Sideways: The Illegitimacy of the Mid-Life Crisis

The following review was originally posted on cinekklesia on June 29, 2005.

Several months ago, one of my co-workers described for me the concept of the "quarter-life crisis." It apparently affects those in their twenties, fresh out of college and disappointed with what life has to offer them. Perhaps those who suffer from the quarter-life crisis can't find an "acceptable" job and are forced to move back in with mom and dad until an offer comes along. Perhaps they do find employment but have become disillusioned with the mundanity of white-collar life, shocked that the real world is nowhere near as interesting as their summer internships or "service learning" gigs.

Of course, when my co-worker described this to me, I thought that the quarter-life crisis was merely another member of the psychobabble pantheon, a "condition" that really should be defined as mere frustration, disappointment, and unmet (unrealistic?) expectations — in other words, the condition known as life.

Perhaps those reading my words will agree with me, seeing the quarter-life crisis as nothing more than a narcissistic ploy from a spoiled, whining generation. However, Gentle Reader, will you join me in taking this further and in criticizing the concept of the mid-life crisis, a hallowed life stage in the American psyche? The mid-life crisis is not any more legitimate than its younger sibling, and its current manifestation is found in an even more self-absorbed generation.

Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) is yet another example of the mid-life navel-gazing endemic in the Western world. In this highly-acclaimed comedy, Paul Giamatti plays Miles Raymond, a middle school English teacher by day and aspiring novelist by night, who decides to take his friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), on a one-week bachelor's trip before the latter gets hitched. However, Miles doesn't plan for a week of frat-house lunacy; rather, he wants to take Jack on an erudite tour of California wine country with lots of high-end sampling and a couple of golf games on the side.

Jack, on the other hand, has other ideas. A washed-up actor who sees in his upcoming marriage a final "settling down" into a life of bourgeois respectability (his future father-in-law is going to reel him into the family business), Jack wants his last week of freedom to emulate the frat-house lunacy that Miles avoids. He wants to get liquored up and to copulate with any woman who'll give him the time of day.

Yes, we have in Sideways a classic "Odd Couple" dynamic. While I really cannot recommend the movie per se (especially in a forum such as cinekklesia), due to its extremely bawdy humor, full-frontal nudity, and graphic displays of sexuality, I should say, in fairness, that the dynamic between Miles and Jack is superb. For example, while Miles is obnoxiously verbose in his estimation of any given wine, Jack's opinion basically comes down to "I like it."

(A side note on Sideways: Anybody who has ever had to endure the long-winded digression of a food/wine snob will appreciate Giamatti's portrayal of Miles; he helps us to see such pretension as mere compensation for some perceived lack in the connoisseur's life. Interestingly, I have heard that many wine snobs were furious with Sideways because they disagreed with Miles' judgments of the various vintages that passed through his lips; apparently, Miles' sin wasn't snobbery, but rather, ill-informed snobbery!)

The Odd Couple dynamic becomes particularly strong one-third of the way through the script when Miles learns that his ex-wife recently got married. At that point, he descends into a downward spiral, fueled not only by his depression regarding his ex, but also by anxiety over his manuscript, which is hanging by a thread at yet another publishing house. The mid-life demons haunt him as he examines the brutal reality of his four decades on Planet Earth: low-paid teacher, failed writer, failed spouse.

Jack, we learn, also has some major depression regarding his lot. He not only sees that his acting career is over, but he comes to the realization that his fiancée is all that he has in life. He recognizes that his week-long fling with a vineyard employee is ultimately stupid, and he is desperate to prevent the woman he loves from ever finding out about his liaison.

So, what is wrong with this picture? Ultimately, the mid-life crisis suffers from the same malady as its quarter-life variant: they both rely on worldly estimations of value, and they both facilitate unrealistically high expectations. While suffering angst over one's past mistakes is not intrinsically wrong, the manifestation of such angst during a mid-life crisis is often skewed. Rather than lament (à la Ecclesiastes) how we have wasted so much of our lives in shallow pursuits, we often are dismayed at how little we have achieved in those pursuits. We lament how "little" money we have, how we have been surpassed professionally by others, even how our children have disappointed us (relative to others' kids). We do not grieve at the extent of our worldliness; rather, we grieve at how we have failed in our worldly pursuits.

Both the mid-life and quarter-life crises stem from Americans' unrealistically high expectations (and subsequent sense of entitlement). Because we live in a wealthy society and because we readily see the material accoutrements of our wealthy neighbors, we expect to live at a high level. Thus, Miles is dismayed that he is an unpublished writer, living in a cheap apartment, driving an old car. He fails to recognize that he has a roof over his head, an easy means of transportation, and even some cultural capital to throw around. He's not dying in some refugee camp in western Sudan. He's not ducking gunfire in a Haitian slum. He is, by most accounts, a worldly success.

I do not claim to be without guilt in this matter. I have spent the past several years undergoing my own cycles of quarter-life crises. Now that I'm 30, I have seen several of my friends surpass me in professional standing (and they probably will always be ahead of me in the rat race). However, I have come to the conclusion that such fretting on my part is not only worldly but also ungrateful and narcissistic. To dwell on my own perceived failures is both to ignore God's bountiful blessings in my life and to delude myself into thinking that others actually want to listen to me bemoaning my lot. Nobody really cares about that, and neither should I.

Thus, what Miles, Jack, and the vast majority of middle-class America really need is a swift kick in the rear and a reminder of Jesus' hard lesson in Luke 12:13-21. To focus whole-heartedly on worldly pursuits and then to lament our perceived lack of success through a contrived quarter- or mid-life "crisis" is ultimately a sinful enterprise.