Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

“Sideways” (2004)

Directed by Alexander Payne

Satisfaction:Thrilled Tags: Drama, Giamatti, Wine, WIC3

Guest post by Wagner Israel Cilio III

                    JACK
And if they want to drink Merlot, we're drinking 
Merlot.

                    MILES
Oh no, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am 
not drinking any fucking Merlot!

---

It’s been a year since I’ve seen Alexander Payne’s comedy/drama Sideways for the first time and I think that wine isn’t alone in refining with age. I’ve read the screenplay many times and considered it to be one of my favorites. However, I’d never had the opportunity to compare it to the film. This opportunity presented itself last night and I couldn’t help but silently berate myself for not having done so sooner. When had all this complexity and depth entered the picture? Why hadn’t I noticed their individual mannerisms before?

Paul Giamatti’s performance is an empathizing display of human subtlety and transparency of despair and depression while also an honest and often comical testament to human dependence on relationships and emotional nourishment. In essence, a parallel subtlety and transparency may be found in Miles’s (Giamatti) fascination with Pinot Noir and in Jacks’ (Thomas Hayden-Church) fixation with women and their relation to his penis.

Miles would call himself a martyr by the hand of cards dealt him: a divorce, a failed novel, and a dead end job as a middle school English teacher. He’s afraid of being vulnerable even to his own family, leaving only his college roommate Jack to be his ill-matched solace. Nevertheless, Miles is trapped between the pressure of Jack to life a life of pleasure and the hell of his own: that of failure and alcohol.

Furthermore, Jack’s primitive and blue collared outlook on life frustrates Miles and by the same hand, Miles’s incapacity to cope with life, his divorce, and his overall uptightness about life frustrates Jack. Both characters seem to be especially good at pointing each other’s mistakes; the only difference is that they have no idea of their own condition.

Enter Maya (Virginia Madsen). Like a sweet angel of mercy, she generates an odd balance: gentle and caring—unlike Jack—but motivating and encouraging—unlike Miles. In one of the greatest scene in the film, Miles tells Maya how Pinot Noir can only be grown by the most nurturing and caring of growers, “only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression.”

The scene is momentous—in the film and in our understanding of Miles.

As she speaks, Miles makes a trivial, albeit profound, gesture that—to me—laid Miles bare exactly as Madsen opened herself. Something like two lovers reaching climax at the same time. I know that’s graphic but I really can’t imagine anything as precise and as united. The gesture was a slight nod but one that motioned more towards endearment and the Miles seeing something deeper in Maya. The audience becomes increasingly curious as to what’s happening in Miles’s head at that moment. We are admonished to pay more attention to what Miles isn’t showing us.

The sullen and sporadic peeks of a deep yearning in Miles are sad celebrations of human frailty: the need to fill emptiness with something greater than wine and literature. The scene where May confesses her admiration of the life of grapes and wine, we can literally watch Miles’s wall begin to break down. We see that he has found light in a spiteful and ironic world and are thus encouraged ourselves to break down our own walls. This is why we love Miles so much: because we relate to his angst and fears.

The image of Miles pouring out the contents of the spit bucket all over his face is really something I can’t forget. He recently finds out that his book is not getting published and immediately runs to his sure source of comfort—alcohol. Miles’ right hand man, Jack, jumps to the rescue with the ever-ready one-liner “It’s alright, his mother just died!”

On the mountaintop with the spectacular view, Jack tells Miles that his ex-wife was recently re-married. Miles is crushed and literally pouts back to the car and asks to be taken home. I am reminded of my 5 year old cousin when her mother tells her to go to bed. She crosses her arms and bows her and juts out her lower lip. It’s exactly what Miles has been reduced to after so many years of humiliation and irony.

Something about Giamatti’s performance makes me want to believe that it wasn’t too difficult to find Miles in himself, that the two aren’t as dissimilar as Giamatti—or anyone else for that matter--might want us to believe. We sense Miles’ deep-rooted anxiety and strain in maintaining invulnerability. The seams fill and bulge, especially in the darkly humorous deleted scene where Miles runs over a dog on a dusty wine country side street. His face tells the tale when he pops into the camera with a frantic “Here boy!”

Or perhaps that’s exactly what Giamatti’s intended us to believe and we’ve inadvertently stepped into the proverbial looped-rope-bobby-trap that he intentionally set out for us. The only difference is that, like Miles and Jack’s narrowed outlook on life, we have no idea what kind of trap we’re in.