Don Jon was one of those movies that I thought might be interesting, but I had no strong desire to see it. This was mostly due to the fact that I only saw a trailer for it perhaps once, and it was brief and lightweight, not really giving us a peak into the movie’s real theme. I’ve noticed that many trailers seem to do that these days; instead of showing us key parts (or, in some cases, the entire plot) in the trailer, it shows us very little, as if hoping to surprise us. Her comes to mind. And Silver Linings Playbook. But I suppose good movies don’t need to show us too much in the trailer; word of mouth will do its job.
Synopsis
Don Jon is about Jon, a 20-something bartender in New Jersey (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who spends his free time hitting on girls in clubs and attempting to sleep with “dimes” (Tens). In many cases he succeeds, as he’s nice looking, very fit due to his Gym Rat status, and confident to the point of hubris. Jon develops an interest in Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), a Dime he meets at the club who won’t sleep with him that night… or any night for the next month or so as he gets pulled into doing “long game” with her. Things go well until Barbara discovers Jon watches porn. Not only does he watch it, it’s a daily habit for him, something that offers him what he needs: the ability to “lose himself” (his words). Real-life sex just doesn’t measure up. It’s when he meets Esther (Julianne Moore), a weed-smoking, free-spirited older woman, that things take an unusual turn.
Porn and Sexual Addiction
Don Jon is a porn addict. He says he can “stop anytime he wants” (the mantra of all addicts), but when he tries, he finds he can’t. He can’t even masturbate with his eyes closed. Many people compare this movie to Shame, a film about a man’s struggle with sexual addiction, but the two movies have very little in common. Shame is about the pain and darkness of sexual addiction and the joylessness of addictive sex. Don Jon, on the other hand, isn’t dark and isn’t really about addiction. It’s not even about sex. The one thing both films have in common: the leading man’s inability to really connect with others in a healthy way.
Don Jon is about relationships and what it is to connect to another human being. Sex is a unique opportunity to do that, but we live in a culture that struggles with this, that on the one hand looks down on sex for fun’s sake, and on the other supports an extremely profitable porn industry.
The Power of Imagery… and Fantasy
Humans are visual creatures. We love imagery, and film offers such powerful imagery at times that it can impact how we think about certain issues, including our expectations about relationships. For Don Jon, porn imagery skewed his expectations about women and relating to them. For Barbara, the imagery of romantic films fueled her unrealistic expectations about perfect love. Barbara wasn’t enough for Jon; he needed the porn. And Jon wasn’t enough for Barbara either; she expected him to get a more impressive career, to hire someone to clean his home rather than do it himself. She also expected him avoid porn, but not for the right reasons. Their relationship hit a crisis when their shallow, unrealistic fantasies and expectations collided with one another. Porn and romance movies aside, isn’t this what many people do?
In some ways, the film explores male/female differences in an obvious way–we’ve all heard the “men like porn, women like romance” thing until it’s become BORING. But, as Don Jon shows in its unique way, men and women seek the same thing, only in different ways.
Don Jon isn’t about porn and whether it’s okay or not okay. It’s about the things that get in the way of really connecting with someone we’re involved with. Those things can include porn or unrealistic romantic expectations, but they can also include focusing too much on how hot someone is, how much money they make, or whether that person fits the mental image you have for the ideal partner. This is what many people do until they learn–often the hard way–that such things won’t make them happy.
Jon didn’t just kick porn; he learned to connect with a woman. He went from chasing the Dime he thought he wanted but with whom he felt no real connection, to forming an unexpected connection with Esther, an older woman who didn’t even come close to his usual type. He found that the sex (and the relationship) was emotionally satisfying as well as physically, which is what he’d wanted all along.
Some didn’t quite get Gordon-Levitt’s choice to take the film in this direction, but I do. Esther, with her grief, her almost-inappropriate honesty, and her hippie-ish laidback-ness represented the emotional piece Jon was missing and the the opportunity to try it on without expectations. Turns out it fit.
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