Singin' in the Pain

Movies: Annette

So, I was going to include Leos Carax's rock opera, Annette, in with my "Movies I watched in September" blog post, but I realized that this film deserves its own entry.

I watched Annette two days ago and I can't stop thinking about it. I've gone back and rewatched a few scenes, as well as downloaded the soundtrack. It's a film that is mesmerizing and strange, at times cringey and at other times absolutely gut-wrenching.

The film, as well as the music, was written by Ron and Russell Mael, who are also known as the musical duo Sparks. Sparks is having a hell of a year--in addition to releasing Annette in 2021, they were also the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver). Indeed, the soundtrack to Annette is one of its strongest features.

Another strong feature of the film is the acting. Adam Driver who just cannot stop being so fucking talented plays Henry McHenry, a comedian who falls in love with Ann Defransnoux (Marion Cotillard), an opera singer. Rounding out the cast is Simon Helberg (best know for his role as Howard Wolowitz in The Big Bang Theory) who plays a character named only "The Accompanist", who is a musical accompanist for Ann and is also in love with her. 

Ann and Henry's relationship is an opposite-attracts one, which they sing about in "We Love Each Other So Much", which is both my favorite song in the movie and also my favorite sequence in the film. For those of you who pay attention to movie news and/or are Adam Driver stans, like myself, this is the part of the movie where Driver sings while performing cunnilingus. Well, I mean, technically he lifts his head to sing a line...he doesn't actually sing into Marion Cotillard's pussy. 

The problem is...Henry isn't a nice guy. He is aggressive, volatile, an alcoholic, and physically dominating. There's a scene immediately after the infamous cunt-singing scene where Henry holds Ann down and aggressively tickles her. Even though the implication is that it's consensual, it's an interesting contrast to the previous scene because it shows how easily such fun and games could slip into non-consent given Henry's size and unstable personality. 

We don't see just how volatile Henry is until later, after the couple has a child, Annette (played by a marionette, which only adds to the dreamlike and bizarre quality of the film) and Ann gains international fame while Henry's career starts to fizzle out. He becomes resentful for having to "babysit" Annette (YOU'RE THE DAD, MY DUDE) while Ann travels the world, singing to an adoring audience. Henry hits the bottle more and more often, and eventually has a breakdown during one of his performances where he claims he killed his wife by "tickling her to death", and then pantomimes this event. It's a hell of scene for Driver and, I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's almost Shakespearean--just this intense, bizarre, funny-but-not-funny monologue that has the audience booing him off the stage by the end of it. I love it when an actor is willing to just be a combination of nuts and vulnerable. Sorry, I'm trying to not let my horniness for Driver effect this review, but uh, it's my blog and I'm going to be horny if I want to be.

Well, he doesn't actually kill Ann by tickling her to death....but, uh....spoilers spoilers spoilers...

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SPOILER SECTION

The couple take a trip on their yacht to heal their relationship, but during a storm, Henry forces Ann to dance with him while he is blind drunk. She falls overboard and dies. After her death, Henry discovers that baby Annette can sing in Ann's voice. Knowing that his career is over, Henry immediately ropes the Accompanist into his scheme to exploit baby Annette's talent for commercial gain. The Accompanist makes a great contrast to Henry: he is short where Henry is tall, patient where Henry is impatient, and gentle where Henry is rough. I'm really happy to see Helberg getting interesting roles, post-TBBT because he is one hell of a talented dude, both in terms of acting and singing. His character, the Accompanist, was in love with Ann and also suspects that he might be the actual father of Annette, so even though he finds Henry loathsome, he is willing to become involved for Annette's sake.

Well, it's only a matter of time before Henry on-purpose drowns the Accompanist, an act which Annette reveals to the entire world during a performance. The final scene is Henry in prison and Annette--no longer played by a puppet, but a little girl--telling him that he can't love her, "not really". It's a devastating ending which nearly had me in tears. 

END SPOILERS

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You might be wondering why the hell you'd want to watch a movie about a shitty, resentful dude who throws away all the gifts he was given in life and then refuses to take responsibility for his actions. But remember that this is a rock opera, and operas are meant to be over-the-top and, often, incredibly tragic. If Annette were an indie drama, it would indeed probably be a pretty annoying film. But the medium allows it to turn the emotions up to 11, embrace concepts like star-crossed lovers, and pile tragedy upon tragedy--it's an opera for God's sake! You want your operas to feel like TOO MUCH.

Annette is the kind of movie where you'll read about it and either think "yeah, no fucking way I'm watching that" or "hell yes, this is right up my alley". From reviews I've read, people either think it's the most ridiculous, embarrassing movie of the year or the best movie of the year. I'm not quite willing to label it "best of the year", but I will say that it really hit me hard and I think I will be thinking about it and listening to the music for quite a while. So if you're on the fence, I'd highly recommend checking it out--and be prepared to have some strong opinions about it!

