Picking up the pieces

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Nick (Michael Cera) is a fan of the New York indie rock scene and the sole straight member of queercore band The Jerk Offs. He has a broken heart after his girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena) broke up with him on his birthday and his fellow band members, Thom (Aaron Yoo) and Dev (Rafi Gavron), attempt to get him out of the house to play at a club. He consents only because his favourite band – Where’s Fluffy? – is playing a surprise concert in New York that night.

Norah (Kat Dennings) and Caroline (Ari Graynor) go to the same high school as Tris. There is a degree of friendship between them, but in the main, Tris and Norah have quite an antagonistic relationship. The mix CDs which Nick has been making for Tris have been consistently discarded by Tris. But Norah has been collecting them because she and Nick have the same musical preferences, including their affinity for Fluffy.

That night Norah and Caroline also go in search of Fluffy, starting at a club called Arlene’s Grocery, where, as it happens, The Jerk Offs are playing. Tris is also in the audience, with her new boyfriend. Norah is attracted to Nick, not knowing that he is Tris’s ex, and in order to prove to Tris that she hasn’t come alone, she asks him to be her boyfriend for five minutes. The kiss they share during those five minutes sparks Tris’s jealousy. When Caroline gets very drunk, Norah asks Nick to help take Caroline home, but Thom and Dev have other ideas. They see in Norah a potential girlfriend for Nick, and so they offer to take Caroline home in their van, leaving Nick and Norah to drive around the city in Nick’s old yellow Yugo searching for Fluffy.

The six teens have various adventures and misadventures, including a drunk couple thinking the Yugo is a taxi, losing Caroline and then finding her at a gay cabaret, as well as starting and resolving various conflicts among themselves and with others. The overarching plot, however, follows the eponymous characters as they go through these experiences together and develop a relationship with one another. They have both had relationships with other people, which, for various reasons, have not been healthy. Nick must learn to overcome his obsession with the shallow, self-absorbed Tris and move on with his life to embrace the person for whom he is really meant. But his growing feelings for Norah are undermined by his preoccupation with Tris. And Tris’s pursuit of him after his kiss with Norah also helps to cloud his resolve.

While trying to find Caroline, the group goes to a club where Nick meets Norah’s ‘sort of ex-boyfriend’ Tal (Jay Baruchel). Norah tells Nick that Tal has ‘just always been there and . . . you just feel ignored for long enough and it’s just nice to feel special sometimes.’ Whenever she needs to be comforted, Tal is there to give her reassurances and encouragement. So at one point during the night, when Norah feels she has been let down by Nick, she returns to the club where she left Tal to have her spirits lifted. But she learns that Tal is really only using her to get to her father, who is a music producer. In contrast, Norah appreciates Nick’s openness and honesty, and the fact that he isn’t just using her for his own designs. He doesn’t even know who her father is until later in the film, after their affection for one another has begun to grow. So despite having never met before that night, and the fact that Norah only knew Nick through the music he put on his mixes, their experiences have drawn them together by the time the dawn breaks the following morning.

There is no doubt that Nick and Norah have made bad relationship choices. Tris is no good for Nick, and we cringe when he seems unable to let go of her, regularly bringing her up in his conversations. We watch the choices he makes and we know that they are the wrong ones. But were we to put ourselves in the same situation, the difference between right and wrong would be rather less obvious. And, like Norah, we can easily be so focused on one thing we think is good, or is at least enough to satisfy us, that we fail to see the problems and to recognize something even greater that is right in front of us. We make the same kinds of mistakes in other situations besides relationships. Refusing to let go of the past prevents us from moving on to bigger and better things. We can miss out on a lot in life because of this adamant clinging to what we know and are familiar with. We stick with what seems safe rather than taking the risk of finding something better.

When Norah brings Nick to Electric Lady Studios, owned by her father, she brings up an idea from Judaism which she likes, known as tikkun olam: ‘It says that the world’s been broken into pieces and it’s everybody’s job to find them and put them back together again.’ Though the idea originates in Jewish rabbinic literature and mysticism, it has been adopted to express a sense of social responsibility to make the world better. It reflects the innate sense we all have that there is something wrong with the world. Wicked things take place in our world every day, but the problem is within us too. The choices we make impact other people’s lives, and all too often we put our own selfish needs first and make the wrong choices, even though we all long to make the world a better place.

Nick’s response to Norah’s description is, ‘Well maybe we’re the pieces, you know. Maybe we’re not supposed to find the pieces. Maybe we are the pieces.’ Often we might try to deal with the grim reality of an imperfect world by getting involved in a relationship. Our life might seem less harsh when we are able to share it with someone else. It is a right response since God created us to have relationships with one another; healthy relationships with others are vital and wonderful. But, as with all the other activities we engage in, our relationships are not enough to return the world to the state it is supposed to be. They are not even enough to sort our own lives out, since other people, with all their imperfections, weaknesses and self-centredness, will always let us down at some point. There is only one man who can truly bring about a lasting transformation in a person’s life: Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came into our world to rescue us from the consequences of our wayward behaviour through his death and resurrection. When we respond to his offer of forgiveness we begin to experience a new dynamic at work within us, prompting us to make better choices and helping us realize that what we can experience in a relationship with God far outweighs all the second-rate things of this world which we like to think can give us true satisfaction. The reality is that we will not experience the totality of this until the new heavens and the new earth, when everything is once more perfect, but we can begin to experience it now.

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