Professor Natasha Hammond
ENC 1102
9 December 2009
Treatment for a Real Life
What is the outcome when the real and illusory mix together? We get a sweet and gentle movie of an equally sweet and gentle man’s journey back to the real world. In the film Lars and the Real Girl, Lars is a socially awkward 27 year-old who goes everywhere with the blanket that his mother made for him while she was pregnant with him. Human touch is very painful for Lars, it is similar to “a burn; like when you go outside and your feet freeze and you come back in and then they thaw out” (Gillespie). The only “person’s” touch that does not inflict pain on him is Bianca. She is a “sex/love/companion doll” in which Lars believes is a real person. The family doctor and psychologist, Dagmar, diagnose Lars delusional and states that “Bianca is in town for a reason” (Gillespie). Lars grew up with a depressed father due to his mother death. His mother died during childbirth, his birth. Lars chooses to live in the converted garage when his brother, Gus, returned to the house with his pregnant wife, Karin. He insists to stay in the garage despite Gus and Karin pleas to move back into the house (Gillespie). This film portrays the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” in another level. It takes a whole town to heal the heart and mind of a man, and a doll to show the man his capacity to trust, and accept and give love.
The setting is in a small town in the north of the country through winter and spring. The progression of the seasons goes hand in hand with Lars’ progress through his “mental illness” and recuperation. The beginning of winter is also the beginning of Lars mental breakdown and increasing social awkwardness. The middle of winter is Lars full-blown illness at its peak. The end of winter goes with the decreasing delusions. And finally, spring represents Lars’ new beginnings.
The progression of Lars mental illness is peculiar. The deterioration of Lars is in part to the stress caused by Karin’s efforts to show him that he is important to Gus and her, and Margo’s (Lars’ coworker) overt interest towards him. Lars’ tool to deal with these forces is Bianca. She is the buffer against all the stressors that are making Lars anxious. He is not able to trust people because of deep abandonment issues. In certain ways he was abandoned by his family. Lars first abandonment is by his mother leaving him by dying and his father for not being able to be emotionally present and the second time is by his brother leaving. Interesting enough, Lars recuperation is in part through Karin and Gus proof that they do really care about him.
Bianca is also the shield against Margo’s advances. With Bianca at his side, he is able to see Margo for the first time and begins to develop feelings for her. Ironically, this new feelings begin to undermine his delusional relationship. While he pays more attention to Margo, his relationship with Bianca becomes more strained. He becomes jealous of Margo’s boyfriend; so a frustrated Lars goes home wanting to spend time with his girlfriend but becomes even more frustrated because his neighbor Mrs. Gruner is taking Bianca to a volunteer’s banquet. Lars has his first fight with his girlfriend. But the interesting scene is the next one where Karin makes Lars realizes that everyone cares about him. While his feelings toward Margo increase, he proposes to marriage to Bianca repeatedly. The power of his delusions are beginning to weaken when he tells Dagmar that Bianca sometimes refuses his proposal, sometimes says “I don’t know”, or does not reply back at all (Gillespie).
Bianca comprises everything that Lars wants in life. Bianca is a missionary in a sabbatical wanting to experience the world. She wants “to be normal and be treated normal” (Gillespie). His delusion confers many of his characteristics to Bianca. Both of them lost their mothers during childbirth. He becomes confident and more social. Throughout his interactions with Bianca, we are shown that Lars is capable to love, to be funny, and ultimately to behave like a normal person. He has Bianca to help him go through the life stages that he has missed. Bianca is a fast mini-course about life and socialization with the rest of the world.
The movie has a lot of subtle touches of irony. There is a scene where Lars reads to Bianca. It is a passage of Cervantes’ Don Quixote where Don Quixote muses about his lady love Dulcinea. It is funny to compare the delusional Lars with the equally delusional Don Quixote and the futility of their love. It also brings to mind Don Quixote fighting his imaginary giants (Cervantes, 76-78). However, Lars fight is against himself instead of Quixote’s brick and mortar windmills. Lars has to overcome his mental and emotional blocks. One of his blocks is Karin. He shares with the doctor that Karin has some problems. He says that Karin likes to hug people at all times and that is not normal (Gillespie). His confession is very amusing; it is just like “the kettle calling the pot black”. But the serious part comes when Dagmar figures out that one of his sources of anxiety is Karin’s pregnancy. He hyperventilates just talking about it. He does care about his family and dreads that Karin might die like his mother.
In certain ways, Lars is like a little boy. He wears his baby blanket as a scarf; it is his security blanket. He is surrounded by people of his age that behave like little kids. His coworkers Margo and Kurt fight over missing action figures (Margo hides them) and a hanged teddy bear (Kurt’s revenge for the missing toys). He wonders what makes a man a real man. Part of Gus reply is about a man does not cheat on his woman. Lars uses the same answer when he clarifies the situation between Margo and him. He would not cheat on Bianca. Now, he has achieved one more step toward growth and becomes a real man. The progress toward his recuperation also becomes evident. He offers his hand to shake Margo’s hand without flinching (Gillespie).
Lars issues are being solved little by little. Bianca’s mysterious condition worsens. He founds her unconscious one morning and she is sent to the hospital. Lars is the one who says that Bianca is dying. At this tragedy, the townspeople show their support. This outpouring of care and concern are the push that Lars needed to let go of Bianca. He doesn’t need her anymore. The only scene where Lars kisses Bianca, he doesn’t feel Bianca’s presence.
Lars and The Real Girl is a heartwarming and make feel good film. It is not a creepy and gross movie of a guy that acquires online a sex doll as the article by Dana Stevens She's the Silent Type: Ryan Gosling falls in love with a sex toy in Lars and the Real Girl suggests. This review cannot see past the innovative idea of using a doll as a mean to free shy, lonely person from his hermit life. The article even suggests the movie has undertones of necrophilia. However, Bianca is not a corpse but a doll that the whole town has agreed to play along with Lars and make believe that she is a real person. After the first shock, most of the town embraces Bianca. As mentioned by one of the producers of the movie, even members of the town channeled their own selves into Bianca. Like Mrs. Gruner scolds Lars for expecting Bianca to be at his beck and call just like her husband (Gillespie).
Lars and The Real Girl is more than a mental illness involving a real life size doll. It is a lot about finding the essence of the self with acceptance and tolerance. There are no unconventional routes to sanity, but many special people on the way to help and share the ups and downs of life.
WORKS CITED
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel. Don Quixote. Trans. John Ormsby. The Project Gutenberg. 27 Jul. 2004. Web. 27 Nov. 2009.
Lars and The Real Girl. Screenplay by Nancy Oliver. Dir. Craig Gillespie. Prod. Bruce Toll, John Cameron, Peter Berg, Sarah Aubrey, and Sidney Kimmel. Perf. Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, R.D. Reid, and Kelli Garner. MGM, 2008. DVD.
Stevens, Dana. She's the Silent Type: Ryan Gosling falls in love with a sex toy in Lars and the Real Girl. Slate. Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC. 12 Oct. 2007. Web. 27 Nov. 2009.