- You're late tonight, sir.
- In all the years coming here, I've never told you my name.
It's Walter.
It would make me so happy if you called me that
Walter.
- Ignacio.
Good evening.
- The allure of that never fades, I'm happy to report.
Couple of bunches of hydrangeas?
- You got it.
- Yeah, your dog is cute. - Very cute.
Hey, gentlemen, how you doing tonight?
Can you help out a Marine Corps veteran get something to eat?
I did eight months straight in Fallujah, man.
Just trying to stay warm like you.
- Yo, mister, let me get 50¢, man.
- I'll get you a cup of coffee.
- I want 50¢.
- Sorry.
Maybe you should let these young ladies get their dog.
- Have a good night, Walter.
- Good night, Ignacio.
- You've got to be kidding me.
- Just ignore it. - That is not in my nature.
- Yes? - Help me!
- Sam? - No, it might be a trick.
- Who is this? - What's happening?
- Help me! - I'm buzzing you in.
Get down there, I'm gonna call 911.
- Not a chance. - Then I'm going.
- Okay, okay, okay, all right, fine.
What is that?
Oh, hell.
Senseless.
Perfectly senseless.
My wife.
- Call 911! - I already did.
Jesus.
- It's okay, the ambulance is on its way.
Just hang in there.
- Make sure she gets this. - Jesus!
- Her name is Marcia.
- Shit, there's another guy out here!
- Don't let go.
- I'm here.
- I was just...
A thinker who predates Darwin and dares suggest
that an objective analysis of what it is
to live as a human,
a thinking, sentient being
whose sole trajectory is toward the grave,
particularly once children have been reared,
would have us perhaps choose
not to be born at all.
Imagine that.
Better not to live than to live and suffer.
But Eros seduces us not only into striving
for the falsely ethereal, but worse,
propagating.
And thereby subjecting another generation
to the same suffering we endure.
In short,
to love and reproduce
is at some level a sinister enterprise
because we deposit offspring into such a shitty world.
Any way you look at it,
grim stuff.
So...
Friday then.
Just ten years ago, I was certain the answer was no.
The Greeks had it right.
We're just atoms.
But who knows?
In your lifetime, not mine, thank goodness,
we'll perhaps become immortal.
- You believe in that stuff?
- Our thoughts anyway.
Measurable in bits.
Everything reducible to two symbols or their absence.
I used to believe in nothing.
New I believe in everything.
My problem is how all this degrades our appetite
to keep asking what it could all mean.
Jill might have cancer.
- Might?
- A lesion on one of her ovaries.
Does your mother know?
- We're not telling her yet.
- This puts me in a very odd-
- Dad. is that really gonna be your response?
- Of course not, Adam.
What can we do?
- She doesn't want me telling anyone, so...
this conversation is-
it's nothing personal, she just doesn't want people-
- No need to explain.
- I just...
- I'm here, Adam.
Always.
- Oh, my God. - She didn't.
- That's amazing.
- On.
- I told her, but she's like, "You promised me,"
so I'm hosed.
- What-what if I need that?
- What? - The chair.
- Oh, sorry. - Uh, hold on a second.
Dude, how many tickets do you have?
Fuck you. No way.
- Excuse me. - Hold on.
I said hold on.
Can I just have this chair
until whoever you're waiting for gets here?
- I didn't say that I was waiting for anyone.
- Okay, I get it.
Excuse me, may I please have this chair?
- Why didn't you just ask in the first place?
- Dude, just buy the ticket and I'll deal.
No, I don't want pay for two.
I need this chair and you clearly don't.
- Who are you to determine what I need?
- All right, you keep your fucking chair.
It's the only empty seat in here,
but you could stare at it while you're killing fucking trees.
- My book is used. - Yeah?
Well, you're a selfish, lonely bitch.
- Whoa. - Whoa.
- Dude.
- He already knows his multiplication tables.
- The thing about Bobby is he's an auditory learner
more than a visual one.
- Come on, Marta.
You're really gonna choose now
to talk about your precious little Bobby?
There's a line!
- Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Did you honk at me, Sarah?
- I did, Marta.
- Un-fucking-believable.
And what if I needed to speak to Joan?
- You could email her.
- Maybe I need to speak with her in person
because my son is having trouble.
- Hire a tutor like the rest of us.
- How do I know what to say to the tutor
if I can't speak to his teacher?
- Which brings us back to email.
- I learn more in person.
Inflections.
Like I'm learning what a shrew you are right now.
- Shrew?
- I wouldn't get the full effect in written text.
- Did you just say shrew?
- Fuck off, Jane!
- Marta,
why don't you email me?
- Imagine that.
- You're a cunt, Sarah.
Honk at me again and I'll deck you.
Just get me to 5:00.
- Hi, Mommy.
- Hey! - Here you go, Angie.
- You do the math yet?
No, I'll just ask Hal.
Because he's a fucking genius.
Hal, I can't figure out this- Jesus!
- Get the fuck out! - Look your door.
- I said get out. - This is why we have locks.
- Really? - Are you seriously still here?
- Help me with this problem, sicko.
- Call one of your- - I did.
None of them have done it.
- None of them has done it. - Eat me.
- Incest is taboo. - Give me.
- Not with your jizz hands.
"Find the ratio of radius to circumference"-
- It should never deviate. It's pi r to pi r squared.
- Oh, right.
That's so easy.
- Have you and Amy ever...
I mean, have you guys...
- I wish.
- There's always Holocaust literature.
- Fuck you. - I wasn't even-
- Wailing away reading about the six million?
- We will pursue this no further.
What about you?
