Cinematic States: Stories We Tell, the American Dreamlife, and How to Understand Everything

by Gareth Higgins

A Northern Irish writer explores his adopted homeland through film in this irreverent yet moving journey through each of the 50 states. Set among a personal backdrop of immigration memoir, he takes on American myths in their most powerful form—the motion picture—by setting out to determine if a Kansas yellow brick road really does lead to the end of the rainbow, and whether it first has to pass through Colorado's Overlook Hotel. Amid the multipurpose woodchippers, friendly exorcists, and faulty motel showers, resurrected baseball players, and miracle-working gardeners, he examines what the stories we tell reveal about American lives and uses this to sum up what he has learned about the promises, failures, and hope that is America.

380 pages, Paperback

First published November 3, 2013

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Born in Belfast, Gareth Higgins lived in a nation torn apart by politics and religion. His escape was the local cinema. Film opened up an alternative reality for him:

Because of the violence that engulfed my community, the limits of home–where people were killed because of their voting preference or religious beliefs or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, where religion was politics, and politics was violence–were too restrictive for me to accept as the boundaries of being human. Places like northern Ireland struggle to emerge from the lie that being a person is to be merely a receptacle for ideology or a machine for someone else’s use. In those moments when our hearts provoke our minds, we all know this lie equates life with death. The movies sparked this for me. I wanted a cinematic life because dreaming was easier than waking reality. (20)

As an adult, Higgins emigrated to the States. In an effort to understand his adopted homeland, he sought out and watched film set in each of the 50 States (and Washington D.C. because evidently, it’s kinda a big deal). The result is Cinematic States, a collection of essays which explores America, its dream and landscape. By writing about American film state by state, Higgins explores how these movies reflect their context (or at least shows the contradictions). Each of the movies chosen (and there are good ones and bad ones) had an impact on Higgins and contributed to a deeper understanding of America and himself. The themes of the movies and the topography of place, allowed Higgins to explore virtues and features of American identity and through that, he illuminates our deep longings.

The state-by-state format constrains Higgins somewhat in his movie choice. He chooses Bull Durham in honor of his adopted home town, Durham, North Carolina. The Wizard of Oz is chosen for Kansas, Fargo for North Dakota, Rocky for Pennsylvania, and My Private Idaho for Idaho, Robert Altman’s Nashville for Tennessee, etc. Other states are less obvious and Higgins choices are more surprising. He is also constrained by personal taste . There are only four sports movies profiled in the list (five if you count Nebraska’s Teen Wolf). In each instance, Higgins takes care to show that while it is a ‘sports movie’ it is about more than just sports as if there was ever a sports movie that wasn’t really about something else (i.e. Bull Durham is about opportunities and ordinary folk, Field of Dreams is about dreams imagined and realized, Riding Giants is about chasing thrills and Rocky is about heroism and self respect). I think there should be more sports movies profiled, especially for States where the best entertainment in every town is the high school game. There is absolutely no excuse for choosing Close Encounters of the Third Kind for Indiana without even once mentioning Hoosiers.

But getting hung up on Higgins cinematic choices would be to miss the point. If I wrote this book I would have a different list of movies (though I love his choices more than not). What makes this book great is what Higgins tells us about the American dream, our relationship to it and how movies reveal the truth about ourselves: our hopes and desires, our longing for transcendence, our imperfections and failings. He does this through the films of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Clint Eastwood, etc. We have all seen at least some of these movies and Higgins guides us into their meaning and the truth about ourselves.

I think any lover of film, Americana or pop culture will appreciate Higgins portrait of America. I give it four stars.

Notice of Material Connection: I received this book for free from the publisher or author, via Speakeasy, in exchange for my honest review.

[Kcjones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was a quick, easy, and interesting read. The premise is that Higgins, who has come to live in the United States from Ireland, needs a way to connect with his American neighbors and since he is a film buff, he decides to watch and analyze films that he feels represent each American state to see what he can learn about its people.

As I was reading, it was fun to guess what films he would pick to represent each state-some were obvious, like Gone with the Wind for Georgia or The Wizard of Oz for Kansas and some were not so obvious, like Fight Club for Delaware. I was disappointed that so many of the movies that represented the South portrayed it in a bad light, but I really was not surprised. Most of my favorite sections were on the Midwest states.

