During
the semester I kept hearing references to the movie Sideways and I somehow had a feeling I’d seen it before. As it turns out, it was a movie I’d seen
parts of before and I went ahead and watched the full movie this morning. On watching it, I had a couple of key
observations. First, the movie isn’t
really about wine at all—although wine is a central component of the movie. Second, I have a very different impression of
this movie after taking a semester-long course on wine. I also guess I should say that the movie had
something of a nostalgic value for me. My
first visit to California some fifteen years ago was to the Central Coast and
many of the scenes in the movie bring back great memories.
The movie follows a week-long journey of two-middle aged
men, Miles and Jack, played by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church,
respectively. Jack is preparing to get
married and his college roommate Miles treats him to one last “get away” wine-tasting
trip before his upcoming wedding. The
two drive from San Diego, stopping at Miles’ mother’s house, on their way to
the Central Coast. During the stop,
there’s a telling scene where Miles steals money from his mother on her
birthday. From that point on, it becomes
pretty clear that Miles is something of a pathetic character. On arriving in Santa Barbara County, Miles
aims to introduce his old friend Jack to wine and wine culture. Jack however is more interested pursuing
women in his “last week of freedom” than learning about wine. It doesn’t take long for Jack to meet a local
wine guide played by Sandra Oh and Miles reconnects with a local waitress
played by Virginia Madsen who he’d known from previous visits to the Central
Coast. What follows are hilarious
episodes of wine drinking, golf playing, and other activities that ultimately
lead to Jack question whether he should go forward with his wedding scheduled
for the following week. Miles on the
other hand is fixated on his ex-wife who he finds out during that week has
remarried, struggles to romantically connect with the local waitress, and
generally struggles to come to terms feelings personal and professional
inadequacy.
Wine is definitely a central component of this
movie. Miles is clearly a knowledgeable
wine connoisseur, but spectacularly unsuccessful in other aspects of his life. Miles uses many of the wine tasting
descriptors and techniques that I’ve come to be very familiar with after a
semester-long course on wine. Miles
displays a famous disdain for Merlot in the movie that apparently has since had
an effect on popularity of the varietal here in the U.S. The two female supporting characters, Maya
and Stephanie, are also very knowledgeable about wine. In fact, there is a telling scene where Maya
describes to Jack how she became such a wine enthusiast—particularly why she
feels that wines are living creatures that experience the inevitable rise and
decline that all other living creatures experience. It was a vivid description that brought home
many of themes that we covered in class about how wines evolve over time. There was also hilarious scene where Miles gets
in an altercation with a wine-guide and then drinks an entire bucket of
spit-bucket wine to show his displeasure with the wine-guide. I didn’t really feel that movie went into any
real depth on the wines produced at the location where the movie was made. There are several mentions in the movie about
the characters getting chances to taste grapes from local vineyards. With regards to wine knowledge, Jack is the
perfect foil to Miles. Jack is an actor
who knows nothing about wine. He makes
hilarious attempts to mask his lack of knowledge. You appreciate these attempts because you
realize that you were making many of the same empty observations about wine
before actually making an attempt to learn about wine.
All and all, it is easy to see why this was such a
critically acclaimed movie. I found that
the name of the movie was most telling about what the central theme of the
movie was. That is, that life often
takes us on circuitous routes and in the case of Miles, those routes can end in
failure and personal and professional disappointment. In Jack’s case, he had to come to grips with
a fading acting career and a likely chronic proclivity to infidelity. Given the flaws apparent in these lead
characters, I did not find that the movie took the easy way out and used wine as
an escape valve for these characters.
That said, Miles does exhibit signs of alcoholism and drug dependence
and Jack appears to have clinical sex addiction. I found that Miles’s wine expertise was one
of the few areas of his life where he found real self-esteem. Not only that, it doesn’t appear that Miles
has ever really made any money and in spite of that, he was still able to amass
an impressive knowledge of wine. So I
guess you could say that wine is a central backdrop of this intelligent and humorous
character analysis of the human condition.
Name: Lindeman’s
Bin 90 Moscato