- I would have with Lucas, but he never tried,
and I didn't want to come off like a slut.
- Idiot.
- Me or Lucas?
- Both.
- You think I should have lost it to that douche bag?
- He is a douche bag.
- Thanks for telling me.
- I hate all the guys who want to fuck you.
- I just said he didn't want to fuck me.
- Did you blow him?
- Has Amy blown you?
- I asked you first.
Yes.
You had Lucas Rapp's tool in your mouth?
- Okay, enough.
- And he never tried to fuck you.
- Never.
- So he's gay.
- Maybe.
Has Amy ever-
- Hand job.
- Were you thinking about Anne Frank?
Watching footage of The Long March.
- What?
How do you know this shit?
You're a fucking freak.
- Imagine if all the people who built these brownstones
could see the city now.
- Mm.
- It's our ruin or our nirvana.
- What's that supposed to mean?
- Either we'll extinguish ourselves
or become God.
- Jesus, Hal. - What else is there?
- You can still write.
- Shit don't go away.
Just don't nobody want to read it.
Monica know you down here?
- We broke up over a year ago.
- Mission on your own then?
- Maybe.
- Fuck that supposed to mean?
Bringing your obliquity up in here?
This ain't no motherfucking courtroom.
- Just finish up.
- Look at that.
Boy in the day...
Girl at night.
Ah.
Nothing better.
- I have a friend outside that's going to join us.
- Friend? - What kind of friend?
- Helps out with this sort of thing.
- Sort of thing?
- I'm going to open the door.
- Hello there.
- What's going on, Jeffrey?
- Jeffrey has asked me to help to get you some help.
- You a fucking narc?
- I spoke to Dr. Barnes.
- And who told my man about Dr. Barnes?
- Your father.
- Fuck you, man.
- Hey Joe. - Joe, where you going, huh?
Hey. hey, hey, hey!
- No! - Fuck you, Jeffrey!
Fuck you, fucking narc ass motherfucker!
- Here's what happens in the next hour!
We pack you up, go to your doctor, and him and you talk.
- Man, you got to have an appointment
to see that motherfucker!
- And what he say to do, you gonna do.
- Do as I please. - I done took away that right.
- Man, I'm gonna see the police, I'm gonna tell them-
I'm gonna tell them you kidnapping me.
- I know every police in this precinct.
Get you locked up on possession, take days to even think about
remembering to give you a phone call.
So what you gonna do, the-the jail route
or the doctor route?
- I needed to tell someone.
- By all means.
- Look, the last thing I wanted was for you to-
- Then-then why do you do specifically
what I ask you not to do?
- Because I am scared and bewildered and confused.
- What do you think I am?
- If he says it's...
- Then we tell them.
- How?
When? What does one even-
This is what I am talking about.
Why I wanted to speak to someone who's been a parent,
my parent who knows our kids.
- Ms. Zarrow.
- Is this at all related to the fertility?
- Adam asked the same question.
There are some studies that suggest a connection between
progesterone and ovarian cancer,
but a large majority of them makes none.
The truth of the matter is we won't know for a couple
of decades given the uptick in the use of those drugs.
- It will have been worth it.
- Let's not go there.
- I'm gonna have to agree with your husband.
Dr. Nachtagal will assist He is extraordinary.
- And it's...
- Friday. - Friday.
- The earliest I could get.
- Uh, Jill, Adam?
- Hi, Ray.
- You guys have a couple of minutes?
- We leaking on you again? - No, and I got your check
- I'm gonna go up if that's okay.
- Yeah.
- This will just take a couple of minutes, I promise.
- Really, Ray, it's not a good time.
- It's about your kids.
- What's of course hypocritical is we're all alike.
- How's that?
- Over-educated, irrepressibly ambitious.
Moved out to the suburbs, thought it would be perfect,
but without the bank or the law firm or whatever,
what's left but to polish our children
and obsess over every little offense?
More?
- I think I'll switch to wine.
- Stems are in the left cabinet.
You know her math-challenged son already says he's going
to Mommy's college?
- What college? - Princeton.
- Of course.
- It's utterly heinous, the level of entitlement.
As if I would already know that Allie and Angie
were going to Dartmouth.
- This is good.
- I'll send you the website.
From all over the world right to your door,
and the shipping fees are less than what the taxes would be.
What I will say is next to no caregivers.
All moms, but still.
I thought by leaving Manhattan I was through with it.
This is worse because all the conniving and ambition
are less artfully concealed.
- Don't lose sight of how lucky you are.
- Morning on the other side of the world.
That'll be husband.
- I'll check on the girls. - Thanks, Mere.
Hello!
- Angie?
- Oh, you know, just keeping it all moving.
About to have dinner.
Meredith came out.
I know.
How's China?
Well, what do you want me to ask you?
I know.
Allie's sick, but it'll pass.
When are you coming back?
No, no, everything's fine. I'm just...
You do want to come home, though?
Promise?
No, I know. Sure.
Girls, it's your dad!
May I call you once I put them down?
Okay, I-I'll try anyway.
Here.
- Hi, Daddy.
- Immediately.
- What time is it there?
- Really? - Mm.
- Good.
Yeah.
- Come on.
- Hello there.
- I beg your pardon?
- Can't a man greet a woman in the street?
- Is it Friday?
- Just mixing things up.
- You were going to call.
Did you have lunch with Adam?
What did he want?
- To catch up.
Where were you headed?
- I'm craving chocolate.
- Mind if I join?
- You lecture today?
Take on erotic striving.
By my flee. he was living with poodles.
He said marriage was to reach into a sack of snakes
and find an eel.
