“I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore” (2017) — Read Along
“Pretty soon, I’ll just be carbon. So none of it matters”.
Do you want to watch a video of a man in a Radiohead t-shirt sitting cross-legged like a childlike Buddha in a morning school assembly whilst he reads his spoiler free review of a film direct to camera flanked on all sides by the spirit of Salvador Dali and his self-published books?
You do? Excellent! You’ve clearly come to the right place.
But first, here’s an excerpt from the review under discussion today, and the debut film from American director Macon Blair and his 2017 film “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore”
“Ruth” (Melanie Lynskey) Depressed and lost in a fug of melancholia, Ruth is totally at odds with the world around her. Living in a rundown house and working as a nursing assistant she drinks heavily to blank out a world that is passing her by and a world in which she is constantly irritated and exasperated by. Ruth is socially awkward and often lost in faraway wistful stares into the distance but it’s evidently clear that she has a heart of gold and above all an altruistic nature but life has conspired to see she has lost sight of both. Ruth feels to me like a caged bird, desperate for meaningful social interaction but downtrodden and at odds with life as on the one hand she talks of the beauty of the universe and that we are all made of carbon and “star dust” and yet she views the people she meets and those around her as “fuckfaces” and “the way people treat each other is disgusting”. When Ruth returns to her home to find that it’s been burgled she has inadvertently stumbled upon a new purpose in life to track down those responsible and the return of her property and never has the world seemed so exciting to this amateur vigilante!
Ruth grows along with the film as we see far more sides to her nature than is first apparent and this is to the great credit of writer/director Macon Blair and importantly the portrayal from Melanie Lynskey which ranges from heart breaking to joyous, tragic to triumphant and Lynskey deserves enormous praise for a portrayal that will draw so much sympathy from it’s audience.
“Tony” (Elijah Wood) Neighbour of Ruth’s and an almost mirror of her social awkwardness and inability to fit in the world that surrounds him, Tony takes comfort in heavy metal music, a fascination with the dark arts of Kung Fu and his dog Kevin! Tony is a conflicted social being, quietly passive aggressive as well as full on hyper antagonistic and a perfect foil for his new found friend and neighbour. Clad in oversized glasses and sporting a beard and a rat tail, Elijah Wood is almost unrecognisable in his role as Tony and with a performance that proves he is far from the stereotyped and one dimensional character actor he has often been unfairly labelled as. His performance here reminds me of the shadowy and awkward portrayals he excelled with as Kevin in “Sin City” or Patrick in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and his portrayal of Tony here is in the same exalted company.
"I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore" (2017)
My Youtube channel reading of "I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore"
My Rumble channel reading of "I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore"
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection" Vol.3
So now with an appetite duly whetted dear reader you have a choice.
You can either:
(a) Read my entire review of “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore” via the first link above
(b) Watch either of my Youtube or Rumble channel videos of my reading of my own spoiler free review of the film, hence the “Read Along” moniker.
or (c) Treat yourself to any combination of the above or even (d) disappear to pastures new within our collective electrical Matrix.
Oh, and (e) There’s a link above to Volume 3 of my exhaustive 7 volumes of “Essential Film Reviews Collection” packaged in my e-book and Kindle series on Amazon and where you’ll find my review of “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore”.
All volumes are FREE to read if you have an Amazon Kindle “Unlimited” package.
Bless you for reading.
Thanks for reading. If you like the premise of this absurd idea of “Read Along”, then you might also enjoy:
“Oppenheimer” (2023) — Read Along
“Nine Days” (2021) — Read Along
“Monsters” (2010) — Read Along