Straddling the line between depressing and comedic can be a tough task, but “Everything Must Go” finds this balance in extraordinary fashion. Adapted from a short story by Raymond Carver, this was the first script for Dan Rush, who wrote and directed this film in a stunning debut. Perhaps the best way to describe this movie is that it sneaks up on you ... and it is so much more than the sum of its parts.
Rush introduces us to Nick Halsey, an alcoholic with marital problems, a budding mid-life crisis and a defeated mindset. After being fired after 16 years at the same company (the dude from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” Glenn Howerton, is perfect as Ferrell’s smarmy boss), he receives a knife as a severance package -- with somewhat predictable results. Then Nick decides to live on his front lawn after being locked out of his house by his wife, putting his life -- populated by what Rush called “a history of aborted enthusiasms” -- out on the front lawn, for all to judge and value.
He endures gut punch after gut punch to open the film, to the point where we wonder just how much he’s going to be able to take. The capper comes when he learns that his AA sponsor, a cop who had become something of a friend, is sleeping with his estranged wife (who is never shown, by design, I believe). As a viewer, I’m thinking, “Man, who can you trust if you can’t trust your sponsor?!”
He spends much of the film trying to find whatever it is that someone once saw or said that was special in him. Upon tracking down a former classmate (Laura Dern) to ask why she wrote something nice about him in his yearbook, she says, “You have a good heart. That doesn’t change.”
He finds support and even friends in the unlikeliest of places. First, in an aimless black kid named Kenny (the scene-stealing Christopher Jordan Wallace) who teams up with him. Kenny’s character was likened to Yoda by Ferrell, who said that Kenny served as a check and balance to Nick’s actions.
Then, Nick develops an unlikely bond with a beautiful, yet neglected, new neighbor who happens to be pregnant. His friendship with Samantha (played in an understated, absorbing way by Rebecca Hall) reinforces the film’s message about what makes us strangers and what could help us bridge that divide to friends. The message is both deep and sad -- it asks something of the viewer, which can make it difficult to watch. It touches on the bonds we form, sometimes unbelievably quickly, due to a quiet desperation.
At the end, as sunlight begins to peak out from behind the clouds, Samantha hands Nick a Polaroid, with a simple inscription: “Everything is not yet lost.” The beauty and poignancy of that moment and that scene -- which serve as a symbolic comment on the transitory, fleeting nature of frozen images -- make it a wonderful summation of the film itself.
Even at rock bottom, Ferrell is endearing and pitiable. A scene where he’s begging for beers outside a convenience store is hard to look at, yet even in the darkest times, there is something universal in Nick that draws us to him. And at the end, when the charges behind his dismissal prove to be baseless, we are reaffirmed in the lead character’s character.
Rush (who made a wise choice in deleting a scene involving Nick and a hooker) had determined that the lead role required likeability in order to pull the film together, so he made a bold casting choice in tabbing Ferrell as the vulnerable everyman. For his part, Ferrell has said he was drawn to the premise of the movie as a departure for him, having never been tasked with guiding an emotionally driven film. He felt that the universality and sympathy made for a great story, yet he questioned his ability to act it. Ferrell was attracted to the test as the next step from comedy to “Stranger Than Fiction” to this one. Like Jim Carrey’s “Truman Show,” Ferrell wondered whether he could carry a vehicle such as this one.
The answer is a redefining, resounding yes, as the gambles by both Rush and Ferrell paid off with a memorable, moving film.
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