"The Break-Up"

-directed by Peyton Reed
2006
This Jennifer Aniston/Vince Vaughn dramedy has a nice premise – instead of ending with boy and girl finally together, it dispenses with all that by the end of the opening titles, and proceeds to the falling apart. Bravo! Now, i’m about to knock this film hugely. I wouldn’t do that if i didn’t have a little respect for it - the creators are not idiots, and they genuinely tried to make a non-idiotic film. But future generations might hold this film up as a crystallization of how our society is so painfully, horrifically dysfunctional with sex and romance. The film's fatal flaw is taking the easy way out – instead of rendering the relationship in realistic shades of grey, they turn Vaughn into a cliché. He’s so irredeemably selfish (and to his charming credit, he almost makes it believable), the only possible resolve is a transformation of his inability to open up to her – which isn’t ridiculous in and of itself, but it takes a complicated issue and turns it into cookie-cutter pop psychology. Beyond that, watching these two fall apart has an utter inevitability to it, when perceived with a clear eye on human nature. No two humans could endure these kinds of stresses without love turning into something like hate (in that respect, the film is quite realistic). The two of them live together - in scene after scene, the door shuts with them alone in their gilded cage. Their mutual isolation is almost visceral…and in an environment like that, OF COURSE the things that annoy each other get magnified a million times. OF COURSE they break up – anyone would, and that should be the message of the movie. In a society that had any sense, these two would never be allowed to have almost ALL of their self-worth defined by each other, with almost no escape from the presence of each other. But that’s who we are, that’s what we do. The only other thing worth mentioning is the luminous talent of John Michael Higgins (BEST IN SHOW, A MIGHTY WIND). The original ending was a performance of “The Rainbow Connection”, by his character’s a capella group. Higgins arranged it himself. It’s pure brilliance.