Mine is a life in which the thinkers I admire
contradict the reality I inhabit.
- Well, that's a relief.
- I'm gonna retire.
- What?
- At the end of the year.
My spring load is light, then I'm done.
- And you're telling me this on a chance walk to the deli?
- When else?
- Why'?
- I always said when I was done I'd know it.
I've been suspicious for some time.
- Suspicion is hardly-
- I'm certain.
- What are you gonna do?
- Wake up and not have any idea.
I've got a decade left, maybe two.
I want possibility.
- It's all you've ever done.
- And my life has been incredibly fulfilling.
I've been decent, honest, loyal.
- I've worked hard. - Yes.
- I've also been perpetually and resolutely safe.
It's a threshold, Marcia.
There for a moment, then gone.
I've spent my life delving into what it all means.
I want to see for myself
without the reassurance of young adoration.
- And will it be all right if I still adore you?
- More essential than ever.
Let's get you chocolate.
- I really think we should give it an hour.
A half hour even.
- Not happening-
- Just to put it in perspective.
Particularly with the sort of week it's been.
- Hal! - Ella!
Get your asses down here!
- If you're gonna interrogate us like this,
which based on the stories you and Dad have told us
will be patently hypocritical-
- I swear to you, Hal, if you don't cut
the lawyerly bullshit, I am gonna smack you so hard
you're gonna come to in New Jersey.
- Jill.
- Answer the question.
Once a week? More?
Three times? Every day?
- Again, I'm sorry, I reject the inquisitional tone.
- Hal, if you ever wanted to do me a favor
just play ball here.
- What the hell is going on?
- You have been getting baked, daily it would seem,
in full view of our neighbors.
- But why the rage and hysteria?
- Why do you cry every day for the last three weeks?
- Ella, please.
- Seriously, you guys must have-
- Oh, my God, it's all crashing down.
- Guys, answer the question.
- Fine.
At least daily.
Even more than that.
Whenever possible.
- Where do you get it? - Mm-mm.
- You're telling us, Hal.
- Not unless you want me changing schools.
- A kid in your class?
- Yeah, would you rather I buy it on the streets?
Would that make you feel better?
It's pot, Dad.
Ultimately less potent than the four glasses of wine
you drink every night.
And I'm first in my class by miles,
what the fuck difference does it make?
- Don't disrespect your father.
- Did you seriously just say "disrespect"?
- What is going on here?
Anyone?
- Go ahead.
- A tumor has been discovered on one of your mother's ovaries.
- Oh, shit.
- She is having a procedure this Friday
thatll have her in the hospital for the night
and in bed for a lot of the weekend,
so I think you can understand why the timing of this-
- So, um, I'm sorry, as in-as in malignant?
- Jesus, Hal.
- Possibly, yes.
It's largely now just a question of whether it's spread.
- Look, guys.
Whatever happens, we're gonna deal.
I know.
- Just stop smoking pot on the roof or anywhere.
- We will.
- You promise?
- We promise.
- You know this motherfucker think I'm crazy, right?
- Crazy is a tricky word, Joe.
- You hear this shit?
Been dealing with that since grade school.
Motherfucker twists every word that come out your mouth.
- Okay, Shani.
- Ooh, fine-looking woman, that Shani.
- That's enough, Joe.
- Fine habiliments too.
- I said that's enough, Joe.
- Oh, Shani don't mind being told she fine.
Got them kind of legs that don't stop.
- Good-bye, Dr. Barnes.
- Which one of you is Jeffrey? - I am.
- I told you explicitly-
- I know, I know.
First of all, I would like you to meet Cedar Lemons,
and we truly appreciate you seeing us
after what I know must have been an arduous day.
- You lay that shit on, Jeffrey.
- That woman was a patient.
I'm running a practice here.
- We're truly sorry-
- And there's no point to any of this
unless Joe is on board.
- Joe is on board.
- I need to hear that from Joe.
- On board, Doctor.
- I heard that before.
- I just got to make things right.
Get my equilibrium.
- Not in here, Joe.
- Oh, come on, Doctor. - Joe, listen to me.
Not in here.
There's a bathroom down the hall.
Where you going, bitch?
- Wherever you go. - Like white on rice.
And you don't disrespect me
or Jeffrey or the doctor here no more.
Shit's done. You got that?
- Got it.
- So he wants to shoot up and you allow that?
- I run a psychiatric office, not a precinct.
How do you know Joe?
- We grew up together.
- You paying for the muscle?
- His father.
- I met him.
Difficult man, but obviously smart.
- Joe's smarter.
- Be tough to argue that right at this moment.
- You don't seem to like Joe much.
- I love Joe.
I spent four years confronting the tragedy that is Joe.
Smart?
Imagine what he could have been.
We get him across the street, I can keep him in
until he signs himself out, which he will do.
You gonna be there to pick him up?
- I'm leaving for Delaware.
- He'll be out of his mind with no money.
He has a history of theft.
- I know.
- And violence.
I'm not gonna follow him around and clearly you're not either.
- I need to do this.
- Not just across the street.
Inside.
Where he signs his name.
- Just a second.
Just a second.
- Joe. - No, fuck you, man.
I'm just making sure I got everything I need.
- My wife and my children are expecting me at home.
- I ain't stopping you.
Familial bliss.
I get that shit.
- I'm going inside.
- See how that motherfucker treat me?
- Treating you straight.
- What you know?
- I got to be a expert?
- You got to know something you want to tell me what's what.
- Guy got me clean was my uncle.
Never touched a needle in his life.
- Saying you used? - You hear what you want.
- Uh-uh, Joe, not here in the street.