Grade: A- 

At the very least, watch the opening sequence, which slaps:

Sweets to the Sweet

 Movies: Candyman (1992) and Candyman (2021)

I am the writing on the wall. The sweet smell of blood. Be my victim.

***

Ok, so I watched Bernard Rose's 1992 Candyman sometime in 2020 or 2019, but I can't for the life of me find a review of it on this blog. Which is odd because it made a huge impact on me. So I apologize if I did review it and it's buried somewhere.

In any case, I figured this would be a great opportunity to do a double-review with Nia DaCosta's 2021 Candyman, which is being referred to as a "spiritual sequel" even though it's...a straight up sequel. I had been waiting over a year to see DaCosta's Candyman and I was not disappointed! It is not a flawless film, and neither is Rose's. When I compare the two side by side, each one has unique strengths and weaknesses. But they are undoubtedly both excellent, powerful horror films with one hell of a villain.

Rose's 1992 film is based on a short story by Clive Barker titled "The Forbidden". But what's truly fascinating is how Rose uses Barker's story, but also some real-life shit that went down in the Cabrini-Green projects in Chicago in 1987, as inspiration. Specifically, an incident where a woman, Ruthie Mae McCoy, was murdered by a man who literally came through her bathroom mirror. Read the story here. Ruthie's story is explicitly referenced in the 1992 Candyman and one of the characters, Anne-Marie McCoy (played by Vanessa A. Williams, who also has a role in the 2021 film playing the same character) is named after the real-life murder victim. The fact that Candyman weaves this true story into the overarching fictional plot is brilliant, given that the film is about an urban legend, and urban legends are often a blend of fiction and facts. 

Virginia Madsen plays Helen Lyle, a graduate student working on her thesis with fellow student and friend Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons, who went on to direct films herself). The thesis is on urban legends and so, living in Chicago, Helen naturally learns of Candyman, a story originating from the Cabrini-Green projects. The story of Candyman is that he was the son of a former slave who was a well-educated and talented artist. He ended up falling in love with the daughter of a wealthy white man after being commissioned to paint her portrait. After discovering that his daughter was pregnant, the wealthy man had a mob brutalize Candyman (real name: Daniel Robitaille) by sawing his right hand off, sticking a hook into the stump, slathering him with honey, and letting thousands of bees sting him to death. This torture and murder took place the area that would become Cabrini-Green. 

Helen's search for the truth of Candyman shows how urban legends spread: she talks to a single mom who lives in the Cabrini-Green projects, Anne-Marie McCoy, who tells her about how Candyman came through her neighbor Ruthie Jean's bathroom mirror and sliced her to death. Later, a young boy, Jake, shows Helen a public restroom and says that he heard that Candyman lives there...and Helen has a run in with some gang members who tell her she "found Candyman" while they beat the crap out of her. Not to mention the fact that she actually, you know, summons Candyman for real. The mixture of rumor, ghost story, and the simple horrors of poverty and violence blend into a sad, beautiful, and violent story about race, class, and how people mentally process the unfairness and brutality of life.

My main issue with the 1992 Candyman is that it tells a story of Black pain through the eyes of a white woman. It's not so much that the film is racist, it's just that by focusing on Helen Lyle, the film relegates Black suffering to the background. There are many wonderful, interesting characters of color in this film: the vulnerable, protective Anne-Marie McCoy, the skeptical, level-headed Bernadette, and the man himself--Candyman, played by the elegant and very sexy Tony Todd--but they are all just supporting characters in Helen's story. 

However, if we're willing to accept that Candyman is what it is: a product of its times, and a product of a white-centered society, it is a truly unique, even beautiful story. I keep saying "beautiful" because the story of Candyman is a story of forbidden love which transforms into a story of brutality and revenge. There's something unique about Candyman himself. He is indeed a villain, and he murders without hesitation, but he's closer to a Hannibal Lecter than a Freddy or Jason: Candyman is elegant, intelligent, driven by a desire to reclaim the love he lost and take revenge on those who do not fear him enough to leave well enough along and avoid saying his name five times into a mirror. He's not a mindless psychopath, but a poet, an artist. He's also very clearly a Clive Barker creation in the way he mixes pain and pleasure, beckoning Helen to "be my victim" and promising her "the pain will be exquisite" There is indeed a touch of the ol' sadomasochism in the heart of this bee-ridden ghost. 

Bee my victim.

