A Home At the End of the World

A rather unusual movie made from a novel by the author of The Hours, and quite a departure for Colin Farrell, an Irishman we had just seen playing a tough guy in Intermission. Before this he’s done mostly action pictures, much more macho things, including Oliver Stone’s Alexander, which we haven’t seen yet. Here, he is Bobby, a flower child whose brother gives him his first LSD trip in 1967 Cleveland, then walked through a glass door and dies. His mother is already dead, and soon his father dies, too. He goes to live with the family of a friend who is gay, and turns his mother (Sissy Spacek) on to marijuana. Years later, Bobby meets his friend in New York, where he is living with a woman (Robin Wright Penn). An odd ménage forms. Bobby can’t bear to see anyone unhappy, and for a while it all works, they have a child, but eventually he can’t make everyone happy and has to make a choice. Not entirely successful, but worth seeing.