- Got to put that away.
- One POP-
Last one of my life.
- Son of a bitch! - That's right, you stay away-.
- Give me the rig.
- I ain't going to that hospital
till you get your ass out of here.
You hear me?
I ain't going no place till this motherfucker
extricate his hormone monster ass
from the situation!
- Fine.
- Wait, what?
- You paid me to get him to the doctor.
- He paid you?
Remune-fucking-ration?
- Think I done this on charity work, you junkie ass?
Nice meeting you, Jeffrey. Good luck.
Now it's just you and me, huh?
Like the old days down in the basement.
- You need to put that away, man.
- Just give me two minutes.
Two minutes.
- What's going on now, Joe?
- Just thinking a little.
Maybe I'll go home.
You know, get truly ready.
Sort this shit out.
Then we meet here tomorrow first thing.
Tabula rasa.
- Maybe we should go inside as planned.
Otherwise you're a danger to yourself and others out here.
Wouldn't you say so, Jeffrey?
- I would.
- No! - No!
What's going on?
No! No! No!
Let me go!
Jeffrey! No!
I tell you it's against my consent!
It's against my consent! Jeffrey!
Jeffrey, please!
Don't do this to me!
Jeffrey, don't!
Motherfucker, no!
It's against my will!
Jeffrey!
Oh, God!
No! No, Jeffrey!
Jeffrey!
Don't, please!
Please!
No!
Please, Jeffrey, please!
Don't do it!
Don't! Please, don't!
Jeffrey, don't do-
don't do it!
Please!
No! No!
- She trusted, right?
And her trust got broken.
- The loss of innocence?
- Where'd you get that?
- Ms. Geller.
- So you're paying attention.
- What's that supposed to mean?
- Go ahead. - Type it in.
- She's asleep.
- How many chapters did you read?
- Three.
- She's gonna want you here every night.
Say good night to your Aunt Meredith.
- She's not my aunt.
- It's an expression.
See you soon, Allie.
- Night, Mere.
- Have that done when I get back.
No texting or IMing or emailing
or any other kind of pseudo-communication.
- This was amazing.
They're amazing.
You made the right choice.
- You think? - Well, why did you?
- The city had made me numb.
- Yeah, I get that.
- Don't patronize.
- That's harsh.
- You'd switch places?
- Conceptually in a second.
Especially after 2008, so let's not go there.
- I don't believe my husband is in China.
- What?
- When he called, I heard a siren in the background.
It was definitely American.
- Sarah.
- You forget I spent a year and a half
in Beijing after B-school.
I know of what I speak.
- Did you say anything?
- 'Where are you and with whom?
"Why do you spend so much time away?"
No.
- Just because-
you don't know.
No, you're right.
I shouldn't have said anything.
- Because why would he?
- You're right.
- I can stay.
- Europe will be humming at 5:00 a.m.
I know the drill.
- I love you. - I love you.
- Ray is a prick and a narc.
You're gonna tell me that superannuated hippie
didn't smoke in his day?
That he still doesn't?
You know, Mom's right.
We're, uh...
We're gonna deal.
I promise.
- So what did you say?
- Does it matter?
- Maybe I want to know how you lie.
- Wow.
- The usual?
- Thanks. - And you?
- Uh, coffee and lox platter, everything bagel.
- Why "wow"?
- It's-it was just a strong statement, that's all.
- What do you want from me, Sam?
- This.
Right now.
- Like your bagel.
- My bagel?
- Everything.
- Is there coffee?
- Oh, I thought you left.
- I pushed my first meeting half an hour.
Not sure the girl will show anyway.
- Who is she?
- Graduate student I was telling you about.
Brilliant but troubled.
- How?
- Not sure.
Inscrutable.
- Eat out tonight?
- I'm hosting the seminar dinner.
- I hate the thought of you walking home so late.
- I'll be quiet coming in.
- I might be up.
- Yeah?
- The first time I came to New York,
this is where my mum took us before anywhere else.
I was so pissed.
- Why? - Where did you want to go?
- Shops, noise,
the huge buildings,
theaters, streets.
Wha-whatever.
- That doesn't sound like you.
- Yeah, but then when we got there, I was like,
"Oh, I get it."
- You'll have to tell her you went.
- "Oh, that's so sweet, darling.
Who'd you go with?"
- You don't have to tell her with whom.
- She says I'm having the life she never had the guts to.
- A career.
- Oh, bigger than that.
Like, she's never had a place of her own.
Imagine that.
From her parents to college and then in with Dad.
And of course, I have yet to live the only life she's known.
- Well, would you want that?
- I-I'm as.
- Friends of mine are having their kids in their 40s.
- And they'll be in their 60s when their kids
graduate college.
Not for me.
You need to know that.
- You've made that clear.
- It doesn't seem like it.
- Okay.
We have four days together.
Three and a half.
We agreed that we- and now twice this morning.
- I'm sorry.
- I'll do right by us.
I just don't know what that means.
- Can't that be good?
Not knowing?
- It just seems so irrelevant.
Arguing interpretations with the other 12 people
that have read the same text as you.
- Millions would be more accurate.
- Not these days.
- Something must've kept you interested
through a master's program.
You become accustomed.
- To abject despair?
- To choosing a life that relates directly to very few,
but quite directly to everyone.
- What if you're fooling yourself?
- That very question is what it's all about.
- Fooling ourselves?
- At the heart of human interaction
is the agreement that we're all going to fabricate.
Which is to say, agree on certain precepts we call truths,
but would be utter nonsense to anyone not in on the game.
Consider language.
