IF WHISKEY WERE A WOMAN, HOW MUCH WOULD I OWE IN ALIMONY? Also last week, I saw Everything Must Go, now playing at the E Street Cinema and the AFI Silver theater. Will Ferrell gets fired for being an alcoholic mess, and comes home to find his wife gone, the locks changed, and all his possessions on the front lawn. He basically says, “Well to hell with it then,” and lives on the lawn, holding an ongoing yard sale to get around local zoning laws. Based on a short story by Raymond Carver.

It’s not a perfect movie. There’s some on-the-nose dialogue and at least one over-easy plot twist, which I thought let our hero off a bit cheaply. Ferrell’s character befriends a local kid who’s played with a very flat affect, which sort of worked for me but was a bit distracting; I imagine a lot of people would chalk it up to bad acting even though I’m not sure it really was. It’s certainly noticeable acting.

That said, this movie really struck me. It’s cringingly funny and poignant, heartbreaking and almost-but-not-quite-defeated, a story about salvage. Ferrell is terrific, completely convincing, and his intensely public rock-bottom really brings home that Mother Theresa line, “There is no humility without humiliation.” There’s a certain relief to having hidden shames exposed, getting it over with–even when the people doing the exposure are staining their own souls through pride and cruelty–and that experience can also be a path toward redemption. I could’ve watched several more hours of this stuff. A different version of this is the closing song and it’s well-earned. This is a bruised, forgiving, sorry-ass movie.