just relax
by Douglas Messerli
David Kartch (screenwriter and director) Zen
and the Art of Landscaping / 2000, 2001 general release
David Kartch’s film Zen and the Art of
Landscaping won several festival awards in 2000 and 2001 before its general
release in 2001. It is, in fact, a truly well directed satire of the numerous
daytime soap operas of the 1950s and 1960s which it calls up. In a somewhat
more contemporary context, this film employs the life of US suburbia, restateing
some of the impossible coincidences of soap opera plots, although in this case
just making them plausible enough that Kartch’s film successfully skewers small
town conventions and class distinctions simultaneously.
The
gardener Greg Daniels (Greg Haberny) has arrived at the lovely suburban home of
Jean and Richard (Kathleen Garrett and Mark Blum), mowed the lawn, trimmed the
hedges, and raked up the trimmings and grass into a garbage can, while
stripping off his shirt in the hot sun, before
She introduces herself—her husband makes all the arrangements with the
lawn services—and he introduces himself as Greg, suggesting that all of his
friends call him Zen, and before he knows it she’s invited him for something to
drink. We all know what’s in store of course—unless you’ve never seen a comedy
of the suburban wealthy like The Graduate before. He hardly gets the
chance to recognize that there’s more than a little vodka in the orange juice
she serves him and to observe from a refrigerator-posed photo that he thinks he
went to high school with her son before she pulls him in
While seducing the lean hunk of flesh, she eyes the clock registering
5:30, obviously close to time when her hubby returns home. We can guess what
happened, that she’s caught him cheating on her and is using Zen to get even. And
sure enough, we see a car pull up and park in front of the house.
The door opens, and in walks....Andy, her son who’s been away at
college. The couple quickly break away and each attempting to readjust his or
her clothing. Zen insists he should return to his work, but she insists on
introducing the two. The son has seen way too much and won’t believe a word of
her explanation that Greg Daniels has come in to fix the sink. Andy has some
other memories of “Zen,” in fact. “Remember all those times when I came home
from school all bruised and beat up and I just told you I was playing football
with the guys?”
“Well, weren’t you playing football?”
“No, I hate football,” Andy screams out. “Mom, this guy was the Grim
Reaper of Glendale High. He made my life miserable.”
“That was a long time ago, okay.” Greg/Zen admits to Jean. “I used to be
kind of a jerk.”
“And look at you now,” Andy digs in. “How is the lawnmowing business?”
For Andy, who clearly is still is really a jerk, he is just a “poor, white
trash, mother fucker!”
When Zen observes that Andy’s choice of words is strange given the
situation, Jean slaps her brief lover’s face, while at the very same moment,
stage left, enters her husband, Richard. Hearing his voice, Jean grabs Greg,
pulls him to her and kisses him intensely once again, pretending shock for her
husband witnessing their action.
Wait, it gets worse. It seems Andy has driven all the way home to tell
his parents that he’s gay. His father, as have so many other father’s, declares
his son is not gay, and his mother immediately insists—after wondering why he
couldn’t wait until after dinner—declares it’s just college. “Everybody thinks
they’re gay in college,” Zen privately musing “Really?”
As his parents continue their denial while simultaneously blaming of one
another, Andy rushes over to Zen and abuses him just as has his mother: kissing
him deeply on the lips.
Startled by the act, Richard asks “You banging my son too?”
“I’m not banging anybody,” answers Zen.
“Except me,” Jean returns, moving it to take over by planting kisses on
the “landscaper’s” lips. After Zen pushes her away and accidentally hits Andy
in the process, the three get back into a pattern of blaming one another as
they obviously have every day they’re lived together.
“You don’t know what it’s like to wake up every day and feel that you’re
different,” Andy interrupts.
“That isn’t because you’re gay,” insists his father, “that’s because
you’re adopted.”
Another revelation. Which, of course, turns into further revelations,
most importantly, that Jean had not wanted to have a child, afraid she might
lose her attractive “girlish” figure.
Jean hauls off and hits him in the face with a frying pan, explaining
that what she was really afraid of was that if she didn’t remain beautiful her
husband might cheat on her, as he has, apparently, with the check-out girl at
Stopper Shop, Candy Miller—who just happens to be, we immediately discover,
Zen’s girlfriend.
Andy had a big crush on her all his senior year, he gasps, as Jean
suddenly registers shock that Zen was going to cheat on his girlfriend. Before
he knows it, the family made in hell all turn on the lawnmower-boy, coming
after him like ghouls from The Night of the Living Dead, he keeping them
away through the use of Weedwhacker as his backs away in his truck and drives
off.
Too bad such a clever writer/director did not continue in those roles;
he became instead an editor of several documentaries and a travel TV series, The
Coolest Places on Earth.
Los Angeles, August 20, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review
(August 2021).
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