We call an elephant an elephant
with a certainty that will go so far as to marginalize,
even ostracize those who will refuse.
Society depends zealously on this, so we can structure it.
In this case, communicate with one another
even as each of us has his or her own
disposition toward elephants.
Why should philosophy in any form be different?
- Because ultimately who really cares?
- Everyone, regardless of how few want to try
to understand it, which is why I've spent my life gorgeously
and so can you.
- Why have you done this to yourself, Sophie?
- To know that I'm here.
- May I ask how?
- Curling iron mostly.
- If to be wounded is to exist...
You're giving yourself a pretty narrow endgame.
- Have you sought counseling?
Been to health services?
- There is a woman that I've started to see, yeah.
- Is she aware of this?
You have to tell her.
- Will you come with me?
- No, Mr. Cohen already makes me paranoid enough.
- But that's two hours from now,
and besides, he's harmless.
All you have to do is use the word "dichotomy"
and he'll eat out of your hand.
- I still don't know what that word means.
- He actually misuses it.
Specifically it's the rhetorical contrasting of two opposing
or divergent ideas, thus the prefix dicho-, two,
and then -tomy, meaning to cut.
- Make out with me.
Hal?
- Yeah?
- I think I'm ready.
This weekend my parents will be away.
- Is it 'cause my mom has cancer?
- No, asshole.
It's because I want to.
- So it's not a sympathy thing?
You ask me that one more time,
we're breaking up and you can keep fucking your hand.
- Wow.
Friday might be tricky,
but I can just tell my parents I'm staying at Greg's.
- I could spend a year like this.
Every day.
How do you fit it all into a life?
- You leave the world with things still to do.
- That's tragic.
- Tragic is becoming satisfied.
Why didn't I meet you 20 years ago?
- Mm, the Atlantic Ocean.
Child abuse.
- Where's that one from?
- Malaysia.
- This shape is incredible.
- Mm.
The lower and upper sepals are for protection.
This petal is the labellum.
It's always the largest.
It lies flat like that to make it comfortable for pollinators.
All that beauty is-is just about making more of them.
- Right.
- Sam?
- You've got to be kidding me. - What is it?
- That's my daughter's teacher.
- Teddy, I'll take your picture.
- And that's my daughter.
Come on.
- He just stays in his little bubble.
- Sophie?
- Two months.
- What made you start?
- An accident.
- With the iron?
- Cigarette.
- Was it an accident?
- I guess not.
- Go on.
- I-it...
It concentrated me...
To the exclusion of everything else.
- And that was good?
- It was like a drug.
- What's everything else?
The world has just become...
So inhuman.
Everyone's plugged in.
Blindingly inarticulate.
Obsessed with money, their careers.
Stupidly, arrogantly content.
I can't talk to them.
I fight them.
I want to destroy them, even.
I crave interaction.
I crave it.
But you just can't anymore.
They pull their devices out for every little thing:
to reinforce their petty, convenient notions,
to decide where they're going to shop,
what they're gonna eat, what movies they're gonna watch,
everything they ingest.
- Why does that upset you?
- Because what is left?
My God.
- But that doesn't have to be you.
- Okay.
It's like this is all a game
and I haven't been told what the rules are.
Or even worse, if I had,
I am ill-equipped to follow them.
All I can do is provoke.
I become spiteful.
I'm just as bad as they are.
They? I'm-I'm worse.
I fucking hate myself for it
I'm-I am so fucking lonely.
Why is the world so base?
Why is it so insensitive?
Why is it so selfish?
Why am I?
I am not for this world.
- Fucking shit.
- You've been asleep a long time.
- How long?
- From when they say you come in last night?
14 hour.
- Seriously?
- It ain't up to me.
- But you could undo them, couldn't you?
Extricate my ass?
- And lose my job?
- Where you going?
- Other patient.
- I'm just hungry like a motherfucker.
- We're gonna get you food, bring you water.
- You got some crack I can smoke?
- Afraid not.
- You know, just a little bit.
Fire that shit up.
Motherfucker!
Fuck you!
Fuck it!
- We were just out of school.
Living uptown.
We both had really lucrative job offers.
She was gonna maybe go to London.
Chose the Far East instead to be with me.
The next logical step was marriage and kids.
And we just did that, kind of without even discussing it.
Two hyper-educated young adults
making the most significant decision in life
without a single real conversation.
We talked about movies we saw
more than the meaning of a future together.
I remember being, um...
What would the word be?
Frozen when she was pregnant the first time.
I thought,
"Oh.
You know, something's definitely over."
And I never stopped to enjoy it.
- But you like having kids.
- I love having kids.
I get home, you know, usually too late for dinner.
She's...
Into her third drink,
and I have about an hour before the girls have to go to bed,
and I-
I go into their room with a plate, and I-l don't leave.
Most of our interactions these days
consist of algebra and whatever
self-consciously multi-cultural book
they're reading at the time.
As they get older, they get...
Quieter.
The older one, Allie, she's- she's getting belligerent.
- Mm.
Your wife drinks 'cause you're not really there.
- Yeah, that's obviously part of that.
- Not exactly the raucous time we were thinking of, huh?
- It's honest.
- That's ironic.
- Mm.
- I don't want to go home yet.
- You have to, Sam.
- Just one more day.
She's not expecting me yet.
- One more day.
- Are there friends you can speak to?
Your father?
Your brother. Hal, isn't it?
- What is this with me needing to talk to anyone?
- Just to know others are concerned, care about you.
- You believe that?
That people care about each other'?
- We treat people the way we want to be treated.
It's just compassion.
- I don't consider myself compassionate.
