Everything Must Go

It is high time movies started reflecting economic conditions. In 2011, finally, we had a ton of movies about people out of work, looking for work, or just feeling the pain of a sour job market. It beats the heck out of the message-challenged “Occupy” groups. Among the best of these reflections is Everything Must Go, a film in which Will Ferrell loses his job and sense of humor.

Admittedly, this film spoke to me unlike it will speak to others. Everything Must Go is a quiet portrait of a man who has lost. Fired from work, thrown out of his house and a no-longer-recovering alcoholic, Nick Halsey (Ferrell, in essentially his first serious vehicle) decides to camp out on the lawn in front of the house he can no longer legally enter, babysitting his stuff, tossed to the curb by a pissed-off estranged spouse. I have a wonderful spouse and don’t drink much and yet I found it extremely easy to empathize with Nick.

In the opening moments, Nick’s company gives him a pocket knife as severance. It’s a cheap move. It’s honest, but something that grabs you as, “what’s the least amount of personal attention we can deliver to get this guy out of our company?” Nick fails to notice the stenciled monogram on the hilt as he plunges the blade into the car tire of the man who fired him. Is it worse that he committed the crime or that he won’t get away with it because he can’t retrieve the blade? Hard to say.

He comes back from work to nothing.  The house locked and unavailable, all his stuff is on the lawn and wife has moved away as well.  Lacking options, he decides to camp on the front lawn until a better plan comes along.  It doesn’t.

I see Everything Must Go as a modern day cautionary tale – one not just about the wreck this man has made of his life externally; it’s also about the subtle ways in which he has sabotaged his own happiness. Sure, losing a job and a wife sucks. We see that. That’s obvious. The alcoholism also counters potential good. What else? Look at how trapped he is both physically and psychologically. Free in the open air on the lawn he once owned, he won’t stray from his stuff (because somebody might take it?); he is also severely challenged by an inability to reconsider his next move. He has no plan. He can’t get beyond the pain to figure out the future. Here is a man with no boundaries at all and yet he’s imprisoned. It’s a deep film if you can sympathize with Nick; otherwise it’s Will Farrell on his front lawn for a week not being funny. That probably isn’t gonna do it for most of you.

Can’t say this is one for the kids … or the employed.

Rated R, 97 Minutes
D: Dan Rush
W: Dan Rush
Genre: Tales of the unemployed
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The unemployed
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: M.A.D.D. reps