"Brad" is a man circling age 50 with a sunny wife, and a kid interviewing for colleges with music programs in the Boston area. He has been the head of a non-profit for most of his adult life. He has a good upper middle class existence, but Brad is dissatisfied and restless. Mostly, he's quietly jealous of three of his former Tufts classmates, all of whom have apparently succeeded financially--they are decidedly more than middle class--and publicly. Brad is a nice guy. He'd generally not voice his dissatisfaction and he tries to tell himself that he has done sufficiently well. After all, he has a son who is good enough to go to Harvard. He's happy about that. Or not. For even there, there is a little jealousy. Tufts was a great school, but it wasn't Harvard, and just maybe, he wasn't good enough to get into Harvard like his son. His friends passed him by; his kid is passing him by. "Doing good" in so far as raising a decent kid and having a non-profit begins to feel like plain old failure.
He takes more of a self-esteem hit when his son gets the day of his Harvard interview wrong, and now Brad must swallow his pride and call one of the three friends (played by Michael Sheen) who has the juice that Brad doesn't have to get the interview rescheduled. The proper person to person "thank you" requires a dinner with the intercessor. Brad is early to the restaurant, the reservation under his name, and the hostess places him at that nadir of tables, the one by the kitchen. There is another table nearby, but Brad, being a nobody as the world reckons, is rebuffed with "That table is reserved." But the arrival of Brad's famous friend, Craig, generates the relocation that Brad alone couldn't accomplish. Craig dishes on the other two friends, and their personal woes, the existence of which Brad has never accounted in his ego-laced reveries about their lives compared to his own. If the lives were objectively compared--if that were truly possible--it is Brad who has the best, most consistently comfortable, and meaningful one. Brad is a Generation X self-inflicted psychological victim. Only we, the relatively comfortable, have the time to worry about how successful we are in relation to other friends and professionals. The rest of the world is busy just getting food and finding a place to live.
Only once does Brad let his "I'm a nice guy" guard down and that is when he meets one of his son's friends, a musician herself, whom he sees as idealistic and energetic as once he had been. But he tells her too much about his bitterness and rather than sympathize with him, she reflects back his unappealing "poor me" inner world.
But in the end, Brad had done a good thing by swallowing his ego. His son, Troy, got the replacement interview with the critical people and is accepted into Harvard. Brad watches his son sleep, the boy, once like he was, who has his life ahead of him, and he embraces, perhaps still a little reluctantly, his life, as it is.
I have probably had more than one moment that could be titled, "Djinn's Status". Beneath a public smile over the thirty five years between these photos, the first in 1982 when my dad first came to California and I had my first job here, and the second after a twenty five year stint in a government agency, there were many Brad like internal conversational laments.
I have compared myself, more than I'd like to admit, to endless others, over the years, the smarter others, the one's who have houses in the hills, or on the water, who were successful television writers (which I once wanted to be), the few, and they have been only a few, who have wonderful spouses, who made more money than I ever did as attorneys (like Brad, I have worked in public interest mostly), the ones who merely appear someplace and are ushered in, accompanied by endless flattery. And actually, perhaps I should be more ashamed than Brad that I have felt, on those occasions, shorted. In "Brad's Status" there is no mention of a transcendent faith. I am not saying there should have been. There is no critique here of the movie. The critique is of myself. I know that all things are passing, and I purportedly believe that my journey isn't about what benefits and lauds I get in this life for my efforts, but one which leads to the Eternal, to that which was lost by the very act of making a comparison and envying God.
Too often, instead of being grateful--let me be brutally honest about myself--more often than not as I have tended toward a pessimism that is probably the result of that nuanced combination of nature and nuture--I have most often NOT been grateful. I can tick off the real and perceived slights from grammar school to date, the lack of "connections" that meant, to me, I had to work harder than others to achieve a middling success. And then a moment of sanity. None of this is about me. My life was a gift (Brad and I have a commonality in that realization, too often an impermanent one); it remains a gift. I have been given much. And I have no right to compare myself to others--who, by the way, whatever I see, may have crosses far heavier than anything I have ever experienced to date--my internal whining (or more vocal ones, which like Brad, I try to keep to myself, with general, but not perfect success) notwithstanding. Of course, I will again compare and whine. And I guess I am in good company. It is part of the human condition. Brad conquered it in the movie, at least for the time being. I pray for the Grace to conquer it in real life, and for good.
Postscript: I am happy to report that "Brad's Status" appears to have sufficient word of mouth that it is doing well. It's nice to have a movie that leaves something substantial with you. Kudos to Ben Stiller for making a fictional Brad come to life. And providing a thoughtful script.
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