I have no respect for my father
because he is bossed around by my mother.
Now, I not only hate her,
but I resent her
because it's interfering with my life.
- All this is natural.
- It's-
Pretty fucked up too.
- You're young.
You don't want your life interrupted.
- I love her so much.
- Hello, Joe.
- Fucking let me out of here.
- In about 20 hours, you'll be able to sign yourself out.
- So let's skip the fucking hassle.
- By law, I've got to hold you for 48 hours.
- Hold a man that wasn't hurting nobody.
Come to his apartment uninvited,
chuck him in a hospital, strap him down.
- If you could kill yourself right now, would you?
Ain't gonna kill myself.
- You'll be dead in a year.
- You told me that last year.
- Last year I gave you two years.
We're right on schedule.
- Tell that nurse to bring me my dinner.
- Not until I-
- I don't think you understand.
You are not here anymore.
- That what you're expecting, Mr. Clancy?
- It's opening up.
- You want to try something else?
- I'm good, thanks.
- Hello, Jeffrey.
- You too?
Where's Devlin?
- He's here. - The full team.
- Care to join me?
- Think we can be nice to each other?
- I'm optimistic.
- Excuse me.
- His name's Jerry.
- First name basis.
- Hey, Jerry, this is Rachel. - Yeah.
- I'm arguing against her in the morning.
Make sure she's hungover.
I'll just have a glass of that and see a menu.
- Sure thing.
Shit.
I have to make a phone call.
It'll be a second.
- Yeah, who this?
- Hey, buddy, how you faring?
- How am I faring?
What am I, on a motherfucking yacht?
- How are you, Joe?
- You fucking left town.
- I had no choice.
- You always got a choice.
Even I know that, and I'm a motherfucking junkie.
- A case I've been working on for eight months.
- So that's more important than your friend
that you just dumped in a detox?
- To a company with $700 million at stake, it is.
- Oh, so that's supposed to
belittle me, make me feel small.
What, you working for Warren fucking Buffett?
Maybe you could've picked another day
to fucking commit me.
- Hasn't your dad been down?
- When I was asleep.
- Well, he'll be back. - For what?
- Says he kept you afloat for the past five years.
- And pay for four years at Amherst.
You think I haven't heard that?
When you coming back?
- Depends on how long the case lasts.
- Say, man, how much, uh, you make a year?
I mad in the newspapers you motherfuckers can pull in
$2 million plus if you're a partner at a big firm.
- We are not discussing that.
- Okay, so what we gonna discuss?
'Cause you called my ass.
- I have to go, Joe.
- Why you hanging up so fast?
- I'm in a meeting.
- Don't go, man.
- I'll call you later.
Don't forget:
you all I got.
- I'll set my alarm to it
- I'll be waiting up.
- Hey-hey, Joe?
- Yeah?
- I love you, man.
- I got to go-.
- So what was Ginsberg like?
- Fantastic. - Really.
- And no way was I gonna teach.
Corporate all the way.
Litigation all the way.
Never anything else.
When I decided to sell.
- Fucking call me.
Fucking call me!
Why didn't you wake me?
- You should get the kids up.
- All right.
Hal, it's 6:45.
- Thanks, Dad.
- Few minutes. - No.
Don't fuck with me this morning.
You know what's happening today. I don't have the time or energy.
- I'm gonna stay at Greg's tonight.
- Pardon?
- Greg's. - He needs, uh-
- Are you aware that your mother is having surgery?
- Yes, I thought you wanted me out of the house.
- No, you want to go to Greg's and get stoned
'cause it's harder to do that here now.
- That's actually not the case.
- We're gonna be together this weekend as a family.
That means while your mom and I are at the hospital,
you're home with Ella.
- Okay. - That's all you had to say.
- I just wish I hadn't.
- The best thing you can do for me is to ace that history test.
- I got it postponed.
- Ella, don't do that.
You could take it with your eyes closed.
- Well, I'm not going to.
- What are you gonna do during that period?
- Talk with Mr. Werth.
- Can't you talk with him during a free?
- I don't want to.
Why do you care? I'll take it next week.
- I need to feel like your life is going on.
That it will go on.
- I'd want it to stop for me.
- You won't when you're a mom.
- Yes, I will.
- Just take the fucking test.
- Honey, we should go.
- Why do we all have to play stringed instruments?
- It's good for your brain.
- So is math and science. - So is reading.
- Presumably you're being taught those subjects as well.
- They could teach them more and ditch the hours of violin
every week.
- Besides, she doesn't let us play any notes.
- What do you do?
- Spend the first three months learning how to hold
the stupid instrument.
- You're joking.
- It's totally fucking lame.
- Watch your language.
And Mrs. Silver is nationally renowned.
- As what?
- As a violin teacher.
And your school happens to have the top strings program
in the country.
You know, families move to Englewood just to go there.
- Is that why we moved to Englewood?
- No.
I mean, I did check out the school, but-
Don't you like New Jersey?
- I hate New Jersey.
- I love it.
- You're a moron.
- I wanted change.
- So Dad could be gone half the time
and you could get drunk every night?
- Holy shit.
Angie, get out of the car.
- Why? - Just get out of the car.
Go to strings.
Don't you ever talk to me like that again,
especially in front of your little sister.
You might be a fucked-up little monster, but she isn't.
- Well, like you say, Mom,
smart people, girls especially, are all fucked up.
- You think I'm drinking too much?
It's just wine mostly.
- I think you're not happy.
Not happy in the city working.
Not happy in New Jersey not working.
- I don't know what-
- Just don't drink anymore.
- It's not that easy.
- Try middle school.
