Sunday, December 29, 2019

Damned Scribbling Women

Movies: Little Women

Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel, Little Women, is more complex and insightful than many folks give it credit for. A basic interpretation of the text is that it's a domestic story of four sisters who grow up during the Civil War and learn moral lessons at the feet of their loving mother, Marmee, and eventually all fall in love and marry (except for poor Beth who is too pure for this world). The novel could easily be read as saccharine, preachy, and anti-feminist (there are also numerous occasions in the novel where a women is lectured to by a man: the sordid stories Jo writes to earn a living are bluntly criticized by Professor Bhaer, and Meg is lectured by Laurie when she becomes too involved in fussy outfits and mindless small talk at Sally's debutante ball). Not exactly a "you go girl" book, right?

Wellllll...

Louisa May Alcott was, for one thing, a very forward-thinking woman for her time. Raised by transcendentalist parents in Concord, Massachusetts, Alcott advocated for the abolition of slavery and for women's suffrage. She never married. She, like her heroine and fictional doppelgänger, Jo March, wrote sordid stories to pay the bills. It is impossible to read Little Women without considering the author's life and moral values and how they play a role in the plot. For one thing, Jo March is a women who is willing to face a life of loneliness and near-poverty to feed her passion for writing and be true to herself. There's even an interpretation--which I made up, but also probably others have figured out as well--that Jo is queer. Her adamance that she'll never marry, and the words she uses when she turn's down Laurie's marriage proposal (I'm paraphrasing, but something to the effect of "I wish I loved you the way you love me") suggests that she can't love men in that way. Of course, we all know she ends up with Bhaer, but there's plenty to suggest that if Alcott had her druthers, she would have let Jo become the "spinster" she was destined to be (perhaps in a "Boston marriage" with another woman?).

Gillian Armstrong's 1994 film adaptation of Little Women remains one of the most beloved films, well, probably ever. It's a movie that made my dad cry, you guys. So one might ask why Greta Gerwig had to go and fix something that ain't broke. Well, because good stories deserve retelling. And good directors and actors can make an old story feel fresh and uncover new feelings toward a story many of us know by heart. After all, Armstrong's version of Little Women was the fifth film adaptation of the story. So people bitching about another remake should really consider: what if the adaptations had stopped before Armstrong's masterpiece?

Gerwig makes a couple big changes to the plot structure. For one, she begins the story not at the beginning ("Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents!") but in the middle, when Jo (Saoirse Ronan, excellent as always) is living in a New York City boarding house and writing. The framing of the story is that Jo is called back to her home in Concord after Beth (Elizabeth Scanlen) takes a turn for the worse). The plot hopscotches back and forth between past and present.

Gerwig makes the controversial decision to keep all the same actors between the "older" scenes and "newer" ones. This is actually a decision that took away from the film. For example, in the "earlier" scenes, Amy is supposed to be 13 years old. Florence Pugh, an amazing talent, plays Amy. Anyone who has seen Pugh act knows that this bitch ain't 13 years old--she has a notably husky voice for one thing. The Armstrong version basically did the same thing, but Armstrong had two different actresses play Amy since her character has the most dramatic jump in age between the older and newer scenes (in the sense that Amy goes from the cusp of pubescence into adulthood, whereas Jo and Meg go from late teens to adulthood). That said, I love Florence Pugh and I thought she was excellent in the role.



I also liked Gerwig's decision to cast Timothee Chalamet and Louis Garrel as Lauie Laurence and Frederich Bhaer, respectively. Chalamet's Laurie is the right age for the character, who is about the same age as Jo. He is playful, goofy, and--often--conceited. Chalamet, who is an unbelievable talent, hits all the right notes to play the "fuckboy next door", as one review put it. Laurie is a very imperfect man. He is rich, yet is annoyed with riches. He is educated, yet chooses to live life adrift. He loves the March girls, yet he mansplains at them quite a bit. But there is no reason for the film to shy away from showing Laurie to be a product of his time and upbringing--it also reveals why he is a better match for Amy, who is very similar to Laurie in her vanity and desire for/understanding of the finer things in life than for Jo, who genuinely doesn't care about those same things.

