Igby Goes Down

Synopsis: Igby Slocumb (Keiran Culkin) is surrounded by idiots, a fact of life on which he would be happy to elaborate. His mother Mimi (Susan Sarandon) is totally caught up in living life at a superficial level. Appearances are what matter to her, and this is the motto that rules the family. Her long-suffering husband, played by Bill Pullman finds solace in mental breakdown. Her eldest son Oliver (Ryan Phillippe) has learnt how to please mommy by taking on the role of college boy. That leaves Igby as the black sheep. How can he survive a family that are only interested in their own survival?

There’s something compelling about youthful arrogance. Igby has buckets of it. The thing that separates his brand of arrogance from that of his brother Oliver, is that Igby doesn’t fit the mold prepared for him by the society to which he was born. Oliver’s arrogance is born of contempt for people who don’t toe the line. This sets the brothers up for mutual loathing. With the most memorable aspect of Igby’s schooling being how many times he has been expelled, it is clear that we have a character very much at odds with his environment.

It’s not hard to detect a pattern emerging from Middle America that reveals an underlying feeling of emptiness. The Buddhists would have a field day. All that grasping for the trappings of a consumer society - no wonder there is so much suffering. The Jungian analysts would point out how the feminine is totally out of kilter. Any loving compassion and maternal nurturing are so foreign to Mimi, that her sons are both drawn to the only woman who offers some warmth, Ms Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes). And with dad well and truly out of the picture, what hope do they have? The dominant male of the bunch, Igby’s godfather, D.H. Baines (Jeff Goldblum), with his questionable life style and money to burn offers a fine example to the ambitious Oliver and a fist full of dollars to his wayward godson.

As a first film, Steers has taken on a popular genre. The coming-of-age film is not a bad place for a director to start his or her career. There’s snappy dialogue and little love lost between the majority of the characters. Susan Sarandon plays a similar character to the mother in Moonlight Mile. Perhaps she has had enough of playing "worthy roles". There’s nothing likeable or redeemable in the self-interested Mimi, so much so that the idea of choosing her sons to assist her in her desire to die "neatly" comes as no surprise. Neither does their lack of emotion once the deed is done.

Keiran Culkin as Igby holds this film together. The string of loathsome characters that inhabit his world would be too much to stomach if it weren’t for Igby’s unwillingness to suffer fools. It means we don’t have to either. It’s a world few would choose to embrace, where insanity is the best policy. Igby refuses to go down the path of his father, instead choosing to escape and see where life leads him. It looks like it led him to Los Angeles and a thriving film industry.

 

 

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