Another delight about the book is that Higgins is a peace activist and spiritual writer and he infuses his insights on our society, ways to attain peace and thoughts on spirituality within the film analysis. I included many quotes in my inspirational quote book. My only criticism is that the passages were too short and I sometimes felt that he could have gone a lot more in depth. Again, the passages about each state were fun to read as Higgins included references to famous people and events from each state that made me feel a little ashamed that I did not have as good a grasp on my own country's history.

I recommend the book for fun and insight and the insight that has stuck with me the most is the fact that the most common element Higgins found in the films was violence. In his book, he examined films from the early days of cinema to now and while the violence has become more graphic over the years, it was always present. America nurtures a culture of violence and this makes me sad. As a Christian and as a fellow peacemaker, I want America to be known as leader of peace and of positive, healthy communities, but this the opposite of how people think of us and for good reason. Over and over again, violence towards women and degradation is practically celebrated by our TV shows and movies, instead of inspiring dialogue about peace and true liberation. For more, go to Cinematic States Book Review

[Glen Grunau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently spent 6 days in the far south of the US in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was attending the Movies and Meaning Conference with host Gareth Higgins. He is a self-confessed movie addict. I can relate. But Gareth inspired me with his reminder that movies are not created for our passive entertainment. They are given to us (at least the good ones) to help us live better.

Gareth has written a book entitled Cinematic States: Stories We Tell, The American Dreamlife, and How to Understand Everything. I brought the book home with me. Gareth is an immigrant to the US from Ireland. His outlook on the US is a unique one. He is not afraid to flesh out the paradoxes that are rife throughout this land. He does so by "travelling" each of the states in alphabetical order (although he begins with North Carolina and ends with New Jersey) and selecting movies he has seen that represent each of these states.

I find myself very ambivalent about the nation to the South of us. The American dream has become tainted for me with its colonialist superiority, capitalism gone awry, war mongering, gun rights, and bizarre politics. Yet it is a land to love for the heroes it has borne and the freedom it proclaims. And Albuquerque treated me so well!

As I near retirement and consider the travelling options that will open up to Karen and I, the USA represents a vast frontier to be explored. We hope to take some road trips together some day soon. So the prospect of beginning these travels on the cinema screen holds great appeal for me as I attempt to befriend my neighbour to the south.

I finish with a quote from Gareth as he reflects on the paradox that is the USA and captures the essence of what offers me hope for my neighbours to the south: "It’s a 300 million person paradox. If there’s one thing its recent history tells us, it’s that the American empire is declining. But if there’s one thing that living here has taught me, it’s that if it can accept this reality with humility, it might just figure out its gift to the world". Can we pray for this?

I created a list of most of the movies that Gareth explores in his book. It can be found at http://letterboxd.com/glengrunau/list...

Let the viewing begin!

[Kari]

A guy from Ireland with a love of movies moved to the United States (specifically to Durham, NC) and decided to document his project to learn about America by watching at least one movie for every state. This is the premise of Cinematic States by Gareth Higgins: he works his way through the states (and accompanying movies) in alphabetic order with an essay on each one.

My interest in the chapters varied based on how much I knew about the state and/or the movie he was talking about. For some of the most obvious choices, I felt he was constrained a little bit: obviously he is going to have to watch The Wizard of Oz for Kansas, but what else is there to say about such an iconic movie? On the other hand, the chapter about Delaware and Fight Club was probably my favorite.

But the real reason to read a book like this is to argue with the author about which movies he picked. Here, I’ll start. Gareth watched Bull Durham for North Carolina, and while that is an okay choice, if you want to get a feel for this great state, I suggest you watch Junebug. For California, he watched Chinatown and I have never seen it, but I have to say that surely such a big state can’t be limited to one movie. I would add Pulp Fiction (which I have also never seen, yes, yes, it’s true) and Clueless. For Mississippi, he watched Crossroads, but what about O Brother, Where Art Thou? I can’t argue with Stephen King for Maine, but I would have added Cider House Rules. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is okay for Indiana, I guess, but what about Hoosiers? And one thousand points to my neighbor who pointed out that Washington state really should have been represented by Twilight.