And I liked Louis Garrel as Bhaer because he's closer in age to Jo than Gabriel Byrne was to Winona Ryder and he plays Bhaer as quiet and notably foreign--a stranger in the strange land of America. He is a good match for Jo, who needs a strong man of few words to absorb her frenetic energy. Jo needs someone willing to not fight her for the spotlight (as Laurie would have done)--and Bhaer, the introverted intellectual, is just the man to let her shine in her quirkiness.

But Gerwig's version even teases with a bit of "did they or didn't they", at the end of movie--lightly suggesting that maybe Jo *didn't* end up with Bhaer, but "wrote" the ending for her character in her novel to appease her publisher (Me? I think they end up together. But I'm a romantic at heart).

As for Jo March--wow, I have rarely felt kinship to a character as I did to her, in this adaptation specifically. Jo's whole deal is that she remains true to herself, her feelings, and her passions even when it seems the world is punishing her for it. I'm a woman who sometimes worries that my choices, my politics, and my opinions have alienated me from whole swathes of people. My refrain in life has been "I want to be loud and opinionated and assertive...and I want everyone to like me". It's a hard lesson to learn that you sometimes can't be liked by all, and also be unapologetically yourself. When Jo has a heart-to-heart with her mother about knowing that women have brains and souls and are meant for more than just love, yet she is lonely and wants to be loved--I felt that in my bones, y'all. I totally understand her. To be a feminist, to be adamant that women are not just playthings and accessories for men, yet to also want romantic love like anyone else, is a real tightrope walk. And I think that's why I root for Jo and Bhaer at the end because I want Jo to have everything she wants: a school, a book, AND a lover. Of all the heroines in all the great works of literature, who is more deserving than the fiery, uncompromising, hair-selling, ink-stained Jo March?

So, I guess what I'm saying is that Little Women (both the book and this movie) has some flaws, but it remains a powerful story of sisterhood, family, community, passion, and virtue--not virtue in the modern, Christian sense, but virtue in the sense of finding the balance of staying true to yourself, while being flexible enough to change, grow, and do right by those you love.

Grade: A

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Slice of the Pie

Movie: Knives Out

Believe the hype: Rian Johnson's Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery Knives Out is as fun, clever, and star-studded as you've heard. If you're sick of reboots, remakes, sequels, and Star Wars, Knives Out might just be the ticket to escape movie-going boredom.

Christopher Plummer plays Harlen Thrombey, a celebrated and extremely wealthy mystery novelist. The morning after his 85th birthday party, his housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson, hilarious in a small role) finds the old man dead in his study: he slit his throat the night before.

Seems like a straightforward suicide to Detective Elliot (Lakeith Stanfield), but the appearance of private investigator and southern gentleman Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) suggests something else is going on. Blanc doesn't even know who hired him: he simply received a directive to investigate Thrombey's death and an envelope of cash a couple days after the alleged suicide. As Blanc begins to dig into the Thrombey family dynamics, it appears that nearly everyone has a motive to off the old man--except for Thrombey's loyal nurse, Marta (Ana de Armas), who--conveniently for Blanc--has a very strange quirk: she pukes when she tells a lie.

Blanc insists that Marta work with him to discover whether or not Thrombey really killed himself, or if something is, as Blanc states, "afoot".

To reveal the motives of the different Thrombey family members would be to spoil the plot (or bore those who have already seen it), so I'll hold off on that. I will say Knives Out worked really well for me because 1) it wasn't too difficult to follow (I struggle with "heist" movies for this very reason), 2) it actually fooled me (I predicted one ending and, well, was wrong), and 3) it was funny and entertaining as fuck--mostly due to the talented ensemble cast. Starring everyone from Jamie Lee Curtis to Toni Collette to Michael Shannon, the sheer volume of talent is overwhelming. And everyone fits into their role like a hand in a glove, even when playing against type. For example, Chris Evans--Captain America himself--is a standout as Ransom, the douche-y, wildly entitled grandson of Thrombey. His pretty boy looks serve him well in the role of a man who has looks, smarts, and money but is a total waste of a human being.


