In Search of Wine and Women

When I come across reviews of Sideways, which I still do somehow from time to time despite the fact that it’s been three years since the release date, I’m always surprised by the fact that so many reviewers mention that both protagonists are unlikable. Some go so far as to describe them as “completely unsympathetic.” I mean, I understand that Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is pretty much a tool and that Miles (Paul Giamatti) is some kind of self-confidence-less downer, but I rather like the pair of them, and I think that their faults are part of what makes them sympathetic.

The fact that the road trip Jack and Miles take to California wine country is supposed to be some kind of bachelor party for Jack, who is getting married in less than a week, does quite well at highlighting Jack’s less than desirable qualities. Namely, he wants to get laid before he gets married, and he makes various “you need to get your joint worked on” types of comments to Miles, and acts completely insensitive with respect to Miles’ plans for the trip. I can see how unappealing some of those moments are; after all, who wants to hang out with some horn-dog who makes uncomfortably chauvinistic comments in public and is trying madly to cheat on his fiancé at any cost while being a selfish prick? But I think that what’s really underneath that façade is a man uncertain about a very significant and grown-up life choice. And who wants to grow up? Who’s comfortable with “settling down?” While most of us do that eventually, and are ultimately happy with the decision, change is almost always painful, and thus we can sympathize with Jack. After all, what he really wants is merely to post-pone big change for just a little bit, and that’s understandable even if it’s not admirable. I find that when I watch Sideways, I’m actually rooting for Jack to get laid, even though he’s doing to at the potential expense of his future marriage. Through him, I can see, and experience vicariously to a certain degree, that which I did not (and never would) do during my own bachelor party.

And then there’s Miles. He’s such a downer because he’s still depressed about his divorce years after the fact, and he never wants to do anything on the trip. All he wants is to drink fine wine, eat great food, and crash at the motel. While none of those things sound particularly bad or undesirable, they do sound as though they’re missing something bachelor party-wise. So he’s depressed and boring, hardly the recipe for the protagonist of a great film or a character that audiences will love and find sympathetic. But the things that make him likable for me are his knowledge of fine wine and his appreciation for good literature. The scenes where Miles talks about how to taste wine or about particular varietals evoke high sensory pleasures, the things that really enable one to escape the rigors of the day-to-day grind, or, depending on your point of view, to appreciate this life. Knowledge of those pleasures provides a kind of transcendent perception which enables one to see that there actually is good in the world despite frequent appearances to the contrary. Miles’ depressed personality coupled with this transcendent perception highlight the very same contrast. While he might not seem like much on the surface, an examination for his qualities reveals something worthwhile. As Sarah Vowell says in “California as an Island,” one of the best essays in her magnificent collection entitled The Party Cloudy Patriot, “There’s something educational about trying to see the good in things, holding some old picture in your hands and telling another person why it’s significant and excellent, special.” I’ve always loved that admirable and positive statement and how it avoids cheesy sentimentality. Like the antique maps Vowell sells in that essay, Miles and Jack provide viewers with a chance to see beyond outward appearances, to transcend the everyday and see something “significant and excellent, special.”

Taking solace in, well, something.

In Sideways, it's clear what Miles does to get through the day-to-day slog. His appreciation of fine wine provides a pleasure that allows him a momentary distance from whatever crap each day shovels at him. The most telling example of this comes late in the film when he drinks his '61 Cheval Blanc. He has just acted as best man at Jack's wedding, where he saw his ex-wife and her new husband. There are a lot of people around after the ceremony, but viewers get the idea that Miles doesn't know most of them and isn't quite in the mood to socialize given what he's been through over the past week. So he goes to this diner, where we see him eating a burger with onion rings and drinking from a styrofoam cup, the formal nature of his tux contrasting the crummy booth's cheap upholstery. He has the bottle of '61 Cheval Blanc on the seat of the booth next to him, and he pours its contents into his styrofoam cup serving by serving when no one's looking. The uncrowded diner with only a few people ordering at the counter and a man and a woman each eating alone on the other side of the room creates the perfect aesthetic environment for the emotional goals of the scene. As Miles drinks from the wine after a bite of his burger, we see in his face and hear in his slight moan that the '61 Cheval Blanc lives up to the weighty expectations surrounding it. This moment gives us the delicate balance between the sadness of being alone while experiencing such an extraordinary pleasure and the exquisite, comforting nature of the same pleasure.

