Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus

Michael Cera is so lovably punchable that I just want to punch him. And I won't say much about his acting because he always plays a slightly different version of himself. He plays Jamie, a young man in Chile in search of some cactus highs. He doesn't care much about learning about Chile. He doesn't seem to care much about his companions (the director's brothers and Crystal Fairy herself) other than to use them to help find his precious cactus.

Jamie (Cera) has fallen into a malaise that I've seen a lot in my peers. He's searching for something (but I don't think it's the cactus) and he's not sure what it is (it's probably not the cactus) so instead of trying to find it (again not the cactus) he attempts to chase whatever momentary pleasure he can get by looking for a cactus.

 Jamie sports a sort of male self-confidence that is too common to be funny, purporting knowledge of things he does not fully understand as if he is some sort of authority on the subject, "Is this Chilean cocaine? It goes really smooth. Although this pot is really heady." In a drunken/cocaine ridden frenzy he invites Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffman), another American tourist, to join the band of merry cactus comrades. And Crystal is just the type that would take you up on that offer any day of the week.

I want to say this and make it perfectly clear, Jamie is a colossal asshole, he knows nothing of how to treat other people. He even pushes his car seat into someone's legs so that he can go to sleep easier on the trip that they are taking primarily for him. These are basic rules of society we have all learned about being polite. I felt like calling his mother and letting her know what a dick her son turned out to be. And Crystal (Hoffman) she just isn't an asshole at all.

Gaby Hoffman really did a number on portraying this woman. She played her with a sort of innocent sincerity that I'm not sure another actress could pull off. Crystal is so naively spiritual about the world you know that something awful had to have happened to her. When someone wants so much for the Earth to be a force of everlasting protection you start to wonder what the people on the Earth did for them to need that so much. She tries so hard to win Jamie over, and in the end she sort of does.

Although Jamie acts like a hippie, he really isn't. He's just a cynical kid who is trying to justify his drug habit with hippie literature. He generally doesn't know what he is talking about, and doesn't care much about people. Crystal is a real hippie, generally doesn't know what she's talking about (but believes it) and cares about everyone. They clash ostensibly. But Jamie doesn't want to be mean, and I don't think he means to be mean, he understands near the end how precious Crystal has been to the group. She has held everyone together, kept things from becoming stilted, taken awkward things (being naked in a hotel room) and made them normal. That is her strong suit, making the strange seem normal.

Silva's style is slow moving, but it feels like real life. If I were to take a trip with some friends in Chile to find a hallucinogenic cactus, I imagine the road trip would feel a lot like this film did. Kind of hot, slow moving, awkward, and occasionally funny. I enjoyed watching the characters trip, and I liked that he just let us watch the whole thing (like an objective observer) instead of trying to make us experience their high in a first person sort of way. The whole thing felt like being a fly on the wall at a trip we weren't invited on.

In the end, we inevitably get high and learn about Crystal's damage (and it is brutal). Hoffman is so matter of fact in the way she reveals the information, and the emotion builds so naturally it feels incredibly real. Everyone reacts to Crystal's pain, because in the end, you don't feel like Crystal is someone that deserves pain, even Jamie knows that Crystal doesn't deserve pain. All she gives out is love, and all that she should get back is love. The film is heartbreaking, funny, and real. Give it a watch if you can and let me know how you feel about it in the comments.


~Alena Ivanov


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