Islands and Bridges

The Station Agent

 

I had wanted to see this movie for a long time, the forgot, then was reminded by a friend recently which got me off my keister to the video store.  Well, my Mom's blockbuster gift cards that she asked met o use while I am here to rent movies for her helped. 

 

He was right (hopefully I correctly remember the person who told me this . . . ).  I loved the movie.  Oddly, the characters also reminded me of him -- his love for life as well as need of contemplation and independence.   Perhaps a bit of myself, though I am a bit too heavy in the contemplation area. 

 

This, exactly, was the focus of the movie:  how do we balance the two?  Each character struggled between a life of energy and action and a life of meaning and depth, one of independence and one of connection.   Particularly beautiful in the filmmaking is how he internal conflicts of each character to find such balance paralleled the external conflicts between the characters.  In the end, each person's imbalanced helped the others to find the balance they needed.  It is not that they were incomplete, but more a learning from each other how to strength the part they lost touch with or neglected or was more difficult to nurture.  

 

I like movies that challenge our desire for separation or our belief that we are separate and alone from those around us.   Thus, this movie reminded me of one of my favorite films, About a Boy, in which the main character regularly misquotes/misattributes John Donne's "No man is an island."  The station agent revives and extends this metaphor in the form of this station depot.   It is like an island in the midst of a sleepy New Jersey town, static against the train churning by outside, never stopping.  Joe then drives up his island, the coffee and hot dog truck, parking it next to Finn's island, the depot, each day.  Finally, Olivia lives on her island of the get-away home (by far the most luxurious of the islands).  Joe doesn't know how to stay on his own island and, eventually, there is this trio of seemingly unlikely friends. 

 

Intertwined in all of this are themes of acceptance and perception and identity -- how patterns of behavior lead to expectations that perpetuate the same patterns, until someone or something knocks us out of that pattern.  

 

I found Joe to be the most intriguing character, though on the surface the most straightforward, he surprised me the most.  Here, you have this outgoing, attractive, young, and curious Puerto Rican man who is the one who choreographs the outings that bond the three characters.  In the beginning, he talks about how he is out of his element in this sleepy town, being from Manhattan and such.  He is always on his cell phone.  At first, perhaps like Finn, I suspected his friendliness was out of boredom.  However, like anyone else, he simply wanted to connect.  His sincerity and his ability to truly see people completely as they are inspire.   We often forget that people who are so in love with life (as Olivia describes him) also have insecurities, also need to feel connected to others in order to feel validated as a human being.  In our culture, we often see this as a weakness, as something to hide.  Finn, Olivia and Joe found each other where they did not need to hide this. 

 

If you haven't seen the movie, I didn't give away they ending and there is still the beauty of how these three characters interact.  

 

I look forward to soon returning to my little island and exploring the bridges, old and new, some which may need mending, others that have stood all kinds of weather, to the islands of others around me.