- Gladly.
- Aren't there drugs you can take?
- I'm on just about every one you can imagine.
So are all the moms you can see.
Except maybe Marta, although she should be.
- Real mature, Mom.
- That will probably be the highlight of my daylight hours.
- I'm sorry.
- No.
I am.
You should probably get going.
Jesus.
Fucking sharks.
- Gracie. - Good morning.
- I need you to give me a hand.
Empty all these.
The ones with screw tops you can pour down the sink.
The ones with corks, you can have.
- No, I don't drink.
- Oh, give them to your husband.
Trust me, he'll be happy.
Now.
- Are you sure about these French ones?
He always say-
- If he cared, he'd be here.
- Where the hell have you been?
- I'm on time, aren't I?
- For the meeting two hours ago?
- I'm sure you handled it fine.
- I'm second fucking chair.
- This is open and shut.
They should've settled.
- All rise.
- Counselor,
I really hope you're not going to use that in my courtroom.
- Just turning it off, Your Honor.
Hello, you've reached Jeffrey.
Please leave your name, number, and a detailed message,
and HI get-
- Good morning, sunshine.
- Speaking of which,
where's that paperwork I can sign myself out
to see some motherfucking sunshine?
- What happened to a child like you?
- Meaning?
- Once you must was a good boy.
Done what him told.
How you gone so wrong?
- I was 14
in the basement of my best friend's house in Maryland.
Me and him snuck a bottle of Sambuca down there.
Finished it between us.
I ain't never looked back.
- This ain't Sambuca.
- Discovered the good stuff a lot later.
- And your friend?
- Now he a fancy nigger lawyer who don't answer my calls.
- Maybe him busy with him life.
' Oh. yeah?
- You can't see you in charge of yourself.
You can't do nothing.
- You think I don't know that?
- So why you here in a bed got straps?
- What then do ail these thinkers we've examined
this semester have in common?
If we truly explore to find a common thread?
At the outset of a century that would constitute
the bloodiest in human history,
along with scientific and technological advancements
that would literally make us like gods.
Even as we began to dismantle the very meaning of God,
they ask...
"'What is a life?"
Does to live any longer have a how?
Does it any longer have a why?
Against a backdrop of industrialization,
people will contend with alienation,
dislocation,
population on a mass scale,
and murder
on a mass scale.
They'll consider the constraints of truth,
whether metaphor or paradigm,
with many concluding actual truth has never existed.
A nexus in the great human saga,
when we dared to trade the organizing bliss
of good and evil, right and wrong
as determined by a creator
for other opiates.
Communism, socialism,
capitalism, psychology.
Technology, any learnable system
to replace what had begun to evaporate.
The 20th century.
My own,
but also the one into which each of you was born.
For many, an era of hope, liberation, possibility.
For others, of abandonment and despair.
A most human century in which we begin
really to understand that Nietzsche was right.
- We are beautifully,
finally,
achingly- - -
Alone.
- In this void, philosophy at its worst
becomes self-reflective,
linguistic, semantic...
- Typically, opposing counsel...
- Relativism having rendered any discussion
of right and wrong, good and evil,
to be the quaint concerns of another age.
At its most provocative,
it asks other questions.
Those concerned with locating our stranded selves...
When meaning seems to have died.
- He's expecting your call.
- So you gonna sign me out or what?
- Nothing less, in short, than why do we live at all?
- Call him. - Go there.
- And what makes us who we are?
They ask.
"'What now?"
And we're still asking it.
What will fortify us as another century,
your century, commences?
Do we abandon finally the search for truths
that seem ever more elusive, even silly to some?
The ethical? The moral?
The good?
Principles that by definition can never be proved
when so much now can be proved?
Or is all this finally and forever pointless?
Are we done?
We can destroy cities, alter the planet irreversibly,
speak instantaneously face-to-face
from across the globe,
create life where there was to be none,
even while intoxicating ourselves with it all.
And yet, how do we still seek purpose?
And where do we hope to find it if we're so busy
convincing ourselves there needn't be any?
And so we wander,
eyes closed to the dark,
while technology, science, medicine, and godlessness
blaze illusions around us,
with less to guide us now than ever.
Seemingly omnipotent...
But more human,
and just as afraid.
These quandaries do not end with this course
a week from today.
They begin,
and I certainly haven't taught these writers
for 30 years just so you can drop references
to existential thinkers and their antecedents
at dinner parties.
The crowd is untruth.
In an era darkened
by the false shade of imperviousness,
you and those who pause to question
carry the light.
It's been a wonderful 34 years.
Let's not be strangers.
Either to one another or, more importantly,
to everything we've learned from one another.
May your best years be yet to come.
And so for us all.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- Hey, what are you doing? - That's my purse!
- Hey! - We got to get my purse!
- Motherfucker!
- So I heard you gave quite the final lecture
in the survey course.
- Well attended anyway.
Students I hadn't seen in years.
I'm sorry I wasn't there.
Th-this is me, so...
- You made a promise.
- I know.
- So?
- I-I I can't.
- I'll make me a willow cabin at your gate.
- Who's that?
"- Viola from 'Twelfth Night."
I said it to my wife 46 years ago when I proposed.
- You're gonna be late getting back to her, so...
- And later still the longer we tarry.
- I can just get another one.
I can use cigarettes.
- A moment at a time.
Mm.
- Sophie.
Thank you.
- You're worth it.
- Where are you?
- I was with a student.
The one I told you about.
- Should I wait up?
- If you can.
I won't be ten minutes more.
- Okay.
- Hey, what's going on, my man?
- You're late tonight, sir.
