Better than Sideways says a lot

Citizen Ruth (1996)
Directed By: Alexander Payne
Written By: Alexander Payne
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

Artists are on the pulse of what is true.  The vehicle they use may not always ride alongside Carl Sagan in the scientific literacy-mobile that cruises the neighborhood of Vega, but they always understand what is altruistically on display with the presence of Love.

In Citizen Ruth, Alexander Payne, long before satirically mesmerizing us with Election, About Schmidt and Sideways, displays with little error, the tantamount failure of the "American experiment".  As Laura Dern's character walks, free and silent, on 1 side of a fence, the opposite side is toiling in a timeless racewar over her...beautifully symbolizing the devolution of humanity, and with this final scene, Payne not only ties up one of the singular films of the 90's, but swiftly evicts the American Political landscape from the roundtable discussion, aloft and lost in the cosmic range...endlessly searching for another corruptible intelligence.

We start Citizen Ruth with a familiar guttural feeling.  With the gritty reality of the gen-x burnout culture on full display, he has our unpleasant attention, but instead of holding our dorky 1983 heads in the toilet with repeated flushing, he fantastically removes our heads and places them in the owl's eye, whom eternally presides on higher ground with a calm gaze over the American countryside.  What we see is a miracle...Ourselves and our bullshit put on display as we culturally act in one perceived reality, while we timelessly act in a radically different one (The first: The Left & The Right THINK they are helping humanity, The Second: The Left & The Right actually ARE hurting humanity).  We see the members of both sides do not care about Laura Dern or Laura Dern's unborn child, nor have they ever.  In each character, with the acception of Dern (and possibly the verteren Harlan), where some level of compassion may have existed, it was only replaced in time by the lie of Political Affiliation...the misappropriated value set of the American individual on full display.  Whether it be Religion, Politics, Cultural Heritage, Race, Gender is not  more important this corruptible will of the individual extant in Society.  Payne uses the Abortion issue as a very appropriate and smart vehicle to tell his 1997 story, but it easily could've been swapped for another.

He tells us that we make up our own minds, independently of all others, including parents, wives, husbands, priests, god, little talking heads trapped in our lamps, etc.  We are lucky to have the help of artists like Payne, who take what we know (even for a split second) to be true and articulate it.  We are lucky that he is able to articulate through the use of comedy.  And we are lucky that Laura Dern's character has what this reviewer believes to be the only possible outcome with her child: that child becoming miscarried through a proven motive (thank you Stu Silver)...a Mother addicted to "Huffing" and bent on self-destruction.  Thankfully she is saved in this fairy tale satire by the masses that killed her child by not saving her first.  A more than slight existential angle, but irrelevant in a satirical fantasy...we see the problem continuing to exist and it's up to us to fix it.

Payne's most relevant and witty overall work.  The fact that it's his first film only validates his further success.  To date, with the acception of The Descendants, he is a person consistently able to tell us something about ourselves complete with the visionary talents he shares with other great Directors.