I recommend this book for movie buffs, people who love America, and people who like to argue. But here’s the truth: reading Cinematic States was a fun experience but talking about it has been even more fun.

[Red🏳️‍⚧️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps unintentionally one of the most well written and compelling arguments for getting a Netflix disc subscription, Cinematic States is a lovely book. It flits in an appropriately dreamlike fashion from meditative vignette to meditative vignette, examining the brush strokes of America's cinematic psyche. It says painfully beautiful things about forgiveness, acceptance, loving others and the lies we tell ourselves about the redemptive power of violence. It is different and distinct from almost every critical film thing is you can find.

However, its philosophical throughlines are more honed than its structural integrity. While it is a dream object, and subject to those same fluxes in narrative we have in waking and sleeping as we cast our line about hoping to catch answers, it suffers from inconsistent quality, especially in its beginning and end, where much like the author I am looking for how he got here and where he's going next. I feel I know him as a film fan but not as a man, which seems important considering the book is a journey through his mind, his hand holding yours. I suppose I wanted him to bleed on the page a little, but he keeps a certain distance. Maybe I'm too used to memoirs (as this is a memoir) or the internet trading in the currency of pain and I don't know how to feel without it. But there are tears and dreams and hopes and wants here. A silhouette of our author.

A book for mountains. A book for rest. A book for movie people. A book for someone you want to know more. A book for someone you miss somewhere. A book for stargazers. A book with wine. A book that sees you and past you. A book that yearns. A book for yearners. A book that dreams even when it isn't being read. A good book.

[George Donigian]

An Irishman writes cinematic reflections and observations about each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia through the lens of films either made in or featuring the given state. Colorado, for example, leads to Citizen Kane and The Shining, which lead further to a wildly substantive conversation between Charles Foster Kane, Jack Torrance, and a counselor who represents Colorado’s conservative Christian ministries. Fight Club shows us Delaware and the power of corporate entities to shape, alter, and mutate lives. Robert Altman’s Nashville helps us to know a portion of the music business and much more about Tennessee. And so it goes--with some surprising film choices matched to states. Seeing the states through this cinematic perspective seems an appropriate 21st century update of the 19th century Democracy in America.

[Fr. River · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cinematic States is a book by Gareth Higgins, who is native to Ireland. He describes his love of movies in Ireland and then he takes us through all fifty states identifying each with a movie. He shows the mixture of our perceptions and of how we let our ambitions shape us in each state. We tend to be a people looking for the American dream and he points out that the American dream that we really are looking for is basically one of loving one another.

[April Yamasaki]

The premise of the book is intriguing — a look at America through the lens of different movies set in each of the fifty states plus Washington DC. Originally from Northern Ireland and now living in the US, author Gareth Higgins has a unique perspective–keenly observant, sometimes irreverent, always thought-provoking. Here is my full review: If you Love Movies, You'll Love This Book.

[Chris]

A Northern Irishman emigrates to the US and writes about the movies he think best represent each of the 50 States.
He includes a lot of movies I haven't seen, and excludes many I have. Not that he hasn't seen the films I've seen, he just didn't think they represented the state in question. In his West Virginia essay he mentions Matewan, but not as a representative film. Matewan is one of my favorite films and depicts a heroic struggle of forces present in contemporary US culture, but is it truly representative of West Virginia?
And true, Higgins misses or paints a state portrait with only the broadest of strokes with these essays. His essay on my home state of Vermont was a fuller protrait than, say, that recent SNL skit that had white supremacists moving to the Green Mountain State, but I still found it shallower than my impression every morning, looking out my kitchen window.
With 50 (plus) essays, Higgins experiments with different styles. Some, like the 5 haikus about Las Vegas, work. Others, like the review of Jaws from the sharks perspective, are cringeworthy.
There is a lot to express and cover and uncover in a 50 state review of films and Higgins is up to the task. Even in the Jaws review there were aspects of the film, of the American character that were thoughtfully revealed.
Cinematic States is, after all, more than a review of states' cultures and characters but revealing of the nation as a whole. We are at a moment in time where, perhaps more than other times, we need sober self-reflection. Cinematic States is a good start.