Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Written by Nancy Oliver
Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Scheider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson
Release Date October 12th, 2007
Published November 8th, 2007
“They’re not real so they last forever, isn’t that neat?”
I want to start this essay by stating how much I adore the movie Lars and the Real Girl. This article is going to be hyper-critical of the movie and I don’t want anyone thinking that I feel the movie is bad or poorly made. Rather, I think it is a memorable, entertaining and moving work made by people of great empathy and care. On a specific level, regarding the character of Lars, it is a wonderfully told story. That said, I do have some issues with the movie that I feel are valid.
Lars and the Real Girl centers on Lars, a lonely man who struggles with deep insecurities. When Lars’ sister-in-law, Karin, becomes pregnant, Lars becomes even more withdrawn and unusual than before. His idea to cope with his latest bout of insecurity is to purchase a sex doll, but not for sex. In Lars’ mind, Bianca, the doll, is a real woman who has come to stay while on a missionary trip. Lars gives Bianca a full backstory and a life of her own and even has her stay at his brother Gus's house rather than with him in order to maintain propriety as he sees it.
As is revealed through dialogue, when Lars was born, his mother died while giving birth. This has bred into Lars a fear of pregnancy as expressed in his awkward and fearful interactions with Karin. Furthermore, Lars’ father was withdrawn and depressed as Lars grew up and he eventually took his own life. This created a sense in Lars of the impermanence of life and deeply set his fears and insecurities regarding losing people he cares about.
Are you sensing a pattern? Lars and the Real Girl appears to have an origin story for every one of Lars’ insecurities. When Lars acts out and buys Bianca and then settles into the delusion that Bianca is a real person with a real life and a voice that he can hear and converse with, the movie has an answer as to why and sets about showing off a solution to Lars’ many problems. That solution involves everyone in Lars’ life and the town in which he lives, going along with his delusion that Bianca is real
And it works, eventually, Lars begins to enact Bianca’s death, a death that is symbolic and cathartic, a necessary step toward his recovery and re-emergence into a more normal life. It’s not simple, per se, the movie doesn’t take shortcuts. Rather, my issue is how neat it all is. I’m not a professional psychologist but even I know that what Lars is going through is a dissociative state that he can and likely will overcome with a symbolic gesture and a little help.
But you don't have to have even minor knowledge of psychology to see that Director Craig Gillespie and writer Nancy Oliver leaning over shoulder through the movie and asking you if you understood the deeper meaning of their movie. The constant back stories every one of Lars' quirky personality traits, the source of his trauma, the grief and drama that like caused him to delusionally disassociate from the world is revealed and underlined in often heavyhanded dialogue, just to make sure that the dum-dums in the audience understood the origin story for every aspect of Lars' life.
I'm certainly critical of this aspect of Lars and the Real Girl, I do believe the movie is overbearing in how the script occasionally looks down upon the audience. But, I do not hate this movie. In fact, I have a deep affection for Lars and the Real Girl, an affection deeply tied to Ryan Gosling's remarkable and unique performance as Lars. Gosling is incredible at portraying a traumatized and infantilized young man slowly beginning to recover but unlikely to ever be fully recovered. He's gone through too much and been stunted for so long that he will likely struggle the rest of his life.
That fact is at the heart of Lars and the Real Girl which, though it appears to have a happy ending, it is just melancholy enough to leave you feeling a wealth of empathy for Lars, hoping he can move forward but clear in the knowledge of how deeply damaged and often low functioning he is. It's remarkable that a movie and an actor can communicate that kind of depth, even as Lars and the Real Girl tends to lean far too heavily into exposition.
