Lars and the Real Girl is, in a word, restrained. There are so many ways "Lars and the Real Girl" could have gone wrong that one of the film's fascinations is how adroitly it sidesteps them. They have no understanding of anything or anyone as being separate from them. In Playing and Reality (pp. In this lovely story, the doctor and the community respond to Lars in a way that acknowledged his need to be held by their acceptance of his illusion that Bianca is a real woman, whether they realize what they are doing, or not. Consider, in this film, the neighbor named Mrs. Gruner (Nancy Beatty). ', I was thinking of his thesis after seeing the unnerving comedy Lars and the Real Girl, the second movie by Craig Gillespie, working from an Oscar-nominated original screenplay by Nancy Oliver, one of the writers on TV series Six Feet Under. Nothing is said in so many words, but we sense that she thinks Bianca functions the way pets do with some closed-in people: The doll provides unconditional love, no criticism, no questions. A character says at one point that she has grown to like Bianca. This holding environment protects the baby from having to deal with aspects of reality before it is ready to do so. At first, he's jealous of their attention, but begins to change, to be brought out of himself, and we infer that through Bianca and his sister-in-law's pregnancy he's at last coming to terms with his mother's death in childbirth and the recent demise of his father. In this comedy, Lars Lindstrom is an awkwardly shy young man in a small northern town who finally brings home the girl of his dreams to his brother and sister-in-law's home. A few weeks later, a packing crate is delivered to Lars, and soon his brother and sister-in-law are introduced to the doll. She was a truth-teller, and all some situations need is for someone to tell the truth, instead of pussy-footing around embarrassments. With a serenity bordering on the surreal, Lars takes her everywhere, even to church. And you surround him with actors who express the instinctive kindness we show to those we love. It is about who Lars is, and how he relates to this substitute for human friendship, and that is all it's about. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Gradually, and with just the right timing, the mother disillusions the baby, and the baby’s illusion that it is all-powerful and the creator of everything dissolves into awareness that other people are separate individuals, and that it is possible and desirable to have relationships with them. When he is presented with opportunities to form connections with others, he tries to avoid them. How do you make a film about a life-sized love doll, ordered through the Internet, into a life-affirming statement of hope? 1-25). In his first film, the undervalued Mr Woodcock, Craig Gillespie took a somewhat less idealistic view of small-town life. They don’t mourn them; they just let go of them when they no longer need them.