What happens when an artist falls in love with and breathes
life into his own creation? It’s a trope as old as literature itself. It goes
way back before Pygmalion/My Fair Lady to the Roman poet, Ovid. And once again
it makes for a delightful, unpredictable and funny story. But this fantastic
premise, as entertaining as it may be, is ultimately a red herring in the
latest movie by the team that brought you “Little Miss Sunshine.” The issues at
the center of this film are ones we struggle with on a daily basis in our
relationships. When we think about how to be with significant others and have
our needs met without controlling them. How to love and accept all of someone,
the good and the bad, and not just pick and choose parts we want. That kind of
mature “ambivalent” love that includes a recognition of the other person as
valuable despite their flaws is what relatively happy, long lasting adult
relationships and marriages are about. And it’s the opposite of the kind of
selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance.
That’s the kind of illusory, self absorbed state of “love” the protagonist
Calvin (Paul Dano) is in for the majority of the film.
Calvin, a JD Salingeresque character struggling with writer’s
block lives in a narcissistic bubble that is isolated and disconnected from the
world. He is miserable and unhappy. He cannot have a real relationship with
anyone. He can only use people as narcissistic extensions of himself. And others
return the favor. At the beginning of the film he tells his brother, “Women
aren’t interested in me. They’re interested in some idea of me.” But we have a sneaking
suspicion that he is talking about himself. This is confirmed when his ex-girlfriend
tells him “the only person you were interested in having a relationship with
was yourself.” At the same time Calvin is also a heroic character because he is
trying to break out of this bubble. He is NOT oblivious. He is smart and he is
sensitive. He knows something has gone desperately wrong with him. We know that
it is developmental and has to do with his inability to give up the tie to the
first idealized love object of his life, his mother, who is still intimately
involved in his love life. His analyst, played in a very contemporary,
relational, and REAL way by Elliot Gould helps him by providing a series of “transitional”
experiences where he can begin to imagine relationships outside of himself,
where he is not in complete control at all times and be OK with it. He keeps
gently pushing Calvin along. So the stuffed toy “Bobby” leads to the dog “Scotty”
which leads to the suggestion to write about someone who “loves you just the
way you are, all slobbery and scared” which leads to the idea of “Ruby Sparks”
and a way out of his writer’s block.
His brother tells Calvin “what you’ve written here isn’t
real. You haven’t written a person.” Of course he hasn’t. He’s written a
fantasy. And fantasies by definition must be unrealistic, because the moment you
get what you seek, you don’t want it anymore. Desire, in order to exist must
have its objects perpetually absent. One of my favorite writers, Robert Anton
Wilson said “human beings live in their fantasies, we only endure our
realities. And Pascal said that “human beings are only truly happy when day
dreaming of future happiness.” So we know what people mean when they say “the
hunt is sweeter than the kill” or “be careful what you wish for” not because it
might come true but because if it does you are doomed not to want it anymore.” But when Ruby magically appears, Calvin is
truly challenged because his task then becomes to give up the fantasy of her for
the reality of her. Initially, Calvin can only stomach the simple IDEA of Ruby,
and not Ruby as a whole person. But if the relationship is to survive and if he
is to be successful in his heroic quest to break out of his bubble he must be
able to conceive of her as a complicated individual with thoughts, wishes,
beliefs and desires of her own. The real Ruby it turns out is much more
complicated than Calvin’s conception/fantasy of her. She can be “irritating as
fuck” because she’s a real person and Calvin must come to terms with it. He must
give up his need to control her and use her solely for his narcissistic
satisfaction, which since he WROTE her is remarkably easy to do. He can just
change by writing away whatever characteristic of her he doesn’t like.
But in the end, he chooses reality over fantasy. He commits his
first truly selfless act in the film when he writes away his control over Ruby.
He sets her free and in the process emancipates himself, as the past “loses it’s
hold” over both of them. For Ruby, she is free to be who she really is and for
Calvin it’s about the resolution of the oedipal situation and giving up the
childish tie to his mother. For what? The freedom, we hope, for a truly mature
REAL relationship where he can relate to “Ruby” and himself as a fully rounded
human being. So, in the end we may say that the movie is about his
developmental progression, with the help of his analyst, from a state of
primary narcissism and self centerdness to the world of mature, intimate adult
relationships where he can conceive of a loved person as something other than
his own narcissistic extension and out of his omnipotent control and be OK with
it. Indeed by the end of the movie he comes to the realization that everything
SHOULD not be under his control.
