The Spectacular Now is a Drama
The Spectacular Now posits itself as a high school romantic comedy — two lovable leads, highs school and teen love; popular guy meets shy girl and the unlikely match becomes something special. However, The Spectacular Now subverts the genre by digging into its characters and revealing humanness — the beautiful and the ugly and therefore says something true about all of us.
Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) lives in the moment. The film starts off with him proudly announcing his accolades; he’s popular, he’s got a great girlfriend, he’s the life of the party. He represents life on “the automatic mode” as David Foster Wallace would put it. Everything is as it should be, why worry about all the world and the future — live in the spectacular now. Enjoy life. In a sense this posture mirrors our own way of inhabiting the world — the we become unconscious that our actions have meaning. We become focused on ourselves. While for Sutter it’s hedonism for us it can be success, and a whole number of ways we distract ourselves from reality.
Sutter’s world begins to crack with the loss of his girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson). He then meets Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley) who’s the opposite of him; hard working, goal oriented, respectful and self conscious. She’s had a hard life; her father’s past away from a drug overdose, she’s never had a boyfriend and she doesn’t consider herself worthy of attention. She’s beautiful, kind, smart, and vulnerable. Sutter however believes he’s the savior of the world and that he’ll manifest this special gift by giving Aimee special attention. They begin hanging out, doing homework and sharing stories. Sutter’s shortsightedness blinds him from what’s endemic to special attention. “What if she falls for you?” asks his friend. Sutter shrugs it all off, what’s the worst that could happen?
Aimme does fall for Sutter but Sutter isn’t ready to bear the responsibility that comes with romantic feelings. Aimme begins to attach herself, has sex with him, and starts to plan a future around his world. Ideas begin to develop in her mind; getting away from their town, an apartment in Philly, moving in together. Sutter continually shrugs these ideas off as he can’t handle the realities that comes with deep attachment; commitment. The combination of all this with Sutter’s lack of responsibility begins to demonstrate the way that Aimee’s attachment to Sutter is delicate and fragile; she’s overly invested while Sutter hasn’t committed — he has no plans.
Aimee encourages Sutter to find his dad which he is at first reluctant to do; for Sutter this means facing his past, which like many things in his life he’s unable to do. However, Aimee’s encouragement works. Sutter drives with her to meet him imagining the positive conception of his dad from childhood, but when they meet the reality is far from his imagination; his dad his careless and thoughtless of others particularly him. He learns that his mom didn’t leave his dad, his dad left him. His dad even repeats his own motto “live in the now” — What Sutter finds is an older less attractive version of himself.
Driving home, Sutter is silent. Maybe its me who’s the problem he thinks to himself. I don’t deserve her love. Aimme sees his distress. “I love you”, she repeats over and over again. “Do you not see that I am bad for you — you need to get away from me!” Sutter yells at her, demanding that she leave. Sutter the savior is now gone and as he turns on Aimme, he turns on himself. When Aimme is suddenly hit by a car on the side of the road, he answers is own question — what love does he have to give?
It’s at this moment The Spectacular Now turns from comedy to drama. Drama is about the way life is, not about getting the perfect girlfriend and going through some mild trouble and then riding off into the sunset — because life isn’t like that. David Foster Wallace says, “We end up becoming ourselves” which translates to that, at the end of the day, we will become the person that we are at our core, that person will be revealed. Our modern culture thinks that everything inside of us is love, goodness, and butterflies — the bad is out there. Hell no. We are troubled human beings. We have been hurt and we then hurt others. The Spectacular Now acknowledges this. Sutter realizes that the bad is in him, his actions can cause harm. This is why he turns on Aimee and on himself simultaneously. Why should someone so beautiful and kind be with him?
The Spectacular Now highlights the way our past affects our identity and self concept. There’s a moment where Sutter’s boss, disappointingly, says to him “If I were your dad, I guess this is the moment when I give you a lecture about how you’re ruining your life.” Sutter responds, “If you were my dad you wouldn’t have to”. Sutter’s a product of being left behind unloved by someone who should have been there. He’s responded by trying to love in the way he knows best but it hasn’t worked out. When he leaves Aimee at the bus stop it’s because he’s realized he’s not the man he thought he was and that man doesn’t deserve her.
This is drama. This is life as we experience it because we too like Sutter experience ourselves as products of harm outside our control and find ourselves in moments where we discover that we’re broken human beings with a flawed capacity to love. The Spectacular Now unravels Sutter by slowly unraveling his world, his beliefs, his understanding of his past and his parents, the moral dimensions to action, and the tragedy of a full realization of internal brokenness. As Sutter cries in his mother’s arm, he acknowledges the tragedy of being human; a product of love and the lacke of love. Yet its the former that has more power. The love of a mother transforms him. “You love everyone,” she tells him, “You are nothing like him — he’s never loved one person in his life.”
There’s paradox in her words. In one sense Sutter was becoming his dad, but as he realizes that he doesn’t want to be him, he opens himself to another possibility. Sutter comes to grips with his past and in a mysterious way heals. There’s no formula here — the way we transform and change is strange, complex, and full of contradiction and The Spectacular Now, with Sutter weeping on his moms shoulder, acknowledges just this — the mystery and power of union. Sutter shows up to Aimee’s college softer, wiser and more ready to commit. In this sense The Spectacular Now is not just a character study drama but an insight into how we as human beings grow, change and learn to become more capable of what we were made to do — love.
