FILM « In Which Cameron Crowe Imprisons Various Animals »
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 10:53AM 
Zoo Inspection Blues
by HANSON O'HAVER
We Bought A Zoo
dir. Cameron Crowe
123 minutes
There exist in American culture two popular sentiments. The first is that we should be able to do almost anything, free from interference from government regulators or responsibility. The second is that we should do anything we're allowed to do. In practice, this sometimes leads to bad decisions — things like owning dozens of guns, or regularly eating a cheeseburgers with donut buns. Things like buying a private zoo.
We Bought A Zoo, starring Matt Damon, Elle Fanning, Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Haden Church, and Colin Ford, breathes insight into one such decision. In the film, Damon plays the newly widowed father of a 14-year-old boy (Ford) and a seven year old girl (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). When his son begins acting up (making disturbing drawings, stealing) and the newspaper he writes for offers to give him a blog column, he knows that it's time to make a drastic change. He decides to quit his job and to move out of the city. He goes house hunting with his daughter and real estate agent JB Smoove (Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm) and almost strikes out, until at the end of the day (the stapled print-out of prospective homes is flipped to the last page) he finds the perfect house. There is, of course, one thing that stops it from being so, as the following dialogue explains:
DAMON: This is the perfect house.
SMOOVE: Well, there is one thing.
Lion's roar.
SMOOVE: It's a zoo.
Like all the best sentences, "We bought a zoo" can mean so many different things. Is it declarative? Scared? Shocked? We Bought A Zoo encompasses all these emotions and more.
I. Shocked ("We… bought a zoo?")
It is not really Matt Damon's decision to buy the zoo. When he's told that the zoo comes with the house, and that if no one buys the house the animals will be killed, he's resigned to letting them die and finding another place. "That's life," he says. JB Smoove agrees, adding, "That's life." But when he sees his daughter talking to geese, he realizes what must be done. Drunk on the love of a seven-year-old, he buys a zoo. His son and his brother don't take the news very well.
II. Nervous ("We bought… a… a..a…zoo.")
The zoo, of course, requires hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs and upgrades before it can be reopened to the public. Its staff, led by Scarlett Johansson, isn't sure if Damon has what it takes. Damon tries his best, but it seems unlikely that they'll be able to get everything up to code by July. The government inspector is very tough and also mean, we're repeatedly reminded, despite the fact that it seems very reasonable that a zoo that literally has lions and tigers and bears be up to the latest in safety measures.
III. Defensive ("We bought a zoo.")
Were you talking shit on people who buy home zoos? Well you better stop. Because Damon, family, and the zoo crew are working together. They're going to have the place ready come inspection time, doubters be damned. When someone asks Damon why he bought a zoo, he asks "Why not?" And he's right: Why not purchase a home zoo with 72 varieties of exotic animals that require expensive expert care just six months after your wife's death leaves you a widower with two young kids?
As Damon learns, however, a positive attitude isn't always enough. During one especially poignant scene, he has to decide to put an aging tiger to sleep. As we can see from the use of Bon Iver's "Holocene", the tiger's death is a metaphor for letting go of his wife. No one told him running a zoo would be easy. Luckily, when Damon runs out of money, he finds a deposit slip for $84,000 that his wife left him when she died. He uses this money to finish making upgrades to the facilities.
IV. Exuberant ("WE BOUGHT A ZOO!")
The big government inspector fakes that he's going to fail them, but then he doesn't. The day before the zoo is set to open, however, Southern California experiences a torrential downpour, in what can only be described as "man vs. nature." Luckily, the next day is sunny. At 10:02, two minutes after the zoo was set to open, there are still no visitors. "Dad, there's something wrong," the once-misguided son says. Matt Damon reassures him, but he says that there is literally something wrong and then runs down the road leading to the zoo. The family follows, and we learn that the storm knocked a tree into the road, which has prevented the sizable crowd from making it all the way to the zoo. Matt Damon is proud: "We bought a zoo! We did that!" The opening is a success.
V. Afterword ("We have a zoo.")
The people of Southern California love Matt Damon family's zoo. The first day is filled with smiles, lens flare, and an unearned post-rock soundtrack from Sigur Rós's Jónsi. Weirdly, there are also kites everywhere. Someone asks Johansson, if she had to choose, would she pick people or animals? "People."
At one point, in a staff shed, 26-year-old Johansson confesses to having a crush on 41-year-old Damon. They make out, and then she says something about how maybe, if they're ever standing near each other on New Year's Eve, they can do it again. Matt Damon tells her that he can't wait for New Year's. We get the feeling that he won't have to.
We Bought a Zoo ends in a coffee shop, with Matt Damon and his children in a group hallucination of the first conversation he ever had with his wife.
"Why would an amazing woman like you even talk to someone like me?"
"Why not?"
Why not, indeed.
Hanson O'Haver is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Brooklyn. He last wrote in these pages about the coming of Lou Reed. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He twitters here and you can find his website here.
"I'm Wrong" - Sharon Van Etten (mp3)
"Magic Chords" - Sharon Van Etten (mp3)
"We Are Fine" - Sharon Van Etten (mp3)
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