Li’l Fatass’s Top 5 of 2011: Richard Ayoade’s Submarine

#5: You remember what it was to be young. To be cherishing your young blood like it was a temple. A tiny temple to the executor of your unrequited loves. To be young and to have only kissed one girl. And when that girl became floppy and terrifying. You remember pushing that girl into a pond. You remember how she shook that pond water off like a dog. You remember how that pond water stung upon your face, the scum getting in your hair. You remember the fat face of your first kisser.

You remember taking long walks on the beach by yourself. And narrating your life to yourself as though you were someone more important. But you were never important. Even to your mom you were just one character in the story about her life. And how she went from being an optimistic young woman into your mom and now no one watches the story of her life anymore.

Richard Ayoade remembers you. He was behind a rock, taking notes. He was stashing away notes to use for the movie about your life. Of course he had to change a few things. He made you Welsh, for one. He made your parents into Jews. He gave them the noses of Jews and also the hypochondrias. But so much of your life is there. Your attempted suicides. Your girlfriend’s mother’s brain tumors. The handjob your mother gave to that neighbor with all that leather and a ponytail.

Do you want to watch a movie about your own life? On one hand it recapitulates all the humiliations you endured during your adolescent (i.e. prime masturbatory) years. On the other hand it affirms the importance of those humiliations. Maybe they will help you to own those humiliations. You will own them and then they will empower you. Or maybe they will smash you into a jelly like a very pressurized atmosphere. Either way you are old now and not very important. Your life is not worth very much. Very much money or very much to the earth. If a coyote were to find your meat he would say it is not very much meat to write home about. Make your meat work for you. Make your meat take a few more risks in this life . . . $11

If you heart Submarine:

Recommendations by Li’l Fatass
Wes Anderson’s Rushmore
Nicholas Jasenovec’s Paper Heart
The Hess Family’s Napoleon Dynamite