High Fidelity (2000)

“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.”

Join Ian & Liam for our 349th episode as we alphabetise the vinyl, rank our emotional catastrophes and head back to Championship Vinyl for Stephen Frears’ High Fidelity (2000).

Megs isn’t with us this week — Rob asked her to rank her five worst break-ups and she decided she’d rather never speak to any of us again. Kev has disappeared into a record shop and refuses to come out until everyone agrees his Top Five Albums list is objectively correct.

This week we discuss:

• John Cusack as Rob Gordon — charismatic, funny, self-aware... and still somehow completely incapable of recognising that he might be the problem.
• A coming-of-age story for a man in his 30s — has Rob reached adulthood without ever actually growing up, and is the film really about emotional adolescence arriving about fifteen years late?
• The strange A Christmas Carol connection — like Scrooge, Rob is forced to revisit his past, confront the stories he has told himself about his own unhappiness and realise that memory becomes much less comforting when other people get to challenge your version of events.
• Breaking the fourth wall and controlling the narrative — does Rob talking directly to us make him more honest, or simply allow him to curate his own story in the same way he curates his record collection?
• The Top Five obsession, music and taste as identity — are Rob’s lists just a funny character trait, or a defence mechanism that allows him to substitute having good taste for actually having a personality?
• The ex-girlfriend tour and the women in Rob’s life — funny, revealing and deeply unhealthy. Does revisiting these relationships actually help Rob understand himself, and how much are we still trapped inside his self-centred perspective?
• Barry, Dick and Jack Black before JACK BLACK — the supporting cast repeatedly threaten to walk away with the movie, while Jack Black seems to arrive already fully formed.
• The ending and Rob’s emotional growth — does he genuinely mature, simply become more self-aware, or finally learn the fairly basic lesson that loving someone requires occasionally making the story about somebody other than yourself?

And finally, whether High Fidelity is the Best Film Ever — or simply the perfect film for anyone who has ever mistaken having excellent taste for having an excellent personality.

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