Mike White: "Enlightened"

Flannery O'Connor said a writer must concern himself both with mystery and with manners. In other words, the writer must have an eye on cosmic questions--questions about faith, love, morality, death. At the same time, the writer must notice the bizarre, tiny details of human interaction--the trends, the missed connections. Mike White is so good at doing both. His characters convey an aura of awesomeness; they seem larger than they are; they seem archetypical. So, for example, as we follow Tyler around, he's thinking: "I am a ghost. I am a secret kept by me. Some pearls are never found; they remain at the bottom of the ocean. It's light, being a ghost. If you never have love, you'll never lose it." These uncomfortable, cosmic thoughts might strike a chord with the viewer; how can they not? (White's use of voice-over narration reminds me of Jane Austen's use of free indirect discourse. Often, when we hear a voice-over, we take it to be the gospel truth. White does something more complicated. He almost never agrees with the words he puts in his own characters' voice-overs. This is such a pleasure. So, when Amy is privately thinking, "I have arrived; follow me," White is aware that Amy's own thoughts are far, far from the gospel truth. Amy Heckerling did something similar with the voice-over bits in "Clueless"; Cher's pronouncements are authoritative and brisk, and also, frequently, far, far from the details of actual reality.) At the same time that White is letting us in on his characters' cosmic monologues, he's also making observations about manners, tiny details. He likes to remind us of the quiet racism of Helen's generation: "You're Jewish? Hmmm...And Irish? Well, they drink a lot." "My daughter was always the shortest in school--except of course for all the Asians." White takes time to notice Dougie's boorish response to being slighted; aggrieved to find that the Molly Shannon character doesn't want him (even though "dating old women is like shooting fish in a barrel"), Dougie makes a point of loudly saying, "Gotta go now. Hot date. Life's short. This girl is really, really into me." And then there is the etiquette of Twitter: How do you ask someone to follow you? What counts as worthwhile "content"? (And then my favorite comedy-of-manners moment in a White script, at least as of now: Ben Stiller's character in "Brad's Status." He's at his son's Harvard interview, talking to another parent, and he very much wants to gloat. "My son is looking at several schools," he says quietly. "It looks like he is going to have A HOST OF OPTIONS, you know what I mean? But it looks like Harvard may be in the running." His interlocutor rolls her eyes. "Oh?" she says, smirking. "You think Harvard might have a shot?")

-The Molly Shannon character in "Enlightened" is such a revelation, because where have you seen her before? Who--beyond White--is writing like this? "I'm a learned extrovert," says Shannon, in a heartbreaking way. "I was shy for decades. I had this really bad thing where, like, I thought I was in a relationship with my boss. I mean, he was married! And I had this toxic thing, in my head, for years. But therapy helps. Have you tried therapy? You just have to take risks, and if people turn you down, they turn you down." Stunned, the un-reflective Tyler can't really produce much of a response. "My former boss was in a relationship with me, and she didn't even know it," he says. "Well, she didn't think we were in a relationship. We had sex, but that didn't count for her." Then Tyler moves back to safer terrain. He wants to talk about his music collection. The Tyler/Shannon dynamic becomes entrancing, because Shannon won't let up. "I don't want to sleep with you if this isn't going anywhere; I don't really have time to spend on that." "I like that you're sort of sad and sweet." "Life is weird; things come in waves; you think you are trapped, and then you aren't." Tyler's response--for Tyler has studied Shannon from afar, at the gym: "You run really fast for someone old." I could watch this unfolding relationship for years and years. Of course, it won't go anywhere promising, because it is built on Evan Hansen-ish false foundations. Tyler is withholding the fact that he is partly using Shannon to get to her boss's files. This squirm-inducing complexity is the thing Mike White does so very, very well. It seems appropriate to use the word "genius" here.

-I enjoyed "Brad's Status," particularly the reversals. Stiller lectures his son on how a Yale admission letter is unlikely; the son shocks him by saying, coolly, that it's actually quite likely, and really Harvard is the ideal here. Stiller--vain, euphoric--finds his joy punctured when the son misses his Harvard interview. White is well aware that--in a cosmic scheme--this setback means basically nothing, but he takes great pleasure in detailing all the twists and turns of Stiller's agonizing, small-minded journey through status anxiety. Stiller imagines a friend skipping down the beaches of Hawaii, in early retirement, surrounded by young Hawaiian women; in fact, the friend is severely addicted to drugs. Another friend might be speeding around in his private jet? But in fact he's fighting embezzlement charges and swallowing the news of his small daughter's cancer diagnosis. "Many of my Hollywood acquaintances are--like me--deeply, crazily obsessed with status. It's all they think about. And yet they write these small, quiet movies with quirky indie love subplots. That's not the reality they're living." Leave it to White to tell a story that makes you mildly ill with self-recognition--a story that no one else is telling, not really. "Discovery is looking at the same thing everyone else looks at--and seeing something new." I don't know if White has his long-closeted artist evangelical father to thank for his gifts--talk about a John Cheever-ish Divided Self--but, regardless, he's a supremely wonderful space alien. Long may he reign.