Of course, I'm sure we can all relate to such a thing. In my case, for instance, it's not uncommon for me to stop after a particularly thoughtless, sloppy, and unintelligent student essay I've graded at my dining room table. I'll get up at such a moment, sometimes near tears at the hopeless states of education and intelligence in this country. I'll walk over to my bookshelf and pick up my thick volume of Robert Creeley's early poems. The weight of the book is comforting in and of itself, suggesting as it does the quantity of wonderfully crafted poetry inside. Creeley's hyper-intelligence as a poet, his ability to create hope from ambiguity, and the elegant grace with which he deals with the concepts central to his poems never fail to make me feel something similar to what I imagine Miles to be feeling as he drinks his '61 Cheval Blanc.

I wonder if there's something more to the solitary nature of the two aforementioned pleasures. Is there a sad comfort in being among the small population of those who can appreciate the most exquisitely constructed poetry or the most delicately subtle wines? The sadness of solitude, such as it is, might be countered by the pleasures afforded through these sorts of things. Or maybe not. Maybe these things are just pretentious and sad unless we can find others with whom to share them. Who can say?

Making peace with the ignorance of the masses, or something equally pretentious yet desireable.

These last few weeks, I've graded mindless student essay after mindless student essay. I wonder how many more self-righteous, ignorant, lazy 18-year-olds who drive around SUVs that daddy bought them will tell me that some of the best literature ever produced in the English language is "dumb," "stupid," or, my favorite, "gay," before I lose it completely. Fortunately, as I'm sure many of you know (if, in fact, some of the people I know really read this), I don't plan to stay in my bust-your-ass-for-nothing line of work much longer. But while I'm still here doing adjunct faculty slave-wage work for three different colleges and universities, I can really get into Sideways. That film portrays sympathetically, and perhaps even glamorizes, the pathetic and sad yet beautiful and necessary existence of those who teach English.

Of course, the fact that Miles is an English teacher might escape many who watch the film. It's not a central part of the plot or even of Miles's character. But there's a gorgeous scene very near the end of the film in which we see Miles in the classroom. In it, the boys in the obviously private school all wear khaki pants and sit quietly with blank looks on their faces as one of them reads from the moving, sad scene of Phineas' funeral in John Knowles' novel A Seperate Peace. In the golden light, the camera moves in to focus on Miles as he savors Knowles' words and their clear implications concerning his own life. When the student finishes that infamous passage about how you do not cry at your own funeral and asks if he should continue, Miles says "No. No; we'll pick up there Monday." When he asks Miles if he should continue, the student refers to him as Mr. England or something like that (it's difficult to discern). With that disorienting Mr. something, Miles' alienation in that environment is rendered complete and understandable. Those kids have no idea who he is and most likely don't care.

In my own case, it seems to me that most of my students don't really think of me as a real person, and they often seem shocked when I relate to them some anecdote from my own life that happens to be relevant to what we're reading. Presumably, the shocking part to them is that I am human, a real person with real experiences sometimes similar to theirs, not some kind of anomaly who exists only in their English classroom for three hours each week. At any rate, as much as I am able to relate with and be liked by my students more so than many of my colleagues, those students, by virtue of their treatment of the classroom environment and the ways in which they speak to me (or don't), sometimes seem less than the real people I know they are, the real people who would make teaching an extraordinary thing. Thus, they create an appropriately alienating environment. The way in which the camera moves in on Miles as one of his students reads from A Seperate Peace mirrors for me exactly what I go through every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I can see it now--one of my students reads aloud from a Scott Silsbe poem and looks up blankly. No, I think, not wanting to ruin the beauty of the poem with the inevitable classroom bullshit, we'll pick up there on Monday. And so will we.