Don Jon
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has become one of my favorite actors over the years, between rediscovering his work as a teenager on “3rd Rock From the Sun” and “10 Things I Hate About You” to watching him turn into an interesting character actor in films like “Brick,” “The Lookout,” “Looper,” “Inception,” and “The Dark Knight Rises.” Now, he makes his feature writing and directing debut with a romantic comedy. Well, that label might have you expecting one type of movie, but I promise you, that’s not really the film you’ll be getting, which should be relatively obvious just looking at what Gordon-Levitt has been in, and who he’s worked with. “Don Jon” isn’t really on the same level of an “Inception” or “Looper,” but it’s definitely an entertaining movie, starting with the man at the center of it.
Gordon-Levitt stars as Jon, a New Jersey boy who is passionate about his workout regiment; his family (played by Tony Danza, Glenne Headly, and Brie Larson); his church; his friends; and his women, who he, invariably, get in bed with him. But almost above all of those other things, he is passionate about his porn, which he watches religiously. Even with his latest conquest sleeping in the other room, he gets online, and gets off. In the end, nothing else really does it for him; real sex is nice, but there’s something about the perfection he finds in porn that satisfies him in a way actual physical intimacy is unable to do. One night, when out with his friends (Rob Brown and Jeremy Luke), he sees Barbara (Scarlett Johansson, remarkably sexy and sharply funny) at the bar, and is floored. When his usual routine doesn’t get her into bed, he’s frustrated, but determined to make it happen, which is when he has to break out what Brown’s Bobby calls “the long game” (what the rest of us call, simply, “dating”). But it’s not long into his relationship with Barbara when he sees that she might have some issues with expectations vs. reality, as well, when they go see a sappy romantic comedy. Suddenly, he’s taking night classes and going without real sex for longer than usual. He still has his porn, though, but even that might cause issues in the long run.
The comparison between the outsized expectations some men get from porn, and some women from romantic comedies, when it comes to dating and sex and relationships is not really a subtle one in “Don Jon,” but it’s definitely worth looking at. Certainly with romantic comedies, and Hollywood romantic movies in general, there is something of an idealized life that, if we aren’t careful, can infect our thinking about life and love if you don’t have much experience in the romantic game, even when you have the inevitable second act break up before the characters realize they can’t live without one another. That type of filmmaking fuels the “hopeless romantic” mentality, and I’ll be honest– I bought into it hook, line, and sinker for a long time. But love doesn’t always win out, and people don’t always get back together in the end; the most important lesson should be to discover something within ourselves, even if it’s negative, and let that impact the person we become after the fact. Jon and Barbara may make an attractive couple, and they seem to fit together well, but Gordon-Levitt and Johansson aren’t afraid to show the cracks in their relationship caused by their respective “outsized expectations”: for Jon, while sex is great with Barbara, and he’s definitely attracted to her, he still needs porn, with its choreographed sexual perfection, to achieve real fulfillment; meanwhile, Hollywood love stories have turned Barbara into someone who thinks that men will always tell women the truth; that if a woman wants a guy to do something, whether he wants to or not, he should do it (Jon enrolls in night classes after Barbara pressures him to go to school); and when the bloom is off the rose of a relationship, it’s time to end it. Granted, such expectations on Barbara’s part aren’t nearly as destructive as Jon’s, which mask a real inability to relate to women on an emotional level, but they don’t help things when the second act break up in “Don Jon” happens, and Jon seems to sincerely miss her.
That’s where Julianne Moore comes into the picture. She plays Esther, a middle-aged woman whom Jon meets at night school. The first time he sees her, she’s crying; she later goes to apologize, and their bond goes from there. I’m hesitant to give away too much of her role, but Moore plays the type of character she plays best– someone who cuts through the bullshit, and gets to the real truth, which Jon needs in a big way. And Esther needs it as well, and Moore and Gordon-Levitt play this unorthodox friendship beautifully, with some real grace notes afforded for both characters. Moore’s lived long enough, and lost plenty, to know that life isn’t what our media culture gives us, and that personal satisfaction means little if it isn’t a shared experience with another person. This is what Jon needs to learn, and by the end, he seems to be on the way to doing so. He isn’t ready for a relationship yet, and Esther isn’t looking for one, but they fill a part of one another that’s been empty, and will help them both move to a better place. If you’re looking for the rough, but funny, romantic comedy the trailer seemed to be selling, you’re looking in the wrong place, because, not surprisingly, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has something more on his mind than just doing a straight Hollywood movie. He wants to entertain us, but knows that sometimes, the best way to do that is to get us thinking about who we are, and what we expect out of life. Well played, sir.
