Review of Jack Goes Boating (2010) by Shiira — 21 Oct 2010

Maybe Jack(Phillip Seymour Hoffman) caught a midnight showing of Perry Henzell's "The Harder They Come" at some brokedown second-run theater, or simply bought the iconic movie's reggae-dominated soundtrack, but regardless of where the aging dread-locked taxi driver first heard The Melodians' "Rivers of Babylon", we know it changed his life, probably for the worse, and now as middle age encroaches, the ganja-smoking cabbie is paying the price for being a Rastafarian in a capitalist society.

When Jack was a younger man, with his young man's ideals and axioms, lighting up a joint functioned as both an act of spiritual enlightenment and rebellion against the Ideological State Apparatuses of our country's democratic government, unlike now, in which Jack gets high for the sake of getting high, without any designs on getting closer to God, or being an anti-capitalist.

If Jack's mission in his misspent life was to reject western society, consider the mission accomplished, because western society has resoundingly rejected him. To help illustrate this point, cinematically, Jack and his best friend Clyde(John Ortiz) stare at the city skyline from the hinterlands of their cabstand, far-removed from the movers and shakers who pound the pavement of the New York city streets, while they stand near their stretch limo taxis and try not to crazy, as life passes them by.

That's why Jack needs a new song. "Rivers of Babylon" no longer posseses the dynamism to make the Rasta feel "irie"; it's a personal theme song whose original theme of staying positive haunts the cab driver, like in the opening scene, where Jack, eyes wide open in bed, looks disillusioned and frightened, unsure of the future, and yet he insists on keeping himself insulated with The Melodians' music, like a junkie, still remembering and hoping for that original contact high.

Somebody has to save him; somebody has to yank off those headphones, and maybe that somebody is the embalmer's assistant, Connie(Amy Ryan), who works with Lucy(Daphnie Rubin-Vega), Clyde's wife, at a funeral parlour.

"Jack Goes Boating" is nothing new for Philip Seymour Hoffman, quite possibly, the least vain of the A-list actors(John C. Reilly running a close second), in which he played the same sort of "loser"(opposite Camryn Manheim) in Todd Solondz's "Happiness", but as a filmmaker, Hoffman has a lot more sympathy for people, and never allows his debut offering to lapse into a burlesque of miserableness.

Faced with new possibilities, personal and professional horizons to counter the onset of arrested development that has its hooks in the cab driver, Jack takes the plunge, figuratively and literally, jumping into romance and the pool, lessons both, in love and swimming, the latter, as a means by which the MTA aspiree plans to take Connie boating in a conformist lake at the conformist public park.

In "The Harder They Come", Ivan(Jimmy Cliff) misses the boat(to Cuba) he desperately swims toward, the same fate which could have befallen Jack if not for the dinner party incident at his friends' house.

Because of the drugs, nobody notices the dinner that Jack had prepared from scratch for this intimate gathering, catches on fire, as the dinner guests were too busy passing the hookah around, just like how The Musical Youth taught them, "on the left-hand side".

Outraged, at both his ruined casserole and life, Jack locks himself in the bathroom, but is lured out by a Melodians' sing-a-long. The reggae song proves itself effective for short-term problems: the ruined casserole.

It's not nearly as effective for long-term ones, though, when Lucy replaces Jack in the loo, after Clyde upsets his wife for inviting her old flame to the party, a passive-aggressive move that costs him his marriage.

Connie hands the cuckolded husband the tape recorder, then shrinks away from the potential shrapnel, as the swimming instructor beats "Rivers of Babylon" into permanent silence. Clyde's actions have the effect of giving his best friend a fresh start in life.

The song needed to die; the song had worked in concert with the ganja, a facilitating accomplice to the drug that kept Jack in a fixed state. In an earlier scene, during her stay at the hospital following an assault, he tells Connie not to worry if she doesn't get all the lyrics.

It's an ironical statement for Jack to make because he doesn't get the lyrics either. After "Jack Goes Boating" with Connie, then Jack can go music shopping with the embalmer's assistant and find a new song that describes their new life together, since his Rastafarian pretensions is a thing of the past.

The Zionist state doesn't end up killing Jack like it did the Jimmy Cliff character in "The Harder They Come"(or Peter Tosh, in real life, for that matter). He's a strong swimmer; he doesn't miss the boat.