Sideways (2004)

For some filmmakers — particularly younger American directors who till the soil of an indie aesthetic originally fertilized by sex, lies, and videotape — artistic growth is linked to the mastery of an increased degree of technical difficulty: As they find their voice and polish their style, these bright fellows juggle more, get fancier in their storytelling. For Alexander Payne, whose gloriously wise and warm Sideways is on a very short list for best American movie of the year, a creative growth spurt has brought him to a looser, deeper, and more reflective place. And homeland moviemaking, as well as movie lovers, reaps the pleasures.

Who could have guessed that contentment would become him? In Payne's first work set beyond the psychic confines of his hometown of Omaha (Citizen Ruth begat Election, which begat About Schmidt), he has found mature happiness in a California backyard far from the prairie. Sideways unfolds in the rambling vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley, where a couple of old college roommates — now men of a certain early-midlife rumple — have journeyed to taste wine (well, sometimes just to drink) and to forget, temporarily, that they have already swallowed so much manly disappointment. Miles (Paul Giamatti) knows the misery of failing to flower and wallows in a tender depression (familiar to any adult, thanks to Giamatti's exquisite definition) over a busted marriage and unpublishable novel; he's a wine connoisseur prone to drunkenness, with a particular passion for the hard-to-grow grape that produces pinot noir. Jack (Thomas Haden Church, flying way past TV's Wings in a career-defining performance) knows the failure of settling for shallow soil; he has adapted his acting dreams to the realities of commercial voice-over work and now must curb his hearty appetite for women to fit the reality of a forthcoming wedding to a respectable girl he knows he ought to appreciate more than he does.

The road-trip tour of vineyards is Miles' bachelor-party gift to Jack. But Jack, in his hale and horny way, gives as much back to his frumpier friend, encouraging him to keep writing, keep believing in himself — and keep his pecker up, as Jack has every intention of doing in his last week of what he calls ''freedom.'' The two men kibitz and bicker, often to unforced hilarious effect (the unimprovably lovely script by Payne and his regular writing collaborator, Jim Taylor, is based on a novel of the same name by Rex Pickett). And before too long Jack has put the moves, lustily reciprocated, on a wine pourer named Stephanie (Under the Tuscan Sun's Sandra Oh, the welcome fizz in any movie), and Miles is stumbling toward a connection with Stephanie's soulful friend, a local waitress named Maya (Virginia Madsen, nothing less than a revelation 20 years into her career). There may be no more breathtaking scene of tentative intimacy between a contemporary man and a woman than the nighttime conversation Miles and Maya conduct on Stephanie's back porch — he describing the difficulty and reward of nurturing pinot grapes (by which he means himself), she musing on the living qualities of wine as it swells to its peak of drinkability and then declines (by which she means herself).

Sideways takes scenic detours for piquant adventures. A manicured golf course, with its rituals and formalities, becomes the site of a satisfyingly violent expression of male apoplexy, and when Stephanie learns that her new beau has neglected to mention his upcoming wedding, she employs a motorcycle helmet as a cudgel in a liberating yee-haw of fury. The movie swings like that, from snapshots of the very daily and bathetic (the boys stop to visit Miles' mother in her ticky-tacky town house off the freeway, the decoration of which is a Payne specialty) to X-rays of the very extraordinary and complicated that make up the modern-day American man's ticking soul. The camera work is casual, unshowy; the smooth-groove accompanying score, by Rolfe Kent, sounds like the jazz-beat stuff guys like Miles would listen to at home alone. Miles flosses his teeth, Jack blasts his socks with an anti-odor mist because that's what grown men who know what needs to be done do.

It's an intoxicating feeling when a movie excites and enlivens us like this — and there's a particular giddiness to be had in thinking about what movies can (but don't often) do for one's soul after imbibing such a fine vintage. It's damned hard to resist piling on the grape-based metaphors in admiration. So here's a toast to Sideways. Drink deep.

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