Igby Goes Down (2002)

Review:

“The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard” -Katha Upanishad

This is the epigraph to Somerset Maugham’s novel “The Razor’s Edge,” a book Igby refers to in passing during the course of the film. It is an epigraph that also would fit “Igby Goes Down,” the closest adaptation of Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” the cinema has ever seen.

Igby (Kiernan Culkin) is a career ne’er do well. He has flunked out of several of the east coast’s finest private schools and lives permanently in the shadow of his over achieving brother Oliver (Ryan Phillipe) and his cruelly domineering mother (Susan Sarandon). When faced with another term at a private school, Igby decides to run away and hide out in New York City. He squats in the studio of Rachel (Amanda Peet), a troubled artist addicted to heroine and inclined towards abrupt, casual sex. Claire Daines plays Sookie, a lover and kindred soul for Igby – the type of girl that might be good for Igby if Igby really knew what was good for himself. Jeff Goldblum plays D.H. – a New York real estate tycoon and Igby’s Godfather.

All of these characters form a tapestry of relationships predicated on alienation and sexual encounters. No one in this film is exactly a nice character but you can sympathize with almost everybody.

As D.H. Jeff Goldblum has the second most intriguing role behind Igby. Here is a man we never quite figure out, but we see clearly he is Igby’s antithesis and Oliver’s role model. D.H. is a vicious man with an air of aristocratic fakery that Igby loathes.

And then at the heart of this film there is Igby’s father Jason (Bill Pullman). Seen mostly in flashbacks, we come to understand that Igby loves his father with a compassion he could never find for his mother. When Jason exhibits a schizophrenic meltdown in front of young Igby, it left the boy traumatized.

“Igby Goes Down,” like “Catcher in the Rye,” “The Razor’s Edge” and so many similar stories before it, is ultimately about trying to outrun death and the final impossibility of it. Igby rejects his private schools, his upper class lifestyle, and his family in a vain attempt to reject and distance himself from the tragic descent of his father.

As can be expected, Igby seeks refuge in New York City and finds no refuge at all.

Rating:

On a scale of one to Casablanca, this film is a “Harvey” (1950)

Rationalization:

This film is a contemporary documentation of that timeless quest to find something outside of the self – expression of the hope that you are not the end of the line for you. I think everyone goes on this soul-search now and again, maybe not in as dramatic a way as Igby or Elwood, but nonetheless. And this is why stories like “Igby Goes Down” work on a fundamental level. It speaks to the fears and dreams about escaping who we are in an attempt to understand life better. Can such a thing actually be done? Probably not, but is the journey itself worth it? Maybe.