I should know better. I should learn from my experience. I should be instantly wary of any film that’s received the sort of hype that Sideways has received. And yet…
Sideways is a story of two middle-aged men — wine snob Miles (Paul Giamatti) and failed actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church) — who go on a trip into Californian wine country, shortly before Jack is due to be married. Miles plans to treat him to a week-long wine-tasting holiday but Jack soon reveals that his plan for the week is to get laid one more time before he’s wed.
The reaction from critics has been overwhelmingly positive and I tend to prefer these low-budget independent films over blockbuster Paul W. Anderson crap, so I was expecting good things — I was expecting a romantic comedy, but what I got just depressed the hell out of me.
To start with, the two male leads are both utterly unappealing people. I can’t fault the actors; they really were convincingly awful people. Jack is an unsophisticated misogynist, out to cheat as often as possible on his fiancĂ© before the cut-off point of his wedding, and Miles is a self-pitying, depressed alcoholic who lies to his friends, steals from his mother and looks like a kicked spaniel throughout the entire story — “poor me,” you can hear him thinking, “poor, poor me.”
Quaffable, but not transcendent.
Director Alexander Payne really gives us nothing to work with; from the very start of the film Miles is lying to both himself and his friends — telling them his lateness is down to traffic when it was down to oversleeping due to a hangover. He makes a show of popping in to see his mother on the pretence of giving her flowers for her birthday, but this is clearly an ulterior motive (the flowers still have the price tag on them, and the card is written in and sealed only seconds before arriving at her door) — he’s actually there for a free meal and to raid her underwear drawer for the money to finance his wine trip, even though she’d happily give him the money if he asked. He’s also a comedy alcoholic, his addiction played for laughs (running through a vineyard chugging straight from a bottle, and later on drinking directly from the spit bucket having been caught in a lie — hilarious! (More on that lie later.))
He looks down on Jack for his lack of sophistication (“I hope you don’t say anything like that in wine-country. They’ll think you’re some kind of dumbshit!”) and in turn, Jack looks down on Miles for his morose outlook on life, abandoning him when he finds willing women and turning to him for help when it all goes wrong.
Ah, the women; Maya (Virginia Madsen) and Stephanie (Sandra Oh). Maya is a waitress who already knows Miles due to his previous visits to the area, and Stephanie is the obligatory ‘sassy’ character who pairs off with Jack. That, I could believe — they seemed like a natural pair. Maya and Miles, on the other hand…she’s attractive, intelligent, knows her wine, and is to waitressing what Julia Roberts was to prostitution. All she appears to have in common with Miles is the wine knowledge, and this is all they talk about throughout the film. She’s essentially just a middle-aged fantasy; representing the sort of woman that Miles wants, not necessarily the sort of woman that he’d ever get.
That lie I mentioned.
As mentioned, Miles gets caught in a lie. That lie is one of Jack’s — claiming that the pair of them are celebrating the publication of Miles’ book instead of celebrating Jack’s last week of being unmarried — but that it’s Jack’s lie is irrelevant as Miles goes along with it with no complaint. In fact, Miles doesn’t even believe that he’s at fault by participating, hence his surprise when the women have a go at the pair of them when the lie is exposed. This moment is horribly manufactured, as Jeff Ignatius points out:
“You’ve seen this moment a dozen times before, and it comes direct from the Great American Sitcom ClichĂ© Factory. It exists because it’s critical to the plot that the information be revealed at some point mid-narrative, and the writer(s) can’t make it work except to have somebody blurt it out, even though it’s typically out-of-character. Sideways never suggests that Miles is the least bit flighty; on the contrary, it shows him driving and doing a crossword simultaneously. And the filmmakers expect me to buy his faux pas?”
Regardless as to how the lie is exposed, it’s the end of Miles’ fantasy romance and back to cleaning up Jack’s mess and generally feeling sorry for himself. He participates in further lies to cover up Jack’s infidelity (the moral of this story seems to be that it’s ok to lie and cheat, just so long as you don’t get caught), attends Jack’s marriage and tearfully encounters his pregnant ex-wife (not through choice, either — she approaches him, not the other way around). After this emotional meeting, Miles rushes off to a burger bar, drinking his most expensive and treasured wine from a paper cup, apparently not savouring or enjoying, just consuming. Was this supposed to be a triumphant moment, where the character finally overcomes his problems? It felt like it was being set up that way, at least. Finally, he receives an unlikely call from Maya, and the film closes with him (presumably) knocking on her door.
You’re still allowed to drink Merlot after having seen this film, you know.
What Sideways is is a very safe independent film. The character’s don’t really grow or change during the film; Jack is still lying to the women in his life at the end, Miles is still moping about how awful his life is and being controlled by events around him. In the end, I found this film to be very depressing. “Losers stay as losers” appears to be its message.