Now, Nia DaCosta's Candyman takes the legend and expands on it. In this story, there are Candymen, if you will: men who have suffered at the hands of white people over the decades. The film opens in Cabrini-Green in 1977. Young William is doing his laundry when an older gentleman, with a hook for a hand, steps through a hole in the wall and offers William a piece of candy. William screams, alerting police officers who beat the man to death. This man is Sherman Fields, a harmless old man who is disabled and mentally not all there, but is beaten to death all the same. 

Cut to present day. Anthony McCoy (Yahya Mateen-Abdul II) is a visual artist living in a gentrified area of Chicago. In his quest for artistic inspiration, he comes upon the story of Candyman. Not unlike Helen Lyle, Anthony learns about Candyman by wandering through Cabrini-Green taking photos. William Burke (Colman Domingo), the owner of a laundromat and, yes, the same William whose scream inadvertently led to Sherman Fields' death, tells Anthony what he knows of Candyman--and Anthony is inspired to create a piece of artwork that involves a mirror. The piece is titled "say his name" (which is a not so subtle, but still powerful, reference to the victims of police brutality) and Anthony's girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris), displays it in an art gallery she runs. Of course, later that night, the gallery owner and the piece of tail he happens to be fucking that evening summon Candyman in Anthony's mirror and are found brutally murdered in a puddle of blood the next morning. 

In DaCosta's Candyman, the murderous ghost is mostly played by Michael Hargrove (who also plays Sherman Fields), until the very end when we see a glimpse of Tony Todd behind a face-full of bees (the crowd in the theatre cheered at this). This is fitting, as William Burke explains to Anthony, "Candyman ain't a "he"; Candyman's the whole damn hive". DaCosta makes what was subtle in the 1992 film much more explicit in this film: the lore around Candyman isn't so much about one scary ghost...it's about how people process the unthinkable. Burke reveals to Anthony a whole history, starting with Daniel Robitaille in the 1890s, of white people brutalizing and murdering Black people on Black people's own turf (i.e. Cabrini-Green). From the mob that slathered Robitaille in honey to the cops who beat Fields to death, Candyman is not a singular entity, but a symbol of Black suffering transformed into Black vengeance.

Indeed, this Candyman (with one exception) only kills white people. The movie aficionado Facebook group I'm in had some questions about this; namely: does DaCosta stick to the lore created in the Rose version? Well...sort of! Candyman's MAIN motivation for killing is two-fold: to punish those who summon him for not "being content with the stories". Basically, if they believed strongly enough, they wouldn't summon him. In doing so, they prove their disbelief and must be punished. Secondly, Candyman kills so that his story lives on. Each kill means more rumors and more fear. And Candyman's greatest desire is to be remembered. His final line in the 2021 film is "Tell everyone." So, in the original, Helen Lyle summons him, but he doesn't kill her right away--instead, he wants her to sacrifice herself to him so they can be together in eternity (Helen apparently reminds Candyman of his lost love, the white woman he was murdered over). There is a touch of Bram Stoker's Dracula here with the whole "I have crossed oceans of time to find you" thing, which makes sense, given that Candyman is supposed to be a Black Dracula of sorts: he is debonair, handsome, and has the ability to hypnotize his victims, making them desire their own demise. 

Likewise, in the 2021 version, Anthony summons Candyman and isn't killed immediately, unlike the gallery owner and, hilariously, a bunch of white teen girls who summon him in a high school bathroom. Instead, Candyman begins inhabiting Anthony, leading to a scene of pretty intense grossness--stay away from this film if you suffer from trypophobia. While Candyman wanted Helen as an eternal lover, he wants to possess and embody Anthony,

Detail-oriented readers might also notice that Anthony's last name is McCoy. And in the 1992 version, single mom Anne-Marie McCoy nearly lost her baby boy when Candyman (or Helen, depending on your interpretation), stole him and put him in a bonfire to be burned to death, only to be saved by Helen, who dies in the process of saving the baby. 

So, anyone familiar with the first film will quickly figure out that grown man Anthony McCoy was that little baby. And Candyman's possession of him is a way for the ghost to reclaim what is his. In doing so, Anthony is added to the lineage of Black men who embody Candyman...and the legend continues. 

My biggest criticism with DaCosta's Candyman is that there are just too many ideas crammed into a 90 minute film. There is an entire subplot about Brianna's father, an artist who took his own life, that is brought up multiple times but goes nowhere. There is also a lot left unsaid about gentrification, art, police brutality, and more. I would be very interested to see a director's cut of this movie, if one exists. The film's insides are bigger than its outsides, if that makes sense.

The 1992 film and the 2021 film make great companion pieces, not unlike Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL. They both have their strengths and weakness, and they both add to the lore of Candyman. I highly recommend both films.

Grades:

Candyman 1992: A

Candyman 2021: B+