Speaking of entitlement, Knives Out contains a not-so-hidden commentary on America's current (and shameful) treatment of immigrants. Marta is an immigrant (the family keeps messing up where she's from--some say Ecuador, others say Uruguay) and is told time and again that she is "like family" to the Thrombey's...but when the shit hits the fan, it's clear that she is less of a family member to them than Thrombey's dogs are. Knives Out rubs the audience's face in rich, white, American hypocrisy--various family members keep insisting that they "built something from nothing" when it's clear they've been given a huge assist from grandpa. Compare that to Marta, who truly is trying to build a home for herself and her mother from almost literally nothing. Conservatives will probably go apeshit over this movie, if they even deign to see something other than a God's Not Dead sequel and I couldn't be happier about that since anti-immigration conservatives are loathsome racists who deserve to have their seed wiped from the earth. Vote blue in 2020, kids!

I'll end by saying: go see Knives Out. Despite the fact that an old man dies a violent death, it's a lighthearted, hilarious, fun movie that will have you guessing and leave you smiling.

Grade: B+


Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Dressed to Kill

Movie: In Fabric

No director pays beautiful homage to giallo films like Peter Strickland. Since I first saw his masterpiece, The Duke of Burgundy, I have been obsessed with his films. Strickland sets his stories in vague locations and times. For example, The Duke of Burgundy appears to take place somewhere in Europe, sometime in the late 1960s...however, the world it occupies has no men and no children. As in, men and children don't exist. In building such a world, the Strickland jolts us from our comfort zone and gives us no cultural markers on which to rely. The Duke of Burgundy focuses on two women in a Dominant/submissive relationship...but can we call them lesbians if men don't exist? Can we call it a Dom/sub relationship if, as it appears in the film, all the people in this movie are in such relationships?

Strickland's latest horror/comedy, In Fabric, is just as timeless but even stranger than The Duke of Burgundy. The movie is about killer dress that seems to do the bidding of a coven of witches who live in the basement of a department store. So right off the bat, I'm like: 1) weird and 2) wow, this reminds me a LOT of the OG giallo film, Suspiria. The cinematography and music pay direct homage to Dario Argento's classic horror tale of a ballet school run by witches.

Shelia Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, giving the film a much-needed straight man to react to all this weirdness) is divorced, in her 50s, living with her ungrateful son, Vince (Jaygann Ayeh), and his hyper-sexual girlfriend, Gwen (Gwendoline Christie...yes, Brienne of Tarth). She is lonely and frustrated. She puts a personal ad in the newspaper and, when she has a date on the books, goes to Dentley & Soper's department store to find a new dress. And find one she does: in "artery red", the dress is a size smaller than Shelia's measurements, yet fits perfectly (Sisterhood of the Traveling Killer Dress?). Never mind the fact that it gives Sheila a nasty rash right away.

Meanwhile, the ladies who work at the department store wash an anatomically correct mannequin in the basement while some old dude looks on and masturbates. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Other weird shit happens: the dress makes Sheila's washing machine "go bananas". A dog attacks the dress and rips it, but then later that evening...the dress is no longer ripped (!!!). The dress watches Gwen and Vince have kinky sex and then attacks Gwen. The dress slinks down a staircase. If this all sounds ridiculous, well... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Eventually, the dress makes its way to a new owner: Reg Speaks (Leo Bill), a chinless washing-machine repair man who is having a stag party to celebrate his upcoming nuptials to Babs (Haley Squires). His friends force him to put on the dress as part of the fun and games of stag night. Later, Babs finds the dress and puts it on. It fits both her and Reg perfectly, despite different body types. And they both come to tragic ends.

In Fabric is...to put it mildly...not for everyone. It's weird even by my standards and I like weird movies. It is dreamlike and artsy and sexual, but not in a sexy way. There is a lot of shit that goes unexplained--like, who are the women in the basement of the department store? Who is the man who jacks off to a mannequin? Why a killer dress? Is this all a metaphor for capitalism run amok? Who knows! When I say In Fabric is dreamlike, I literally mean that it is very much like being in a dream: there are familiar objects, places, and events, but they are all a little off. For example, Sheila works at a bank (very normal) where she is chastised by her bosses for not having a "meaningful" enough handshake (wut). Sheila's son, Vince, has the hairdo and clothes of a young man living in 2019, but everything else in Sheila's part of the film looks like the late 1970s. Everything is familiar yet confoundingly strange--just like a dream. The timeline doesn't make sense either--just like a dream. And symbolism, color, and sound are more important than plot--just like in a dream.

So, I recommend this movie to cinephiles, especially those who like Peter Strickland. Most other viewers may find themselves out of their depth. Unlike the killer dress itself, this movie won't fit everyone.

Grade: B+