The Land of Steady Habits on Netflix

This film wont appeal to everyone since there is a definitive lack of action and therefore many viewers will find it boring. However, I feel as though the film highlights the aspects of real life struggles that normal people face and the connection between the young and the young at heart is pretty touching and at times made me reflect on my own life choices. Basically, the movie made me "feel" and when a film can pull that off without directly leading you down that path, I find it to be powerful.

This movie was released in 2018 as a Netflix original but for some reason has been in the background for a while and was only brought to my attention recently.

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The film starts out with the main character "Anders" (Ben Mendelsohn) who is recently divorced and retired and is going through the process of trying to deck out his apartment with decorum and necessities only to discover that he doesn't really understand the commercialism behind all the various choices for what are extremely common household items such as toothbrush holders.

I found this part of the film amusing because I go through the exact same thing any time I am in these sorts of departments in stores like Target. How it is possible that there are so many varieties of something as benign as a toilet plunger absolutely blows my mind. I connected with "Anders" on this point and the film started out on my good side because the ridiculous nature of consumerism in modern society is extremely absurd if you think about it just for a bit.

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Anders is still hung up on his ex-wife and although he is older, he still has quite a high level of charm and therefore luck with the ladies. The manner in which he is stuck in limbo between being an adult who is retired but still lives a bachelor life is pretty amusing as he struggles to find an identity because he picks up women left and right but then gets all domesticated by doing silly things like decking out his yard with way too much Christmas decorations.

He is able to connect with younger people in the community and this causes him to end up being a confidant to certain teenagers, but unable to related to his own son who is a recovering drug addict that at 27 years of age still lives at home with his mother.

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Basically, this film is simply about the day-to-day struggles that a lot of people end up facing after a relationship goes sour and people try to be civil about things yet struggle with certain aspects of being and adult because they don't want to be, but are forced to do so to a certain degree. Personally I identified with Anders because I am a bit older and never really "grew up" in the way that many of my classmates and friend have done so as I reach 40.

Should I watch it?

I think that if you are older, say like 35 years of age + that this movie will appeal to you. For me, it made me think about how I should probably cherish my own family, especially my parents, a bit more than I tend to and it actually inspired me to call my mom and she was delighted. The movie isn't really about anything in particular as in there is no bad guy to defeat or anything and it is just simply about an internal struggle that I believe most people will go through at some point in their lives. However, I realize that it might not have this impact on everyone, especially younger audiences.

It currently has an 85 approval rating on RT from professionals and 50% from everyday users and this to me suggests that it might be a bit to artsy for a lot of people