When a movie makes you wanna yell, “Don’t!” at its main character … that’s one of the many stupid little things that cinema is all about for me, and several of those moments occur during this one. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character Sherry is one of those movie characters you wind up wanting to fight into accepting a pure loving hug – and you better expect a fight. She reminds me of Vincent Gallo in Buffalo ’66 – so much wrong, but so much to save. In other words, so human.

I expected this movie to be far more painful than it turns out to be – people have complained about the predictability of the characters and the story, and for most of the duration all I could think was that this predictability was almost one of the movie’s strengths, I felt certain it was doomed, like something like Niagara, Niagara, to end in tears (not that I wasn’t crying like almost all the way through), but the ending really blew me away by its innocent simplicity and optimism. I tend to kind of crave the downer kind of movies in cinema, but only yesterday I wrote about how the misery of Children of Men felt to me like I needed to be careful what I wished for. SherryBaby has no such failings. It has more than its share of pain and sorrow, for sure, and Sherry herself is no angel (understatement of the year), but it has that crucial streak of humanity that is so necessary alongside the despair.

I came to it for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s performance, and I still believe she deserves an Oscar for this just as I’ve been blind predicting ever since I heard about the movie, it’s this year’s Junebug if you want another comparison; but I think it would be a great film with or without her, and that’s something I wasn’t expecting. It’s raw, personal, uncomfortable, real, and all the more beautiful for being those things. Next to Little Children, by far one of the best movies I’ve seen all year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 4:34 am and is filed under 5 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.