- In all the years coming here, I've never told you my name.
It's Walter.
It would make me so happy if you called me that.
- Walter. - Ignacio.
- Good evening. - Hi.
- The allure of that never fades, I'm happy to report.
- Couple of bunches of hydrangeas?
- You got it.
- Have a good workout tonight, ladies?
- Yeah.
- Your dog is cute, very cute.
- Got to have milk, don't you?
Drink milk all my life.
Maybe you drunk milk too.
Look like you live the good life.
- I have actually.
- What's the secret?
- You can't imagine how ironic it is
that you're asking me that today.
Perhaps it's as simple as enjoying a glass of milk
or buying flowers for your wife every Friday,
which I've done for as long as I can remember,
and which I shall do now.
- Could you loan me five bucks?
- For?
- Gonna buy drugs.
Which I need awful bad.
Hungry too.
- I'm gonna give this to the men at the register
and tell him you can have anything in the store
one can eat up to $5 worth,
and that he is to keep the change.
- Just like that? - Just like that.
And if you ever see me around here,
I'll always do the same for you,
so long as I'm able.
Simplicity of the divine.
- You've read Augustine?
- Not everything.
- Don't worry, no one has.
- And in translation too.
- I'd be lying if I said I didn't need a moment to process
where this conversation has suddenly veered.
- Come on, man, just help me out with 50¢, anything.
Yeah, you better walk away, motherfuckers!
Yo, mister,
let me get 50¢, man.
- I'll get you a cup of coffee.
- I want 50¢. - Sorry.
Maybe you should let these young ladies get to their dog.
- You gonna tell me what to do in my neighborhood?
- I've lived here 25 years,
but no, it's just a request.
- Thanks.
- Thank you.
- Have a good night, Walter.
- Good night, Ignacio.
- Excuse me.
He-he buy that for you?
- That he did.
- Anyone who ask,
he always.
Buena suerta, si?
- Gonna need that too.
- Hey, bud.
- Hmm? - You dropped something.
- Help!
Help! Help!
Help me!
- Yes? - me!
- Help me, please! - Who is this?
What's happening?
- Help me! - I'm buzzing you in.
- Hey!
- Do it, motherfucker!
No, mother-this ain't your fucking business!
You're doing me a favor.
- A favor?
End this shit for good.
- Hal?
Ella?
Guys?
- You're back?
Is it-why didn't you call?
- Get Hal.
- Can you at least tell me?
- No, not until you're both down here.
- We think I'm gonna be fine, honey.
It was just a big scare.
- Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God!
- Ah, careful, honey.
Go get your brother.
- That might be difficult.
- Are you fucking kidding me?
He's at Greg's getting stoned.
- He's at Amy's.
He hopes losing his virginity.
Her parents are away for the weekend.
- Oh.my...
- He said he did a risk assessment
and the benefits outweighed the potential negatives.
- Jesus Christ.
- Honey, he can be in trouble in the morning.
Let's just be happy.
Pour me a glass of wine.
- You're a lot more forgiving than I am.
Mom?
- ♪ If your clarinet should break ♪
♪ Do not cry a million lakes ♪
- Okay.
♪ If the wind surrounds ♪
- ♪ Do not turn and twist about ♪
♪ Just wait it out ♪
- I love you, Hal.
- I love you too.
- ♪ If your hand should lose its grip ♪
I
I love you.
♪ Do not tremble ♪
♪ Do not sweat ♪
♪ For where then would you get ♪
♪ Where then would you get ♪
- I'm sorry.
- It's okay.
♪ Where then would you get ♪
- A B-centimeter vertical laceration
in the mid epigastrium.
Abrasions to the head.
- You guys get service down here?
- There is an air shaft.
- Give me a sec, will you?
- Mom?
- Oh, God. - Where is he?
What are they- - In intensive care.
- He lost so much blood. - But do they say if he-
- I don't know. I'm so afraid to ask.
- Excuse me.
- Do you mind? - I-I'm sorry.
Are you the family of the man who, uh...
- Yeah.
- I was just, uh, speaking with the police back at-
I-in any case, your husband asked me to give you these.
- What did he say to you?
- Just, uh, just to give you those flowers
and that-that he never missed a Friday.
- Anything else?
- I probably misheard.
- Please.
Please.
- Cabbages.
I'm planting cabbages.
- Oh, God.
Perfect.
- Thanks.
- I'm sorry.
- Mom?
It's from Montaigne.
"I want death to find me
"planting my cabbages,
"careless of death,
"and still more
of my unfinished garden."
- Hello?
- Hey.
- Sam? - Is that you?
- Yeah.
I, uh, I miss you.
I want to come home.
- That's not gonna he so simple.
For either of us.
Forget that you're not even in China.
- Sarah- - Forget where you really are.
Probably the city for all I know.
I don't even care at this point,
which is terrifying in itself.
I'm not gonna be what I've turned into anymore.
- Neither am I.
- I don't believe you, Sam.
Any more than you believe me.
- Sarah, it's been a strange night.
- It should go without saying
that I don't really want to know.
- No, it's not like that. - ;-
I'll explain it when we, uh-
- I don't want to see you right now, Sam.
You want to come home?
Let's discuss it when you were supposed to come back
from China.
- Okay.
- And start thinking if this is
where you really want to be.
- The issue is more what the loss of blood
did to his brain function
in addition to the trauma of being stabbed.
We can keep his heart beating, but-
- I-is my mother-in-law aware of this'?
- She's certainly not leaving his side.
- All right.
I'm gonna go in there.
- Can I, Dad?
- Sure.
- Well, at least he's not in any pain.