I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

It's rare that my giddy enjoyment of a film lasts from it's very first scene to the very last, but I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore gave me that reward for watching it. It's main character, Ruth Kimke (Melanie Lynskey), is a great audience surrogate as she casually observes the absolute worst of today's modern world - all the things that drive most of us a little mad, so that we completely understand the tipping point she reaches at a certain point in the story. Each instance also ranges from the knowingly amusing to the completely hilarious, where Macon Blair shows he has a flair for Coen-Bros levels of wry comedic ability. Ruth's sudden team-up with neighborhood outcast Tony (Elijah Wood) - chalk and cheese at first glance - also seems like a natural flow-on effect of her "not going to take this anymore" attitude, with Lynskey and Wood giving their characters the naïve underdog characteristics we all love to love. Charming and somewhat child-like, they take on those they think have wronged Ruth with nervous bravado, which usually ends in a chaotic, crazy and often violent, fashion. The real criminal element, by comparison, seem in another league - and we pray that the two sides of the equation never meet, at the same time knowing that they must.

Melanie Lynskey, who we first met as murderous teenager Pauline in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures way back in 1994, is award-winningly and stupendously great in this film. She's aided by a screenplay from Blair that is abounding with memorable lines - funny enough to be comedy gold while co-existing in a dramatic thriller that gets bloody and at times brutally savage. Ruth is nice, and when she does something like pick up a grocery item someone has simply dropped on the floor without caring and puts it back on the shelf I get to think, "Oh, she's just like me." She's sick and tired of those in society we can loosely class together as 'jerks', and it's the way her character confronts this that makes her character so much fun. She has a hand-drawn prohibition sign on her front lawn with artistically-rendered dog droppings on it. When Tony ignores this and lets his dog do his business on her lawn, she picks it up and throws it at him. That tells us everything we need to know about her - she's nice, fastidious, but confronts wrongs done to her in ways that are probably not the wisest nor most mature course of action. Tony is harder to figure at first - and tells the audience directly that everyone in the neighborhood hates him. He's the kind of guy that practices martial arts every day, but always alone. He's a devout Christian with a strict moral code that coexists in a contradictory way with bouts of rage and violence.

I cared so much about the two main characters in I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore - two of the least-equipped, funniest vigilantes I've ever seen in a movie. An endearing odd couple whose secret weapon is probably that contrast between how nice and polite they are coupled with how determined they are to complete their ill-advised quest to right wrongs. Most of all though, I think that this was simply my kind of movie through and through, with a razor-sharp wit about it and a perfect rhythm and timing. I loved the duality of Ruth and Tony, who always seem both right and completely wrong with everything they do. Verbally harangued by a wealthy lawyer and thrown out of his house, Tony observes that he's just being that way because he's "unhappy - it's eating him up inside." He's right, of course, but at the same time shamed. In the meantime Ruth lashes out in anger, destroying various lawn ornaments and stealing a decorative tiger. Tony gets upset with Ruth, constantly reminding her "It's not your lawn tiger," all the way home. How do we confront the jerks of society when any act of retribution is obviously morally wrong? This movie confronts this question in a light-hearted, fun and very blood-soaked way, with characters that actually do the impulsive things we think of but never dare do - because it's best and wise not to.

Glad to catch this one - Macon Blair won the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic for this film at Sundance in 2017, and Melanie Lynskey was nominated for Best Actress at the Gotham Independent Film Awards.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore