So, I'm going to cheat a little this week. I'm going to write about a recent episode of HBO's "Girls" - "One Man's Trash" - instead of an actual movie.
The show is highly cinematic, and this particular episode is self-contained enough that it might as well be a short film, so it merits being written about.
"One Man's Trash" is amazing in that it crams each shot with a ton of information. The episode conveys immense amounts of material to the audience, even when it appears that nothing is really happening. Joshua (Patrick Wilson) is introduced in this episode and barely says much in his 15 minutes on airtime, yet he is a fully realized character because of many little touches.
Joshua enters the episode complaining to Hannah's (Lena Dunham) boss that someone has been putting their garbage in his trash can. This is the kind of development that gets people moaning that all the characters on "Girls" are over-privileged and whiny, but here they're missing the point. The fact that Joshua has the time to examine his trash cans so thoroughly and hunt down who has been using them shows just how much free time he has and how lonely he must be.
He isn't spending his time with loved ones or doing something productive. Instead, he is worrying about unimportant little things because that's all he has.
On top of that, the incident also works as a neat little metaphor about him (and people) not wanting everyone else's baggage - aka garbage - dumped on them. It's this kind of attention to character detail that's given the show's star, writer, occasional director and creator Lena Dunham such acclaim.
The episode then does a stellar job of demonstrating how Hannah and Joshua might be acting like they are in love and a couple, but it is all just pretend. These two are just "playing house," and much of the fun of the episode is just waiting for their little daydream to burst.
They might seem like they are being truly intimate with one another, but they are actually just dealing with the surface. Again, the phenomenal writing and directing makes this subtly clear to the viewer.
The recurring joke about Joshua's name - that Hannah wants to call him "Josh," despite his clear protests that his name is Joshua - helps exemplify this. Hannah wants to call him Josh, giving him a nickname that shows some familiarity between the two of them, but Joshua refuses to grant her that. That they can't even agree on what Joshua's name is - even after spending two full days together - shows how they never got to actually know one another.
The camerawork in the episode is key. When there isn't much plot to a story, it's even more critical to have the visuals tell the story and emphasize the points the director is getting at. A simple - but powerful - trick of the episode is that it rarely has Joshua and Hannah share the same frame. By keeping them separated in the framing, it lets the audience visually see how the characters aren't really connecting with one another, despite how they pretend to.
The whole pseudo-love affair ends the second Hannah, in her typical fashion, overshares and takes things too far as she dumps all of her emotional baggage right on top of the unsuspecting Joshua.
He acts polite to her, but you can see in his eyes that the illusion is over and that both of them will have to go back to the real world. It may be brief, but this episode of "Girls" gets a lot out of its short screen time.
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Joe Stile is a senior majoring in political science. He can be reached at Joseph.Stile@tufts.edu.
