the-top, but never so much that he seemed fictional. It was, in my mind, perfectly reasonable that a narcissistic actor who had been on top of the world might find himself struggling with the fact that people were always praising him for--as he put it--reading someone else's words.

That said, the idea that he might quit acting and start a career in hip-hop is completely understandable. I mean, if he could get people to like him as a rapper, they would like him for something that he genuinely created... not a character as devised by someone else entirely. Thinking about that now, as I type it out, I actually understand the basis for this whole film a little better. Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix created a character... a real, living, breathing character that was entirely believable and, in some ways, fascinating. That's honestly more than either of them had ever done in their previous endeavors, when they're "just reading the words off a page of a script".

The more I think about it, the more I liked what they did. Conceptually, the movie was about actors playing the roles they're given, and fitting in the sociological norms that we, the public, put them in. When they behave out of sorts, we mock them, call them crazy, and really make a spectacle out of their misdoings. It was about the struggles an actor might have with being type-cast, and never being a chance to be the "artist" that he/she might want to be. In a way, it was a commentary on the public, and how we force the famous to jump through the hoops we want them too, or we label them and destroy them.

Thinking about it all now, maybe I was too harsh originally. I still feel that the movie was abrasive and, at times, hard to watch. That said, I'm thinking more and more that it just might have been brilliant, and that I was too stupid to get the joke at first. I feel like there was a lot to this movie, and it could very well be one of the most clever, and original things to come out of Hollywood in my generation.

All of that said, I still can't figure out why I had to watch Joaquin get shit on. Yes, he used that specific phrase as a threat, showing his megalomania, but... still...

In the end, I would never recommend that you watch this movie... but I will again.